Why are your lyrics usually about pain then? <smiles>

They’re not all about pain! <laughs>

I can speak only of Delerium songs and I’ve heard ‘Souvenir’ today to be honest … <smiles>

As far as my album, I wrote those songs over such a long period of time, like from even when I was in Rose Chronicles and some are new. They’re about so many different experiences in my life that they are kind of like souvenir of my past. That is why the title for the album is ‘Souvenir’. And as far as Delerium… yeah…hm… I think I’m a pretty happy person, and maybe the reason why I can be a happy person is that I purge anything that’s bothering me out in to my lyrics. Sometimes they’re totally a picture of something that’s happened: relationship gone bad, or heartache or something; other times I go into other people’s head and try to explain a story that I think is happening to someone else. So they may not all necessary be about me personally, songs could be about my friend or about something else…

And on your upcoming album?

Well, you see, something happened among all of the things that went on in last ten years and all the projects - I fell in love with this really wonderful guy, and that made me write about some really happy things <smiles>. But I still wrote about things that I draw from and lot of it is about social questions and conscience about what is going on in the world. There’s much more political or social underlying tone to a lot of my songs. I’ve never thought I’ll write about something like that, but considering what happened in last few years, I just couldn’t help it.

‘Returning’ from “Chimera” is an example?

Yes, exactly. It is a song about ‘Where will I wake up?’ question after all the 9/11 thing and floods and fires that happened in the past few years…will we live in chaos every morning?

Do you make statements in your new songs?

Yes, more so now. I mean, no slogans or anything like that; and you’ll still find some personal songs there, but album definitely has that social undertone. More outside things affected lyrics writing on this solo album. You could say I went ‘outside myself’ by writing about my friends and their relationships, sexual abuse, terrorism – all those things that are out there… Half of the songs are positive and half are not. It’s a quite good mix, actually. <smiles> It’s a mix of emotions.

How did that affect your music? How can we introduce ‘Souvenir’ to readers of Electromeda (keeping in mind they like electronic music)?

I did my album with producer Eric Ross, who worked on Tori Amos’ album, so there’s a bit of influence there. I would best describe it as rhythmic album, it has lot of drum sounds, even sometimes sounding tribal, yet, on the other hand, it also contains a bit of Marvin Gaye drumline... (continues)