You are just returning from a long tour. So how do you feel? What were the highlights of the tour?
Oh, every day was a highlight because it was my first ever headlining tour, and it was incredibly exciting to present my new album across Europe and the UK. I had a completely new live setup with an additional synthesizer, and for the first time I was able to perform a full set of almost two hours every night. It was a great challenge, and I’m really happy because, once again, I learned so much from the experience.
Everything went wonderfully, and I was genuinely surprised to have four sold-out shows. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that at all! Every night I met amazing artists that I had the chance to share the stage with, some of them were incredibly talented, and that was a truly enriching experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t visit every country I had hoped to this time, but I really hope to complete the tour soon.
I came away feeling incredibly grateful. Everyone in the audience was so supportive, warm, and welcoming. I also got to reconnect with people who have been supporting my music for a long time. It was quite moving and I came back home with my heart completely full, full of emotions, warmth, and beautiful memories. It was an incredibly intense and beautiful experience.
 

You also played at Roadburn.
Yes, the final day of the tour was at that amazing festival, and it was an incredible way to end everything. I arrived the day before my performance, and it was really special to be able to immerse myself in the festival from the evening before. I had the chance to see Acid Mothers Temple live, and they completely blew me away. It honestly felt like I was on drugs without taking anything! I just kept thinking, „Wow… this is true psychedelia!“ I absolutely love them. They delivered one of the most unforgettable endings to a concert I’ve ever witnessed. I was just standing there thinking, „What is happening on this stage?“
Roadburn is always a place where you discover incredible artists. I’d played there before, and even the last time I attended I saw some unforgettable performances, especially Senyawa, who were a real revelation for me. The quality of the festival is always exceptionally high. I also had the chance to see Walter again. Beyond being the festival’s main organizer, he’s a wonderful person who always makes you feel at home. It was really emotional to present „Nagalite“ on that stage as well, it was a truly incredible experience, and I have to admit, I was a little sad to come back home when it was all over.
 

 
For the people who don’t know you, can you give a short history of your way as an artist? Did you play in bands before? Or were you always a solo artist?
Everything started when I was 14 years old, so, a really long time ago! Back then I received a wonderful gift: a classical guitar. I started teaching myself how to play, and later, when I was in high school, I met some interesting people and we formed a band together. I was the rhythm guitarist, and we played together for five years. During that time I started to develop my own style and my own musical taste. We really grew up together and we only played original songs.
But I was really, really shy about using my voice. I knew I could sing, but I never wanted to. Then one day I got really drunk… and I started singing. From that day on, I became also the singer of the band. Even then, though, I still struggled a lot with singing in front of other people.
After that I played in several other bands, mostly metal bands. While I was practicing at home, I used to record myself playing guitar on a tape recorder. Then I’d play the recording back while playing another guitar part over it, and record that too. Little by little I built more and more layers. Later, I started using a Tascam four track recorder, which allowed me to layer different guitar parts even further. At first it was just a way to practice, but eventually I began composing songs using this layering technique. Then, in 2006, I discovered loop stations. I started using just one looper with my guitar, and that was really the beginning of the LILI REFRAIN project.
A lot was happening in my life during that period. After many different jobs, a lot of struggles, and also some difficult experiences, I consciously decided to make music the center of my life. There came a moment when I completely changed direction and chose to follow the only thing I truly loved, the thing that made me happy. So, I focused on creating my own music through my own project. After a lot of persistence, I finally reached the point where I could live from my music, and only from my music. So, after twenty years, I can finally say that I’m a musician.

 
Over time I developed this technique of layering sounds using five different loop stations. I added my voice, a synthesizer, and a floor tom, so now I’m basically a one-woman band. Every song is built live, in real time, completely from scratch. I never use a computer or pre-recorded tracks. My approach has always been completely analog. Even mistakes become part of the performance, I interact with them, improvise around them, and let them become something new. So it’s not just a recording project. Live, it becomes a performance, because you never really know what’s going to happen.

 
Do you sometimes miss having people around you, that the focus is not only on you all the time?
Sometimes yes, especially when it comes to making decisions. Touring is actually the thing I love the most. I really love travelling, being on the road, sharing my energy and my music with people, and meeting new people. That’s fundamental for me. But when I have to make important decisions, or when I’m trying to understand whether the music I’m creating really has the impact I hope it has, I need someone else’s perspective. For example, when I’m working on an album in the studio, I consider the sound engineer as part of my band. I work with him as if he were another band member, because it’s essential for me to have someone who’s a little more detached from my music and from my emotions. When you’re too deeply involved into something, it’s very difficult to see the bigger picture. You only gain that perspective after some time, when you can finally step back and look at everything from a distance. But in the moment, everything feels too close.
When I recorded „Nagalite“, my latest album, I cried all the way through the recording of the last song, „Lithos“. I was carrying very strong feelings about what was happening in the world at that time, and unfortunately still does. I was really struggling inside. At the same time, I wanted to approach it with a certain lightness, because it was the first time I’d ever written actual lyrics. Usually, when I sing, I don’t use words at all. But with „Lithos“, I felt that I needed to say something, because the whole album is about transformation, the need to shed your skin, like a snake. If you never change, you’re already dead. You become stuck, and in that kind of stillness there’s no possibility of healing. So I wanted to write lyrics for the first time.
The problem was that I was too deeply inside those emotions. As soon as I started singing, I immediately burst into tears. I thought, „No… I can’t. I can’t do this.“ After many takes, we decided to keep the very first one, the one where I was crying, because it was the most genuine performance I had recorded. It contained everything I was feeling, all the truth of that moment. But for me it was a terrible decision. I felt responsible for passing those painful emotions on to other people. I didn’t want listeners to come away with a bad feeling. But my sound engineer (the excellent Stefano Morabito) said, „No, Lili. This is perfect. You can’t use anything else because this is really you. This is you.“ If I’d been completely alone in the studio, without someone I trusted beside me, I might have deleted everything. I really don’t know. So being alone isn’t always easy when you have to make those kinds of decisions.

 
Being on your own has its ups and downs. On the one hand, you don’t have to deal with the worst part of being in a band like the arguments, or having to compromise because someone else can’t or doesn’t want to do something. On the other hand, you also lose the best part: making decisions together, always having someone to bounce ideas off, sharing the responsibility, or simply combining your energy.
When I’m on tour, though, I’m almost always travelling with two people who work with me, and they’re incredibly important to me. Even though I’m the only one who walks on stage, they’re an essential part of how I get there.
The real challenge is that on stage I’m everything: the drummer, the guitarist, the singer. And all of that takes a huge amount of energy. Touring is demanding. You sleep very little, you don’t always eat healthy, and your energy isn’t always at its best. But once you’re on stage, you have to give everything you have. With a band, if you’re tired one night, maybe you can do a little less.

 
You can retreat a little.
Yeah, and maybe, one night the guitarist isn’t at their best either, but the show still works because you’re carrying each other. When you’re alone, you can’t hide behind anyone. You always have to push yourself a little further, even when you feel completely drained. But sometimes the satisfaction you feel afterwards is exactly what balances all of that effort.

 
The whole applause is for you.
Yes, it’s for US. You know, it’s for us because it’s a sharing. It’s something we create together. It’s always a dialogue.

 
When I first listened to your music, the thing I noticed that you are using different voices. There is a straight voice, then you have this opera the voice and then you have a more experimental voice, that’s maybe a bit tribal, or like Buddhist chants. So, for these different voice personalities, do you have a concept for when to use them or is it fully improvisational and you just go into the flow and these voices just appear? How does it work?
Wow, that’s a deep question. The voice is one of the deepest instruments we have because it’s so closely connected to whatever you’re feeling in that moment. Even when you’re not singing, just when you’re speaking. If you’re very emotional, your voice changes. Maybe it becomes softer, or maybe you suddenly start speaking louder because of what you’re feeling. So, for me, it all depends on the emotion I want to express.
As I told you before, I used to be incredibly shy about using my voice because it made me feel completely naked. Whenever I sang, I felt that something very deep was happening inside me. I think there was a part of me that resisted letting that voice come out with its full power. Maybe I was afraid of connecting so deeply with my own emotions. But over time I began to explore that connection instead, and little by little I became more confident, not only with my voice, but also with my emotions.
I’ve never formally studied music, unfortunately. Everything I’ve learned, the guitar, the drums, my voice, I’ve explored on my own. At one point I started experimenting with screaming, but not in the metal sense. I was simply trying to push my voice into more extreme expressions. Through that process I began to understand how my body reacts to different kinds of vocal sounds. For example, when I use an operatic voice, which feels very solemn, very deep, and also very spiritual, the technique is actually very similar to yawning. You know that sound you make when you yawn in the morning? It’s surprisingly close to operatic singing. I realized that the sound doesn’t just come from here [touches throat], it feels as if it comes from the very bottom of the spine. I also discovered that I could breathe with my whole back, not just through my nose or my mouth. We usually think of the voice as something that’s only here, in the front of the body, but actually the whole body is part of your voice. That made me much more curious about what was happening inside of me.

 
I also started working with vocal coaches who could teach me different techniques. For example, I attended a workshop with SAINKHO, the Tuvan singer. She’s an incredible artist, and she taught me throat singing and how to use the vocal cords to create those monk-like chants. Later, I also started taking lessons to develop a healthier vocal technique, so that I could protect my voice while touring. Touring is hard on your voice. When it’s snowing, when it’s very cold, or if you sleep in a hotel room with the heating turned up too high, your voice is immediately affected. The next day you might barely be able to speak, and that’s a real problem when singing is the main instrument of your project.
So, I didn’t really start studying music in a traditional sense, but I wanted to understand better how my voice works and how I could take care of it. Over time I started blending all these different techniques together because I believe every emotion has its own character, its own shape. That’s why I love using different voices. Some emotions feel wild, others feel more focused or more intimate. And I also want to evoke different emotions in the people who are listening. So, in the end, I simply mix everything together.
 
Sometimes it feels a little bit like these voices are actually different personalities. So, in the end, you are a band.
Yes, there are a lot of Lilis in here, that’s true! There’s the childish one, there’s the older one, there’s the crazy one… Sometimes it feels like opposite parts of me are constantly looking for each other, and singing is where they meet. They’re not separate personalities, though, just different sides of who I am. So yes… I do have a community living inside of me.

 
When I was at the concert, I noticed that a lot of people were really touched by the music and the singing, and sometimes it was not only emotional, but almost spiritual. It was like they were in a kind of shamanistic session or something like that. So, I wondered if this It’s just coming out of you from the flow, or if you have experiences with spiritual practices.
Oh, I think that’s something everyone has. I have my own spirituality, of course, but for me it’s really about connection. I truly believe in connection, not only with other people, but with everything around me. That’s my personal way of looking at things. Though I don’t know whether that comes through in my music. I think the feeling you noticed during the concert probably comes from the repetition. I use looping a lot, and the looping technique is very similar to a mantra. When something repeats over and over again, at a certain point it stops speaking to your mind and starts speaking to something deeper, to your gut, to a deeper part of yourself.
It’s a little bit like a prayer. Or like a mantra.

 
It’s meditation.
Yes, it’s a form of meditation. And I experience it, too. Sometimes, when I’m playing, I enter a kind of trance. There are certain songs, especially „Mami Wata“, where once I start to do „ba ba ba“, I’m not really myself anymore. I don’t know exactly what happens. That’s the mystery of music. I know that other people experience that trance, too. I think it has a lot to do with the looping technique and with the constant repetition, which can be very trance-inducing. It’s incredibly moving for me when people tell me what they experienced during the concert. Some people cry a lot, and that’s deeply touching. Others tell me that the music suddenly brought back memories they had completely forgotten. So maybe there really is a kind of meditative effect. I’m not a shaman, I’m just a musician. But every time something like that happens, I’m deeply touched. Because of that, I also feel a certain responsibility when I perform. I don’t want to push the strong feelings, I work a lot with emotions myself, so I always try to stay as balanced as I can.

 
Is there anything you have planned for the future that you want to announce?
Oh yes! Recently, I had the pleasure of composing three original tracks for the official soundtrack of „MÖRK BORG: Heresy Supreme“, a video game developed by Morbidware and based on the acclaimed „MÖRK BORG“ RPG.
It was such a fun and rewarding experience. Because it was music for a video game, I was able to approach the composition in a much more horizontal and cinematic way than I usually do. Of course, there are looping sections, but overall the music is much more orchestral… and definitely a lot more metal! It was amazing to reconnect with my musical roots in that sense.
As for the near future, I’ll be performing in Portugal at the wonderful Extramuralhas festival in Leiria on August 20th, and on August 21st I’ll be returning to the UK for the amazing ArcTanGent Festival in Bristol. There are also some exciting collaborations coming up… I can’t reveal too much just yet, but I’m really looking forward to sharing more soon!

 
Check out LILI REFRAIN::
Bandcamp: lilirefrain.bandcamp.com
Instagram: LILI REFRAIN on INSTAGRAM
Website: LILI REFRAIN Website