" Feeling Human – An Interview with Das Pop 
"
Feeling Human:
An interview with Das Pop
" Feeling Human – An Interview with Das Pop "
Feeling Human:
An interview with Das Pop
Das pop in 2003. from left to right : reinhard, niek, lieven, bent.
Gent, Belgium’s Das Pop has come a long way from their first single ‘A Different Beat’. After they released their debut album I Love. Their next move was to hit the road, hard. Their recently released sophomore effort, the more mature Do The Human Thing, released on their own label, Francorchamps Records, is an album of truly great pop songs made by a band that seems to have a good understanding of the pop world and where they want to go.
Recently, Incendiary magazine sat down with Bent Van Looy (lead vocals/keyboard), Lieven Moors (guitar), and a roving Reinhard Vanbergen (guitar) to discuss popular music, Belgium, and of course, themselves.
When you made your first single, A Different Beat, you were labelled as Belgian brit-pop, how would you assess your evolution since then?
Lieven: The first single, it was quite hard because it was a new experience for us, because it was a (very basic) studio.
Bent: There were pigeons living in there, that’s what kind of studios it was. I can’t stand listening to it; it’s physically revolting! Right after we moved away from the brit-pop…a bit more European pop.
Das pop started becoming a success after your Rock Rally (a sort of battle of the bands, on a larger scale) victory, tell us more about that.
Bent: That was a long time ago. Actually, that was our first gig.
Reinhard: Actually our second.
Bent: But the first big one, with a proper PA system. And we really needed to win the contest, ‘cuz we didn’t have any instruments. So it was really a make or break situation.
Reinhard: We were so broke, we were like ‘we just have to win!’
Bent: It’s being silly, but just focusing on something and making it a big deal. I think that’s why it worked.
What role do you find music plays in society?
Bent: I’m sure you can live a normal life without ever hearing music, but once you’ve heard it’s very hard not to miss it. It adds a lot of intensity to any emotion, and actually, not hearing music for two weeks can really depress someone.
Your sound mixes electronic music with organic, how do you balance the two?
Lieven: You just combine what you like. You put all the ingredients together. Everybody has to find their own way to make the music.
Reinhard: We do go overboard (all laugh)
Bent: I think what we try to do is follow the way of the songs, you know, let the songs decide what kind of arrangement they get in the end. We used to force songs [into] a certain sound or a certain environment. Like on the first record, we had a song, and it had to fit in, so we said, this song is going to have this kind of disco arrangement. Whereas that was a conscious decision on our behalf, this time around, we just let the songs decide what’s gonna happen. Which takes much more time, and is a very difficult process because if we just say, "oh, you’re gonna be a rock song, and you’re gonna be a ballad." Then that’s over and done with. But [when] you have to really, you know, investigate what the song wants, that takes time.
What do you think of the current pop trend of mixing elecronica with pop?
Bent: It’s trendiness, and I think it’s one of the things that characterize pop music. Pop music is about temporary, and that’s not a bad thing. Now we are recreating sounds of the early-80s, five years ago we were recreating sounds of the 70s, so it’s always looking into pop culture and grabbing the stuff you like.
What do you think of the Belgian scene, and how does it differ, say, from the Dutch or English music scene?
Bent: I don’t really know either of those two scenes. It’s hard to say since it’s just a few bands on a certain amount of space, and some people who don’t live in Belgium can say there is a certain Belgian sound.
Lieven: It’s very hard to tell what the identity of Belgian music is…
Bent: …because we’re living there. It’s easier for us to judge the Italian scene, because we’re seeing it from abroad. It’s like a distancing, you can judge it properly, but being in Belgium is like being in the smallest space possible, there is completely no perspective whatsoever.
Lieven: But there are lots of influences (from outside) which come together in Belgium. It’s surrounded by lots of huge countries with huge traditions in music.
Being from a small space like Gent, how much does rivalry and camaraderie come into play?
Bent: When you know all the musicians, if you need something, you just ask and that’s how it works in Gent anyways. I mean, there are bands who completely aren’t our friends, but that’s another thing.
Lieven: There’s not really a rivalry going on. It just… it stimulates us
Bent: Well, sometimes there is, but that’s good conversation. [laughs] Slagging someone off is really nice, if you do it with your best friends, and you just sit around and bitch, yeah…that’s nice.
We continued to talk about what the future holds. Bent informed me of their desire to move towards a more acoustic organic style, reminiscent of their unreleased soundtrack album for Les Enfantes de l’Amour. "Less pop, more das," Bent said with a coy smile. In the meantime, Das Pop remains a band that manages to break the pop mould and do the unthinkable: put humanity into it.
So, do you wanna do the human thing?