We are at music school, and 90% of the people there listen to Led Zeppelin, or some blues shit and they don’t want to make anything new. They only do guitar solos and drum solos and waste their time.
Incendiary interview Daily Bread
It’s Thursday, it’s the Ekko and that means that excellent Limburgse Land beer they flog at the bar. A great club, the Ekko; it should be a lot better known in my opinion, but it has its own groove and who am I to wreck it?
Lots of fashionistas are here to see Excelsior big hitters ZZZ play, and curious types to see new label mates (and extremely youthful) Daily Bread, who I am set to interview. The ‘Bread amble onstage, looking as cartoony as they did in Groningen. Without much banter, they begin to crank out their reverb-drenched, dansette sound. And run through a high-octane repertoire of pop tunes. But, unlike Groningen, and just like Cecil Beaton, I wasn’t expecting such a weight of noise (ah, the noise, my dear, the noise)… What sounded like a charming poppy set in a pub becomes a three headed monster at the Ekko. Bloody hell do they benefit from reverb. And don’t they like mucking about with pedals and textures and such. Such is the assault that most of the audience are shocked at just how good this lot are.
Once they’ve cleared their instruments away, we repair to the upstairs room and get Chris (vox & bass) Kimberly (vox & organ) and Stefan (pedals and drums) talking.
IN: Your tee-shirt says Sexy Garage Dance, I can see the sexy and the dance, but after seeing you twice now I still can’t see the garage influence. Did you start in a garage?
C: (Laughs) I think because the sound, more than anything, I mean we don’t play in a garage style, but we think the sound is very garage. It’s very sleazy, lo-fi. We make a bit of a dance-electro ‘base’ and we try to mix in a lo-fi sound.
IN: And some times you do try to play your bass like a guitar. But most garage bands revel in that guitar-heavy sound…
C: Are you wanting an explanation of why we don’t play with guitars? Well, me and Stefan used to play in a “Britpop” band, and every time we had problems, it was always with the guitarist. And we hated it. And anyway when you have a good sound between bass and drums you find you don’t need that extra sound. The whole segment is filled.
K: (Laughs) We just never bothered…
C: Every band has a guitar and we don’t need it. We want to prove that you don’t need a guitar.
K: And everyone’s playing with a guitar anyway…
C: And who needs solos and that type of shit anyway, you don’t need that. Just make your point and groove.
IN: Are you interested in making long grooves and then trying to work out what happens after that? I noticed the structure of your music; you pick a chord, and then keep with it; stay in a tempo. Is that how you create your music?
C: Well, most of the time we get a groove I don’t care what key. If it feels good we don’t care.
IN: I thought that your music is very impatient, it’s very explosive. It seems that all the situations and scenarios in your songs are about moments. Is that fair comment?
C: Erm…
K: Yeah…
C: In Holland people don’t really listen to music, they just want to be entertained.
K: If there’s too much time to think, people aren’t interested, so we just want people to dance.
C: We wanna make a big boom, we want to shock them Shake them about. We wanna make a big energetic show.
K: We don’t like to play slow songs.
IN: Another thing; in Holland there’s a sudden emergence of a hell of a lot of good bands, who appeal to the middle ground, who want to be accessible. Almost overnight. Do you feel there’s something going on? Do you get vibes from say Groningen, or from the media?
K: Erm… no… we don’t notice anything going on. (Laughs)
IN: Something else I notice is the sound of Dutch bands, it’s changed.
C: In history of Dutch bands, bands just make songs and never thought about the sound of it. I think now Dutch bands are thinking more and more about the sound of their music and how it gets to the audience. Lots of Dutch musicians forget the audience and the sound and only think about the song or their own instrument.
K: It’s always thinking in songs and not the sound in Holland. But the change? It must be the atmosphere… I’m not sure…
C: I dunno, when I started I always wanted sound anyway. We are always very busy with the sound, we make our own fuzz pedals and we try to work out the drums and the bass sounds first.
IN: You also use space very well. And they are all impatient, and are interested in enjoying themselves.
K: I think that the bands who think about this are all new, all young. Maybe we are a new generation, who knows?
C: We are inspired by 60s bands, we love the first two LPs by the Beatles they are very quick… and the songs are bang, boom, and we listen to a lot of garage and punk. I know a lot of friends do too.
IN: Lots of Dutch bands like one sort of music, they grab it, explore it and don’t care about changing fashions. But the venues in Holland are obsessed by what’s fashionable. It’s like two worlds that never meet. How do you feel about it?
C: I think we can play with that. Our music is very underground, but it’s also very poppy so maybe we can ride with this other audience.
IN: I don’t think many Dutch people are proud of their own music scene.
S: No, they’re not.
C: When I look at our friends, they don’t look to Dutch bands, but just the big bands. We are at music school, and 90% of the people there listen to Led Zeppelin, or some blues shit and they don’t want to make anything new. They only do guitar solos and drum solos and waste their time.
K: It’s Dutch, it’s too close to them; maybe they don’t want to listen to their neighbours…
C: And the problem that Dutch people can’t say that a Dutch band is a big band. When I was growing up I listened to Excelsior bands, and I’d ask people “what do you think of this band?”, and people would look at me like I was stupid. They wanna feel together with all the “people”… They want a safety net. They wanna talk about music people know. But we think differently, we are a different generation. We don’t think a whole lot of the Dutch scene.
IN: What did (do) you listen to then?
K, S, C together: Alamo Race Track, Hospital Bombers, ZZZ, Green Hornet… Lots of noise, and the Kills We love the Kills.
IN: The Kills are very direct and spacey… Why do you jump in the audience by the way
K: To wake the audience up, keep them on their toes! I wanna dance on stage a lot but I feel so inhibited with all the equipment. When I’m in the crowd it feels… great! Everyone is staring at you embarrassed and you know they think ah wow that little girl is dancing!
C: They don’t forget when they come home, they remember the girl in the audience.
IN: You nearly spilt my Guinness in Groningen…
K: (Laughs), you didn’t get soaked? I danced on someone’s toes and they screamed… But Dutch audiences stand about too much; we want to get on with the audience. They listen more.
C: I think that the numbers are swinging and the crowd dances. It’s boom-boom.
Words: Richard Foster
Pics: Courtesy of Daily Bread’s Myspace