Blueneck interview @ Chemnitz, 4 February 2010
- almost unabbreviated

Ben: Immanu El played here and they didn’t like it.

Katrin: But they played in a different venue, much smaller than this one here…

Duncan: And before we came away we played in our hometown Bath and we met up with an American band who just came back from a tour in Germany. They asked us where we’re going to play and I mentioned Chemnitz and they laughed! To be honest this is the most perfect, the most professional venue we’ve been.

Ben: The sound was great, good sound man! And we were treated very friendly. We don’t think it’s a shithole, but a lot of people said it was.

Duncan: They were wrong!

Katrin: I think the people enjoyed your gig very much, it was really nice, though I bet most didn’t know you before… Were you satisfied with your German gigs so far?

Ben: Each one was great, but very different.

Rich: Absolutely. We’ve heard that in Germany they have less gigs than in the UK. So many bands, especially in our home city play every night, and you have five bands on every night. England is saturated with bands. So it feels a little bit more like an event in Germany, and we get treated much nicer here than in the UK.

Ben: Anywhere in Europe! When you play in London you get very little money. When you come to Europe you get a hotel for the night… especially here you get looked after, get great food… all promote in Germany has been wonderful.

Katrin: Could that be the reason why you have released your latest album in Europe first and then in the UK?

Ben: We kind of have a manager and he said if we delayed the album in England we’d get a better press.

Duncan: That’s bullshit. We have two labels. We have one for Europe, which is Denovali, great guys, and in the UK we decided to go for a distribution deal with EMI and we were advised that the press wouldn’t be good yet.

Ben: In the UK it’s harder to get the press. It was to late back then because of the christmas period…

Duncan: And Denovali did a lot of work prior to the release, so they were comfortable to release it in November, whereas in the UK, if we had released it at the same time less people would have heard about it. We wouldn’t have got reviews and articles in UK magazines if we’d had released it in November so we delayed it till February.

Katrin: And did it work?

Rich: I think it worked first psychologically within the band, because we were at home waiting for the thing to come out in our own country and already had some good words from mainland Europe. Countries like Germany or France were excited about the record.

Katrin: You have mentioned Denovali before. How did you get in contact with these guys? Are you personally kind of fans? Good label, they have a lot of high-quality bands and a great attitude towards music.

Duncan: I don’t know of the other guys but I have not heard of Denovali before. They contacted us maybe 18 months/2 years prior to the release of the second album and they were keen to work with us. I think they liked the first album and I just built up a relationship with Timo; I liked the passion, I liked the label, like you say: They have a lot of good bands.

Ben: They’re not a label that looks for money so much. Timo does things with another meaning.

Rich: He showed more passion about our band than anybody. I didn’t know Denovali before but I’m a big fan now. I’m a big fan of their attitude, they’re great people and have a lot of faith in us, which is what bands like us need: faith.

Katrin: What I like about them very much is that they share a lot of their music, I mean their artists simply give it away sometimes and at the same time they produce very good collector’s vinyl records.

Ben: I love the fact that in Europe many people like vinyl records, more than cds. It’s not so common in England.

Duncan: In England we would have a merch stand at the gigs and nobody would want the vinyl, because everyone just wants the cd. Which is a shame, because the vinyl sounds much more beautiful.

Katrin: Especially your second album is made for vinyl consumation. It’s a very dynamic album. Very quiet and sometimes very outgoing, even cathartic.

Rich: It’s a also the warmth. It’s got imperfections as well, not a crystal clear sound…

Katrin: Don’t tell that to people who spend ten thousands of Euros for their analogue hi-fi gear! No really, vinyl listening is a very personal thing. You don’t do it for the fun of the party to go to your record player every 20 minutes and turn the side; it’s a private praisal where you pay attention to the music and don’t have it as a background noise…

Rich: And you can play it backwards and listen to secret messages…

Katrin: Yea right! And you guys even have some secret messages, too. You know, those low, slightly distorted spoken parts, for example introducing “Oig”. I really can’t decipher them…

[As noone tries to demystify I go over to the next question...]

How would you describe the band to someone who has never heard of the band before… without naming other bands as a comparison.

Rich: I come from an interesting perspective on this, because I’ve known Dunc and the band for 8 or 9 years, but joined the band the last 6 months. So I have been a fan for a long time, listened to them and watched them a long time. I think it’s melancholy, warm music… dark, absorbing music that sounds like a soundtrack somehow…

Duncan: I like it when people say it’s intense and that they get absorbed into the music when they listen to a Blueneck record. It’s a lot of emotion in this music and I like it when people tap into this emotion.

Katrin: Ok, you have to convince someone to go to a Blueneck concert, what would you say?

Rich: Naked girls… on rollerskates…

Ben: It’s easy to use the phrase “post rock”, but people don’t really know what it means…

Katrin: Yes, and here in Germany most people would think there some guys playing in yellow jackets, for “post” is the name of a German snail mail service… Ok, no really, it’s intense, emotional rock music where you can get lost. It’s no happy rock at all and I really can’t stand it when people are talking during quiet passages…

Duncan: You know, people go to shows and pay an amount to come in and when they want to talk they can talk. But when we play and they talk we’re not doing our job. Because I think it’s a band to stop people in their tracks and make them listen. And the people who were talking didn’t get us and that we haven’t affected them. But it doesn’t really bother me, they paid come in and can talk if they want to talk.

Ben: You can’t appeal everybody. Some people aren’t going to like the music.

Duncan: Last night we played in Leipzig. They were really quiet there, noone was talking, so we were doing our job properly. And we communicated with the audience last night, and it worked. And if people talk and loose attention WE MUST TRY HARDER!
Maybe we should start weeping on stage…

Katrin: How important is improvisation in your music? Live and in writing music?

Duncan: From a live perspective improvisation works actually well. Tonight we improvised a lot. I think we felt comfortable as a band to try out a few ideas. We made songs a lot longer and I think we had some fun.

Ben: Yes, if you play the same set every night it’s going to get boring…

Duncan: And with improvisation you kind of show how you feel at that time…

Rich: It’s more fun to look each other in the eye and to communicate…

Katrin: …and ask “What the hell are you playing there?”…

Duncan: Every Blueneck show is different. A Blueneck live gig will be different from the night before, depending on how we as a band feel. So how did we feel tonight?

Ben: We had a reaaaally good show last night, so whatever we did this night, it wasn’t as good as last night.

Rich: I think we had a few technical problems tonight.

Ben: Yea, the power disappeared a few times tonight.

Katrin: Yes, especially in the beginning the bass was hard to hear. However, that’s a live situation…
Ok, second part of the question: Improvisation in the studio during recordings. What we hear on the album, is any of it based on improvisation?

Duncan: Basically we have a rough idea of what we want to achieve. And when the guys call I’ll have a rough idea of a track , I’ll give it to Ben then and Ben will come up with a bass idea and then Ben no. 2 will then improvise with what he thinks should happen in that track. In the process of the recordings there’s a lot of improvisation.

Ben: Yea, in some tracks we all know what we’re doing. Sometimes we just have an idea and build upon it, maybe a loop that happened when we were jamming.

Duncan: So, in a summary, we don’t know a fuck what we are doing!

Katrin: Do you already have an overall idea of where it goes to with a third album? Because in some former interviews I have read something that you intend to use some more instruments… But then I asked myself: Where was the cellist tonight?

Duncan: Sandy’s full time profession is being a cellist. He’s also a cellist for an orchestra in England, the London Symphony Orchestra, so he’s very busy. And we knew that when we worked with him during the recordings. He told us that he would play with us as much as possible, but obviously for a lot of our shows we can’t use him. Which is why we asked Rich to come in and maybe to find a way to cross the album and the songs in the right way with the cello missing… The third recording however will be an EP which we want to get out in summer 2010, so a lot quicker than usual. Normally we have a two year gap.

Rich: We want to push the snowball up the hill, want to keep the momentum going and write and record some more things.

Duncan: There was a period between album one and two where we as a band almost decided to quit. It wasn’t working. For me personally I decided to step back three or four months, because I just didn’t feel that we were working well together as a band. I don’t know why that was, but after that rest period things started to work well together and we completed the rest of the second album very quickly. People say that it took two years to complete the album, but we actually completed the second album within three months, which is very quick. We struggled to deal with the seond album. We feel less pressure with the third recording. Personally I’m very much looking forward to recording NOW. Hence I was saying we’re going to have something out in summer and another album soon after. The third album, I think, will be less dark. We still maintain the intensity, but we like to take it somewhere a little bit different and experiment with some new ideas…

Katrin: Are there some bands or musicians you dream to play with one day? Or a project you want to be part in? … I have read that you guys want to do something for a Denovali film?

Duncan: Yea! Denovali are working on a film.Timo sent us the story of the film along with some still shots. He’s active to finalize the film and it looks really good. I can’t tell you the story, but it’s quite an emotional idea of the film and I think it suits us as a band to write some music for the film. They’re currently filming it. I think it will be ready for spring – the music and the film I guess. It’s cool. It’s quite a depressing subject, but visually it should be quite stunning.

Katrin: Ok, then we’ll wait for spring, anxiously awaiting the film and your soundtrack and not to forget your EP, the happy and lovely summer EP!