Meanwhile it's been over a month since the Berlin band D'ANGEROUS released their latest EP "Take A Seat". In the meantime they have released music videos for "Debris Of A Dream" and "Phantom Pain Oblivion", which were very creative as usual. Now the moment has come when you can finally learn more about the mysterious band and how the guys work together.!
Sarah-Jane: Of course, I've done some research about you on the internet, but there's not really much to be found about you. So I'll start with a very classic question: How and when did you come into being as a band?
Olli: The old drummer Thilo and Jens they got together and started writing songs. And then they asked me to play guitar. That was the time when Jens decided to play these weird guitar, bass hybrid thing. He built it himself and created this unique sound, that we have until now. You know I have this studio in Kreuzberg and there was this band from Seattle. I asked them if they would knew a singer and they said “Yeah, we have this singer. I give you his number.” But I said “It’s your singer.” They said “Yeah, we don’t care.”. I thought if they don’t care about the singer, the singer must be pretty bad.” (laugh). I called Carl, he came and started singing and I was totally blown away. So that’s the point where I said: “That’s it, it’s my singer now.” That was 4-5 years ago.
Sarah-Jane: How did you come up with this name?
Olli: That was the idea from Jens. Jens said that he always wanted a band name that is like an Italian last name. Like if you are called Nino D’Angelo or Giovane D’Ario, or something like this. So he said it would be really cool if like the word dangerous but with the apostrophe it is not so serious.
Carl: But it wasn’t a good idea. Because it is really bad for finding it online. It is really not easy. Especially on Spotify. You have to look and look and there is a lot of dangerous. There is a lot of Roxette Dangerous or Michael Jackson or all this stuff.
Sarah-Jane: Carl, what made you come to Germany? Or when did you come here?
Carl: Actually I was in some bands in New Zealand. And we had just decided to move. We just wanted to move and do something else. We threw around some ideas and whether maybe that was in England or in New York. Because when you come from New Zealand all these options are pretty foreign and intrepid. But we decided on Berlin because at the time, 25 years ago, it seemed like an interesting place to be, upcoming and cheap to live. So I started touring Germany within and also UK tours and it was fun and eventually we broke up. So this is when I met this guy. Also it is at the bottom of the world and away from everything. If you have an interest in music and interest in playing big festivals then New Zealand isn’t the place to be if you are a rock musician.
Sarah-Jane: Your album name "Take A Seat", as well as your cover refer to a chair - what did you want to achieve with it?
Carl: I think we have been asked by the government and everybody to go through some difficult things in the last year and a bit. And it is somewhat horrible. Other parts of your life suffer. This is what I take from it. They have been asking us to do all these things. And it is a little bit shitty situation to be asked to do. The idea is to take a seat. It is on fire. It is an absolute shitty situation. To be in or to be asked to do. To be taking a seat. In the last 14 to 16 months we have all been asked to do these things. And in some ways it is good and in some was it is absolutely judgemental. It is fine if you use that balance. But I do not want to sit down but I do it anyway.
Sarah: Jens wrote "Sand In My Soul". How was it for you (Carl) to sing it? How do you come up with the emotions?
Carl: I think when you sing other peoples lyrics you appropriate it to things in your life. You appropriate it to your life and everyone has suffered tragedy in their own life. You think about things in your life and that is how you can be emotional. It might be somebody elses words but you can appropriate it to your experience. I also like the song. I did not even know it was about a loss of a friend. I loved the title and before I even started reading the lyrics and understanding about it. It is groovy and it has this really nice musical interlude. I absolutely love this song as well. I knew his friend also but not really very well.
Olli: It is really cool. It is one of the slowest songs we have and it pretty much fits all the retro doomy stuff that is around there, but everything really just comes together in this song. And when we recorded it, Carl did it actually in one take. He started singing it to the end and Chris was almost crying, because it was so intense and you can hear that I think. We can hear it, but maybe it comes across. It was a really cool experience, because we pretty much did not have to do anything to it anymore.
Sarah-Jane: In your track by track you tell that "Debris Of A Dream" was created from many small individual parts. How can I imagine the process of its creation?
Jens: This statement refers less to the composition of the song than to the very detailed editing on the part of the band and especially Olli. I wrote the song as a whole, but unlike others, this one has changed a lot over time and the working process in terms of arrangement and instrumentation, and is an example of a rather polished number by our standards, whereas others are much more similar to their original demo.
Sarah-Jane: "Coup D'Argent" is a salute to the Stranglers - D'Angerous has many different musical influences, which you can hear out especially on this EP. What music do you listen to in your free time and is that part of your inspiration?
Jens: The 4 of us listen to quite a lot and quite a lot of different music. For me it would be impossible to name names without treating everyone else unfairly. You can be sure that music, just like books or other content, will find its way into our output in one way or another as long as its impression was strong enough. I think most of it happens unconsciously and sometimes you realize later that a sound, harmony or beat sequence could be from the Stranglers for example. Is then either embarrassing or you are happy about something without having planned or wanted it.
Sarah-Jane: "Light The Sea" is about a lighthouse keeper. That's not exactly a common story for a song - how did this "image" come about? Did you have a certain person in mind?
Carl: I can't answer that actually. I like the song. I can't answer why we would write about a lighthouse keeper. It is a question for Jens.
Jens: No, I don't know any lighthouse keeper who went crazy, although I think I saw a good movie about one once... In this case the music of Olli brought me in this direction when writing lyrics and vocal line because of its drama and force of nature, and once the line Light The Sea was fixed, the rest was like it is sometimes with the creative process a self-runner.
Olli: I wrote the music and I had the song a long time in my head and it was totally different. I think when I played it to you first, Carl, it was totally different, but it had this chorus progression and I always wanted it to be huge. Like really dramatic. You know these really cheesy pictures of a lighthouse, where the waves are crushing into the lighthouse and everything is like dark and massive and it is powerful. The sea is so powerful.
