METRIC PAGANS IN VEGAS HOW TO ORGANISE A MUSIC FESTIVAL
INTERVIEW WITH
TEGAN AND SARA TEGAN & SARA INTERVIEW WITH
ANTHONY GREEN
back in Saosin
FREE CIRCA SURVIVE POSTER INSIDE
SILVERSUN PICKUPS’ NIKKI MONNINGER
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A MAGAZINE FOR INDEPENDENT ROCK BANDS
Indie Sound Magazine focuses on real music,
specifically on independent rock bands, best known for his genre “Indie Rock”. EDITORIAL MELVIN FORTY GARCIA • Editor • Art director
journalists NOLAN FEENEY • Metric Interview ROBIN MURRAY • Tegan and Sara Interview JOHN HILL • Anthony Green Interview Dom Gourlay • How to organise a music festival STEPHEN SCHNEE • Nikki Monninger Interview
PHOTOGRAPHY
Our interest in this issue is the lack of attention the media give these bands that are managed by independent record labels budget. Our goal is to give the attention that these bands deserve as well as keeping their fans informed. There’s a lot of artistic talent within these independent bands that deserve the attention of the media to show their talent. For this reason, Indie Sound Magazine proposal focuses on bringing the news, musical projects, dates of concert tours and interviews of different artists to keep fans informed of their favorites Indie Rock bands. -Melvin Forty García
Chris Phelps Pamela Littky Sandra Steh deborah lowery lindsey byrnes Bridget Craig
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INTERVIEW
Since 1998, Metric have been harnessing a craft,
perfecting with each album a specific kind of sound, getting closer and closer each time to the heart of who they truly are. They could not have known then, in their early 20s, that their musical journey would lead them back on the other side of a record contract, to starting their own label and brand, routing their own tours, developing a smartphone app, and essentially running their own show. 2014 saw them living their lives and generating new material, songwriter/producer Jimmy Shaw in his studio, and Haines in Nicaragua and Spain. What they came up with would soon become known as Pagans in Vegas, their latest album, withallusions to the Cure, Depeche Mode, and New Order. Its preorder packaging was elaborate to say the least; a so-called “Pagan Time Capsule�, limited to 500 copies, a kind of ode to analogue, that comes in a customized wooden box; the new album on cassette, a Metric flag, patches, post cards, a lapel pin and a charm necklace.
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METRIC THEY WENT FROM BELOVED ELECTRO-INDIE LOVERS TO A CHART-TOPPING ACT RUNNING THEIR OWN LABEL. PAGANS IN VEGAS IS THEIR LATEST DISC, BUT THE STORIES BEHIND IT INDICATE WHERE THEY ARE AND THE FASCINATING PLACES THEY’RE GOING.
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Metric’s Emily Haines on the Band’s New Album and Breaking Free From the Internet Emily Haines thinks her band Metric could find more mainstream acceptance if she and her bandmates followed a few rules. “Just play a nice song with the guitars that aren’t too loud, make the vocal wispy with some reverb, give us that little bit of feeling that we want, but not too much—music to placate,” she says in the courtyard of the New York’s Crosby Street Hotel. “I will soothe you, but I will not f—king placate you.” She’s running on just a few hours’ sleep after playing a show in Toronto the night before, and later that day she’ll head to Las Vegas, where Metric played the Life Is Beautiful festival. It’s the first time she’s been to the city since making the band’s sixth studio album, Pagans in Vegas. The title refers to “people with a conscience, for better or worse, playing around in the arena of unconscionable behavior,” according to the band’s official announcement. But taking a gamble in a casino is also Haines’ metaphor of choice when describing the band’s decision to create its own company, Metric Music International, and record and tour outside of the traditional record-label system. “We’re betting again on what feels what right to us with zero regard for the consequences, which is a bit nerve-wracking,” she says. “But so far so good.” by Nolan Feeney
Indie Sound: You write a lot about sifting through what’s real and what’s fake in an increasingly connected and media-saturated world. What does that mean to you as someone who doesn’t have a desk job that involves staring at the Internet all day? Emily Haines: The sad thing is, we’re all doing that. Getting emails from Lou Reed [who collaborated with the band on 2012’s Synthetica] is a heartbreaking experience. You don’t want to see a Lou Reed Gmail. Everything is email. We’re all the same. Musicians are just sitting around doing emails as well. It feels as though it’s our obligation. The joke is like, “Read the entire Internet!” [like] it’s our f—king duty. You don’t have to do it! You don’t have to know everything. In one of your recent email letters to fans, you address anonymous Internet commenters and basically tell them to get off the computer. Do you struggle with trolls? Oh my God, it’s fine, we don’t even have a significant proportion. It’s not like, “Don’t read the comments because it’s full of hate!” It’s just like, “Don’t read the comments, go do something else.” With music, it’s been used so much as bait—it’s always the thing that’s taking 6 INIDIE SOUND
you to the other website or the other place, there’s never just it. This is it. It’s not selling something else. It’s selling itself. So is the message of Pagans in Vegas one about unplugging and tuning out? No, it’s about tuning in to what we actually want. I’m not saying anything original, but I do think that the feeling I’m championing is desperately needed right now. I’m up for the job, and I’m going to do it for the next couple of years. We’re going to bring such strength and positivity and love to the people who want to feel it. It is totally tuning in. Stop taking it all in, filter it out—what do you want to experience? What do you want to feel? It’s the terrifying feeling that we’ll never ever be in one room ever again. We know our band is pre-iPhones, man. We’re pre-everything. We’re lucky enough to be around before all this happened, when you would play a show and all that would happen would be in that one room. Maybe someone took a picture, but that was it. I embrace it now that it’s like, Periscope. Let’s do the whole f—king thing.
You’re down with a fan broadcasting your gig through their phone? Oh, for sure. This is the time we’re in, let’s do it. You still have got to find the room. Carve out a place and make an experience that isn’t constantly interrupted and isn’t constantly fragmented. That just sounds so miserable, to never get that pure immersion in something. I get what you were saying earlier about the Internet, though. I recently gave up hate-reading certain websites. Okay, so hate-reading. That’s what I’m talking about— looking for proof that the world is as f—ked as you suspect it might be. Sometimes in the past I had a similar problem in hotel rooms with watching the worst infomercials, like if I watch it long enough, I’ll get to the rotten core of the economic system and the lizard brain of the human being. What are you doing? Turn off the TV and read a book! It’s there, okay? The worst is there. Is that what you’re going to go toward your whole life? Is that the goal? I want to ask you about “The Shade,” the first single from the album. The song seemed like such lyrical departure for you, to the point that I was almost startled by how frank you are singing about love. Me too. F—king terrified of that song. I was freaked out. I tried to rewrite it and insisted on rerecording it, where I put in all these dark undertones. It was horrible. It was like having someone just ruin a beautiful
sunset. It was like sitting on the edge of a cliff with your friends, sharing a joint and looking out at the sunset and then just having them, like, puke. What do you think about the pop world? In the video for “The Shade,” Jimmy tears up a magazine that’s supposed to look like Billboard. Yeah. Come on, we’re in the game! Nobody’s doing what we’re doing. We’re the best. At what we do, we are the best, and what we do is…we aren’t really sure, but we do it with all our hearts. I mean, okay, people have millions and millions of dollars [and] can shoot anything out of a canon. There’s huge-scale productions. Yeah, we’re not doing The Lion King, but for the organization that we are and the people that we are and our dedication, our creativity, our love and our commitment? No f—king way. I’m not saying that in a competitive way. I’m saying it in an owning it way. I’m a bit sick of always feeling like I can’t ever own anything. It’s been 15 years. It’s the sixth album. We have a huge body of work, and I think I’ve made a real contribution. I’m into it now, just like, “Yeah! Let’s do this!” I’m not really waiting for someone to give me permission anymore or say, “Oh, you come up at the door, we’ll open it. You’re allowed in now.” INIDIE SOUND 7
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW WITH
TEGAN AND SARA
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TEGAN AND SARA
“I think the record is going to be a transition from where we’ve been to sort of execute this record properly.”
Tegan and Sara have shared the stage with Taylor Swift and just earned a Grammy nomination for their The Lego Movie song “Everything Is Awesome,” but the Canadian duo’s real breakthrough took place 10 years ago with the release So Jealous. It’s not an understatement to say that the 14-song collection of bright, new-wave-inflected pop songs was life-changing — the band had its first taste of radio support and opened for the likes of Weezer and the Killers. “For us it was imperative that we change our career,” Sara Quin tells INDIE SOUND. “We made a record that would change our career.” INIDIE INDIE SOUND 9
TEGAN AND SARA Love you to death
Tegan and Sara have announced that their new album Love You to Death, the follow-up to 2013’s Heartthrob, will arrive on June 3rd. After a week of dropping hints about their new album, the Canadian indie pop duo formally announced their eighth studio LP and unveiled the cover art Friday. The first single off Love You to Death arrives on April 8th, which is the same day pre-orders for the LP begin. by Robin Murray Indie Sound: What spurred the new EP? Well, we have a record coming out early next year and because we got this Killers tour and because we want to do a proper set up for the record. We’re sort of filling some time, and although we feel that we have a very strong fan base here in the UK in terms of media and radio and the public at large it’s like we’ve just been born. A lot of people don’t know who we are and maybe aren’t familiar with the project, so this was kind of a way to fill the few months in between now and when the record comes out and also to introduce or re-introduce our music to people who may or may not know us. People are perhaps more aware of you via association rather than in your own right. I think so, yeah. You know, it’s so funny because as a band when we first started out probably in most markets – like in the UK – we were identified as an underground of cult type band. We sort of had this very invested and excited audience and they sort of kept us afloat in terms of coming down to the shows and buying the albums and that sort of thing. In recent years our last two albums – in certain markets, like North America and Australia, New Zealand. We’ve really crossed over, we see a lot of radio play. I forget, too, that still in a lot of people’s minds we don’t exist. It’s fun – I actually feel quite inspired by the whole thing because at 32.. hundred years old we very well could’ve been washed up. So it’s a privilege to start all over again, in a way. How did you choose which tracks to include? Well, you know we sort of jokingly refer to the songs on the EP as ‘the hits’ – this of course we think is funny because of course none of them truly have been 10 INDIE INIDIESOUND SOUND
hits. We like to say that they’re sort of the fan classics, they’re the songs which get the biggest response when we perform live. They’re songs that maybe people would associate with other artists – ‘Walking With The Ghosts’ with Jack White, for example. How did it feel to record these tracks all over again? Y’know, I personally feel like the recording process would have been on the bottom of the list of things I enjoy but now it’s become probably one of my favourite things to do. It doesn’t matter if we’re recording covers or doing new stuff, I think that as an artist – as we’ve become more comfortable and at ease in the studio – it’s become a very creative place. I love it. I think I’d go broke and crazy if I only ever made records and sat in the studio but I really look forward to the times when we get to make a new one. Did you record this in one block? We recorded all the new songs and all the new material for the record in a two and a half month block. I think the record was pretty much wrapped by June, so we were sort of sitting on it for a while. You’ve been enjoying going on tour? Oh God, yeah. We love to tour. It’s weird because we haven’t done a lot of support gigs on the last couple of albums but we were really looking forward to doing it. We finished up our last album, zactually, with Paramore so now to do the Black Keys stuff and the Killers stuff.. I find it really fun. We’ve had some success on our own but we’re certainly not playing arenas. It’s actually really fun to play with another band in an arena! At least while you’re play the songs you can convince yourself it is!
Have you been playing material from your new album in the set? We have been playing a couple of new songs, yeah. It seems to go over well – the beginning of the set is a rock set, then it sort of transitions. One of the best songs in the set right now, I feel, is a live band version of a song we did with Tiesto called ‘Feeling In My Bones’. Tiesto’s version, of course, is a much more dance track but we’ve sort of transitioned it into a more Tegan & Sara rock band type place. It just feels so cool to play every night! It’s got real muscle with real drums and everything in it, and it transitions really well into the new stuff. It’s fun.
execute this record properly. We’re very known in certain circles and we’ve become reliant on certain circles or radio stations, so to come out and make an album which is much more poppy and mainstream you still want to be seen.. we’ve spent 14 years making music and releasing albums and I think we’ve build an integrity based kind of career. We do things that make us feel good and we’ve sort of cultivated this audience which is very loyal, so we don’t want to spoil that by coming out with something really different. Also, this is another reason why we’re sort of doing things long lead and slow – I want people to have time to get used to this idea that they might hear us for the first time on pop radio.. I don’t want them to be horrified!
How are you seeing out the year? We’re on tour with the Killers now until Christmas. Do you think people will be horrified? Once we see out the UK tour we’re over in North No. That’s probably a hyperbolic word but I think peo America with them and then the new ple will be surpris record comes out in North America in ed. January so we’ll be back in Europe around February.
To finish with, the new material – a productive process? Well, you know we’re really excited about it. I think the record is going to be a transition from where we’ve been to sort of
Photo by Pamela Littky INIDIE INDIESOUND SOUND11 11
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BACK IN SAOSIN, AND BACK IN CONTROL OF HIS LIFE
Photo by Chris Phelps 14 INDIE INIDIESOUND SOUND
ANTHONY GREEN BACK IN SAOSIN, AND BACK IN CONTROL OF HIS LIFE
“Anthony Green is back in Saosin” is a sentence many retired scene kids never thought would make it into their Facebook statuses in 2016, and yet here we all are. In 2004, after touring off of their pipe bomb of an EP, Translating The Name, and landing a record deal with Capitol, frontman Anthony Green left the group after an overall dissatisfaction from where the band was headed. Saosin then took on a new singer, Cove Reber, and released two records to middling success, never really able to capture the magic of that first EP. Reber left the band in 2010, which put them into hibernation for about four years until Green rejoined. During his absence in which he played in Circa Survive, Green went through a hell of a battle with heroin, eventually sobering up around the same time he was asked back into Saosin. This gave the band the push they needed, leading them to write and record their first full-length record with Green, Along The Shadow. Today the band is premiering their newest song, “Racing Towards a Red Light,” one of the record’s most forwardly aggressive tracks. Green’s throaty screams intersect with the guitar work of Beau Burchell, arriving at spots of harmony and beauty. The song, along with the rest Along The Shadow, never tries to recreate what the band tried to do 13 years ago when they were much younger. Instead, it celebrates in what they’ve done since then, the ways in which they’ve developed as people through music and outside of it. All throughout the record, Green makes silver-tongued references to the passage of time and what happened to the band. We spoke to Green about addiction, and his return to Saosin. Indie Sound: So where are you at today? Anthony Green: Right now we’re at the Beacon Theater in Orlando. And it’s funny because this is where we’ve been playing most of the time. Like, we don’t play House of Blues, we’ll play this or the Social which are right next to each other. And it’s right next to this huge police station, so I’m sitting in this alley right now and it’s by these little fire escape steps and I’ve been coming and hanging out in this little alley since I was a 20-year-old touring down here. I always remember sitting down here back in my fuckin’ drug days, smoking weed right next to this police station. It’s such a fuckin’ weird spot for a venue. But it’s a beautiful sunny day here today and I’m making and playing music with my friends and drinking a green juice and just fucking loving life. I’ve been sober for about 11 months now, this is personally why I’m excited to talk to you. I remember trying heroin for the first time and reality just not being the same. It’s the same thing as when you’re using, meeting somebody else who’s using, you’re like, “Oh God, thank God somebody understands what I’m going
by John Hill
through.” And along the same lines, when you get clean, you search for that same type of thing where it’s like, “Oh God, finally, somebody that understands.” Because people really can’t understand the complexities around addiction. Especially when it comes to heroin, because it’s such a tricky thing. It rewires all the pleasure points in your brain. It changes you. It sucks because, for me, it was like, “This is heroin, this sucks.” Growing up you hear everything terrible about it and then a friend’s like “Try this, really quick.” Then it’s fucking downhill from there. It’s weird. I was attracted to it for years before I even tried it. I think it had to do with knowing about Hendrix and Cobain and other artists that did it. I don’t know. Even though all the negative stigma came around it... everybody can relate to the idea of wanting to get through a problem or get away from a problem. And I think for people who are passionate about music or art or whatever you want to put there, I think it goes hand in hand. It’s just one of those things. “Oh yeah, this thing will make you feel good and take you outside of yourself.” I don’t know. It’s really, really tricky. And it’s fucking evil; straight evil. INIDIE SOUND 15
INTERVIEW
Definitely. How’s sobriety going for you these days? It’s fucking great. I love it. I have issues once in a while. There’s definitely times. And it’s mostly the good times. Mostly the good times I find myself wishing I could have. And I don’t even really think about heroin as much as I think about, like, “Ah, wouldn’t it be nice to have a drink.” You know? “Wouldn’t it be sweet to have a fucking beer with everybody right now?” But I’m only three years clean, so I’m still very easily and swiftly reminded of how awful that shit was. I’m still close to it. The further and further you get away from it, the easier it is to forget about all the awful shit. Like when you break up with a girl, years later you don’t think about how she tried to stab you and how she wanted to take you from your friends and change you, you just think about how great it felt to sleep next to her. So I’m still really fresh with it. It gives me a disgust kind of a feeling in my stomach and in my head when I think about it. But I like my life like this. It’s way better for me on all levels to be living like this as opposed to living as a functioning user. I’m way happier. But that being said, it’s something that on a daily basis I’m reminded of and I’m dealing with. And it’s not even that. I eat like a junkie. I try to eat healthy but then I splurge and I fucking go crazy and I can’t just have a cheeseburger, I have to have three cheeseburgers and french fries, two different milkshakes. It’s the same thing with sex. So, I love it. I love my life and I love being alive. I love being a father, I love being an artist. And it’s all stuff that really suffered when I was using. I sometimes get really 16 INIDIE SOUND
angry at myself that I can’t function on moderation, that I can’t do this a little bit and not just get sucked back into a whole life. I get resentment with myself for it. But I quite prefer being sober. I remember a couple of months removed from when I started being sober... I think I started using originally, kind of like you said, because you want to get away sometimes. But I forgot how nice it is to just be present. Dude, that’s so well put. It’s the real feeling you get from being physically present in your life and actually getting over something as opposed to distancing yourself from it for a minute chemically to get the feel-good and then to have it still be there. There’s something so profoundly relieving from actually being there and actually working something out and having it actually be worked out rather than it being covered up with another feeling for a minute. I forgot, anyone I was using with or drinking with or whatever is like... I realized that I wasn’t actually close to them in any sense. You’re just doing the same shit. Commiserating, sort of. Exactly. Shit, this is a good talk. Dude, I’m mega-proud of you. I know we don’t know each other, but as an addict to another addict, I feel like I can relate to you in that way even though I don’t know you that well. I just want you to know, I think it’sreally inspirational. Not trying to sound like a total fucking lame-o, but it’s really inspirational to talk to somebody else who is able to say, “Yeah, it’s really nice to be present.” Because a lot of people I think are clean for decades and they still don’t know how to be present.
What was the first show you came back in either band sober? I played with The Sound of Animals Fighting, which is a project with me and RX Bandits, and those were the first shows I played right out of rehab. I had my wife and the guys from... I wasn’t alone by myself for months. I didn’t even have a cell phone. But it just felt so good. I’ve heard of artists not being able to get creative and not being able to experience the same feeling, but for me it was hyper-opposite. I was so much more involved. Writing is easier and I feel more confident about the shit that I’m doing. Dude, I remember being on stage in Philadelphia. It was intense. It was in Philadelphia, at the Trocadero where I saw one of my first concerts, where as a kid I never thought I’d be playing shows there. It was just this full circle thing. God, I had so much energy, I sounded good. I was proud of everything about it. Is it scary for you to think about when your kids are going to grow up and look at your lyrics and ask you about that kind of stuff? Nah, what scares me is that my kids are going to have the same issues. I would hate for my children to have to deal with the addiction stuff that I dealt with and the mental health. I used to have a really hard time with it, but I have mental health issues. I have mental health issues. And I think that it was something I was really embarrassed about for a really long time, but I get worried that I passed on my tendency, in my genes, that I passed on my addiction shit or my mental health shit to my kids. That scares me about it. I’ve been trying to make decisions in my life that I’ve been proud of standing by, whether it be my family or some random kid on the street. So when that shit happens I can be like, “Well, this is how I dealt with it and I’m proud of how I dealt with it, even if it meant I fucked up a whole bunch.” So at some point when they’re old enough to read the lyrics, I’ll be proud to say, as long as I keep making the right decisions, you don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. But I wanna make those decisions and I’m proud of being able to say, “Yeah, this is what I went through.” But the idea that I’ve passed on this evil gene, that no matter what I do they’re going to have to deal with mental health stuff or addiction stuff or all that stuff, it terrifies me. It terrifies me. I’m a third-generation addict at this point. I think I got fucked over by being Native American, being predis-
ANTHONY GREEN
posed to all this shit. And it’s weird, the idea that you can pass on addiction or any kind of mental health problem. I believe that in a way, no matter what anybody says about something being encoded in our DNA, at some point you make a choice. I’m scared for my kids to grow up in this world and at some point just have to let them go out there and get hurt and get taken advantage of and go through that shit. But it’s out of my control. I could die of the stress of knowing that at some point they’re going to get their hearts broken and they’re going to get robbed and they’re going to get taken advantage of. That’s the fucking way life is. All I can really do is be their dad and be their friend and love them unconditionally. And that comes real easy, I can do that. I can’t save them from the world, but when it comes down to crush them I can be there to rub their backs. You a good back rubber? I’m a great back rubber, dude. I have had great practice. I rub their backs every night when I’m home for them to go to sleep. They have different types of back rubs. Like, James will ask me for angel wings which is I’ll just be real light, gentle, tips of my fingers. And then Itchy and Scratchy where I’ll scratch a little bit more and go all over. He’ll ask me for foot rubs now. Crazy. I love it though. I love everything about being a dad. It’s like one great, giant meditation on selflessness. I never knew how happy I could be. I honestly believe that in life the key to happiness is living in the service of others, and doing things selflessly for other people. That’s what’s made me most happy in my life. Having children is one great meditation on selflessness and patience and futility and it’s been the greatest thing from my emotional health and my spiritual health and my creative health. INIDIE SOUND 17
HOW TO ORGANISE A MUSIC FESTIVAL Indie Sound goes behind the scenes and finds out what it’s like to plan, organise, book and promote an established European festival. Roel Coppen is a promoter for Friendly Fire, one of the leading entertainment companies in the Netherlands. Specialising in artist management, bookings, publishing, concert promotion and festivals, their reputation has grown rapidly since being founded in 2009. As well as being a festival promoter Roel also has a domestic roster of artists including Seasick Steve, The 1975 and Run The Jewels. However, we’re here to talk about his role as the main booker for Best Kept Secret, the Netherlands answer to Latitude and End Of The Road. Last year’s event was one of the highlights of a very busy summer of festivals, and with the likes of Beck, Explosions In The Sky, Beach House, Bloc Party, Editors and Wilco among the first batch of announcements for 2016, this year’s - scheduled to take place from 17-19 June - looks set to eclipse 2015’s incredible line up. We’re here at Eurosonic Noorderslag where many of Europe’s promoters and bookers have converged. With schedules running tight and every promoter in demand, DiS managed to spend half an hour in the company of Roel Coppen and learned all there is to know about putting together a line up for a major European festival. by Dom Gourlay
Indie Sound: How did Best Kept Secret start? Roel Coppen: The first edition of the festival was in 2013. Basically, we had this idea of creating a summer festival that we’d want to go to ourselves. It’s an easy thing to say but not so easy to put into place! I guess at some point all of the pieces came together and by the end of 2012, we had some of the artists in place for the summer of 2013. We had quite a small team working on this festival, all from Friendly Fire, and it’s still the same team that works on the festival today. Were you influenced by any other festivals? Definitely. I always wanted Best Kept Secret to be a perfect blend rather than focusing one type of music. Something like Latitude for example. We’re an indie festival but there should be room for hip-hop and pop as well. It was always our intention to throw as many
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different styles of music into the mix as possible. Best Kept Secret is located in a safari park around 9km from Tilburg. Did you seek out several locations or was that always your first choice? That was always our first choice. With the safari park it’s a unique setting, really beautiful with the lake and surrounding scenery. Production wise it’s perfect as well. There’s a main road running through the festival site so it’s easy to bring artists in and out of the site. Basically it has everything. The holiday homes are an extra incentive for our audience as well. What’s the capacity for the site? Are you looking to expand and increase capacity in the future? The total capacity of the site could be around 5060,000. We tend to use half of that. I don’t think we’d be
ten years along with The Great Escape and South By Southwest. When bands play here they’re already at a certain level and I guess this is a way of demonstrating they are worthy of playing a slot at ours or any other festival. Quite often with new bands we might not have seen them play live yet, so before an offer is put on the table a set at something like Eurosonic could be the deciding factor. It gives us an idea whether an act is right for Best Kept Secret and the kind of slot or stage we can offer them. It’s quite different from how it was ten years ago. Now you’re really scouting bands for future events and everything starts earlier.
looking to increase the numbers. Purely because that’s not the kind of festival we’d want it to be. It was always our intention for Best Kept Secret to be a small to medium sized festival. I think it would lose its identity if we were to make it a 50,000 capacity major festival, so this year we’re looking at doing 20,000 tickets.
Are there any artists you’ve seen at Eurosonic this week you’d like to play Best Kept Secret? There’s 6-8 artists who’ve played at Eurosonic I’m really keen to have at Best Kept Secret this year.
Is there a lot of competition with other festivals? Not just in the Netherlands with the likes of Lowlands but across Europe as a whole? Our main competitors are definitely the other Dutch What’s your specific role when it comes to organising festivals. I wouldn’t say festivals around the rest of EuBest Kept Secret? rope are a major concern. However, what is becoming Basically I’m fully responsible for the line up so all of an increasing problem is the US festival market. The the artists we book have to be approved by me. I have US festival market has been growing for a number of colleagues working on different parts of the bill such years, so for example there’s several American festivals as the late night electronic programme but even then, in June so now bands have to decide whether they before anything is finalised it has to go through me. want to be in Europe or the US. So in terms of rivalry, that’s the biggest issue. I do talk to a lot of promoters When do you start booking acts for the following year’s from other festivals – Sonar in Barcelona, Northside festival? in Denmark and Bergenfest in Norway being two for It starts earlier and earlier every year. I was talking example – and we share a lot of information so someabout headliners for 2016 before last year’s edition times, if an artist is offered a series of festivals over a even took place. And I foresee that in the next couple 7-10 day period it can be beneficial in persuading them of months I will have to start conversations regarding to choose Europe over the US. the headliners for 2017. But generally that’s just headlining acts. A lot of the offers are sent in September Would it be unlikely for a band to play Lowlands if and October so by Christmas I have an idea where Best Kept Secret had booked them and vice versa? we are at. I always leave slots open for bands that are It can happen that they play both. But what normally emerging so events like Eurosonic are vital when look- happens is that an artist chooses one touring period, so ing at new acts. Plans are always changing with new if they’re around in June there’s a good chance we’ll get acts emerging so we have to be able to give them scope them for Best Kept Secret whereas if it’s later in August before finalising the bill. they’re more likely to play Lowlands. But again, we have to try and keep some exclusivity on the line up. How important are events like Eurosonic and The Not only to keep it interesting for ourselves but also for Great Escape when scoping out new artists for Best our audience. So in a way we are competing with one Kept Secret? another. It doesn’t happen very often that bands play I see Eurosonic as being a feeder event for Best Kept both festivals. Secret. It’s become more important over the past INIDIE SOUND 19
INTERVIEW
ut I guess the main sponsor with any festival is who provides your beer. There’s big money involved, so my colleague Niels Aalberts is currently working on that as we speak. There’s also a large emphasis on locally sourced, freshly prepared, high
Has it ever caused a line up to change at a late stage? The line up I have at the start of the summer is usually very different from the one I have now. The first batch of names we announced were in my head and in the schedule at that time. The list of acts that can’t play because they’re doing the US is getting bigger every year. It can also depend on plans changing with individual artists and their management or booking agents. Sometimes they might decide not to tour at all after putting a provisional tour schedule in place or the release date of an album is set back. So there are more aspects than competing with the US. The first talks with agents are mostly in summer or September. Has the line up budget increased since the festival started? I work within an overall budget for the festival so have to keep that in mind when I’m booking the line up. Sometimes a headline act might ask for a fee that’s bigger than what we had in mind, so I speak to my colleagues about other ways we can try and make that work. For example, we also sell day tickets so try to bridge that gap if it’s a headliner we’re confident can attract significant numbers on a particular day. Day tickets can be an important source of generating extra revenue. How important is sponsorship to a festival like Best Kept Secret? Are more brands approaching you about getting involved now Best Kept Secret is becoming more established? When you start a festival it’s important to have a sponsor that understands your target audience and in turn, that can also attract other sponsors to become involved with the festival. I’m currently working on finalising a couple of potential sponsors for this year’s event, b20 INIDIE SOUND
quality food at Best Kept Secret. Do you see that as being an essential part of the festival? Definitely. It’s what our audience wants. We noticed in the first year that people found it much more important than we thought they would. You have to think carefully about what your audience wants and it’s become quite apparent good quality food is of high importance. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into detail all around the festival and I think you can see that with the food. What is your ideal demographic target audience for Best Kept Secret? I think our demographic is quite broad. The interesting thing for me is that younger kids have the opportunity of seeing bands like Slowdive or Ride. Bands they’ve probably never heard before but read about as influencing their favourite current bands. For example, last
year they could see a band like Wolf Alice then watch Ride who Wolf Alice have talked about as inspiring them. I like that connection. I like our younger audience to be able to see bands their parents might have listened to. Also, it goes back to what I was saying about day tickets. People specifically bought day tickets in 2014 to see Slowdive or last year to see The Jesus & Mary Chain. Was it your intention to target the UK market? No, not really. We don’t construct the line up specifically to appeal to a UK audience. Last year’s line up had a lot of UK acts but the one for 2016 is going to be quite different from that. A lot of it really is dependent on availability of artists. We didn’t specifically focus on or target the UK, Belgium or Germany but at the same time, I think we are an internationally appealing festival with an internationally appealing line up so there is a good chance people from the UK might be drawn to Best Kept Secret rather than Glastonbury or other British festivals, for various reasons. Is this year’s line up nearly finalised? It’s getting there. As I said earlier, we leave several slots open for new and emerging bands, but we have a better idea now of who we might like to fill those slots. So far we’ve announced around a dozen acts and there’s plenty more to come. One name that stands out for me from the first batch of announcements is Explosions In The Sky. Had you
MUSIC FESTIVAL
been trying for them in previous years? I think this is the first time in years they’ve had touring plans with the new album being released. I don’t recall us trying to get them in past years because it was never really an option. But when the agent told me they had touring plans for this summer we knew immediately we wanted to have them here. One minor criticism last year was the lack of late night entertainment after the bands had finished. Are th eir plans to review and increase that this year? Definitely. We’re working hard to have a line up through the night that’s more appealing than it was in past years. I have a team specifically focused on that whereas last year I had to do it myself. We’re also thinking about creating a number of cool spaces around the festival site for this year. Maybe secret stages or areas so we can keep the party going into the early hours. Will there be more stages this year? There might be. Finally, if you could choose any artists past or present, who would your three dream headliners be? That’s a difficult question! I’m a massive Radiohead fan so I think that’s a dream headline act for any festival. I’m sure every festival promoter would say Radiohead. I think a band like Arcade Fire would be perfect on the lakeside. So what’s my third one going to be? This is really tough. I’ll have to come back to you later.
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SILVERSUN PICKUPS An EXCLUSIVE interview with
SILVERSUN PICKUPS’ Nikki Monninger With their 2015 album Better Nature, Silversun Pickups continue their journey to your soul. Ten years on from their debut EP, the L.A.-based quartet – Brian Aubert, Christopher Guanlao, Joe Lester and Nikki Monninger – have managed to build a following by creating music that means something different to each listener. It’s not difficult to understand why some may consider one of their tracks to be a perfect ‘party’ anthem while another person may think of that very same song as the sound of one heart breaking. That is the magic of music, and Silversun Pickups have mastered the art. On Better Nature, their fourth album overall and the first on their new label New Machine Recordings, the band and producer Jacknife Lee have maintained the band’s quality standards with tracks like “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance),” “Friendly Fires,” “Connection” and more. If you’ve fallen under the Silversun Pickups spell before, prepare to be further enchanted by the swirling mass of emotions. INDIE SOUND was able to chat with bassist/vocalist Nikki Monninger about the album and more… by Stephen Schnee
INDIE SOUND: Better Nature is just about to be released. How are you feeling about the album and the reaction to it so far? NIKKI MONNINGER: I’m happy with how things turned out. We went again with Jacknife Lee, who produced our last album Neck Of The Woods. We all get excited to work with him because he’s always pushing us to try things that may not be in our comfort zone. On this album, I played vibraphone, which I’d never played before but I’ve always wanted to. Sometimes, we get in a rut of just doing the same things we like to do, but it’s nice to have an outside person come in and say, “Why don’t you try this?” Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Jacknife is credited with co-writing the songs. Were these tracks that you wrote in the studio, or did you already have them pretty much sculpted by the time you went into the studio? These were pretty well formed songs but he worked 22 INIDIE SOUND
a lot with us and we felt, at the end, we should give him some credit for all the work he did. They’re pretty much the same songs that we brought in but he enhanced them. He had some interesting ideas. We have a great relationship with him and he really worked hard to make it the best album that we could make. The songs have a very powerful, almost anthemic feel to them yet they still have pretty melodies. Is it difficult to balance the two in the same song? I think that when we are in a room, something happens that is special to us. We don’t plan where our sound is going to go – it just happens when we get together. It’s interesting that when we get into the studio, we almost forget that the outcome of what we produce is for other people. It almost seems like we’re in our own little world. We’ve been lucky and grateful that we haven’t had a lot of outside influence by our record company. They let us do what we want to do. When putting together an album, do you look at a set
her own interpretation of the song? Yes. It’s a totally different medium but it’s nice to see what somebody else’s vision is. We don’t like being involved in the creative process because it should just be the director’s vision. The director doesn’t make music and we don’t make films so why should we think that we can do a better job than them? This is your first album on your new label, New Machine Recordings. What inspired you to start this new venture? We had been on Dangerbird Records and our contract with them was up. We liked the idea of being independent and we thought it might be a great move to go in that direction. We decided to take that leap of faith and we’ll see what happens. From a career standpoint, we’ve always gone with our gut and we believe it’s going to turn out.
of songs as pieces of one whole or do you approach each song as its own individual entity? In the back of our minds, we know the goal is to make an album. As we’re recording, it starts to come together. The way that the album flows is important to us because we think it’s something that should all go together – it’s something you’re meant to listen to all the way through. There’s a deliberate order but we don’t think about that until we get to the recording process and things start to fall in place. It naturally happens over the course of our recording process.
You’ve been called everything from Electropop to Alternative to Post-Punk to Indie. Do you feel comfortable even aligning yourself with any particular genre? We think it’s interesting when people put labels on us but we just do what we do – it doesn’t affect us when somebody labels us. People need labels to relate to something. In the beginning, people said we sounded like Smashing Pumpkins, but they also said Fleetwood Mac! It’s interesting that they are using those labels for us. We don’t attempt to dive into a certain genre. The music we like is so diverse; it just sort of comes out.
The record has a lot of songs that are ‘immediate’ and worthy of being a single or radio track. How do you go about deciding which is going to be the first song released as a single? Jacknife likes to call it ‘finding the portal’! (Laughs) We let those who are in charge of that stuff make the decisions. Our favorite song to play live was “Lazy Eye.” It was special to us but we never imagined it would be a single – it’s a long song and we didn’t ever think of being in a singles world. So, it was a surprise to us when it became a single! So, it’s hard. We’re just too close to the music to pick – we just don’t think in terms of radio. When videos are made for your songs, do you enjoy giving the director power to create a film based on his/ INIDIE SOUND 23
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