HAEVN

Behind the ethereal sound of HAEVN hide two musicians as different as brilliantly complementary. Jorrit Kleijnen, originally a soundtrack composer, and Marijn van der Meer, former advertising worker and singer-songwriter… Chance brought the first’s textured melodies and the second’s envelopping vocals and lyrics together. A match made in heaven which finds its full expression in their 14-track album "Eyes Closed" . Jorrit and Marijn took the time to tell us about their striking debut, the long and necessary making of their record and also, the values they defend through their musical project. Passion, integrity, generosity... let’s meet HAEVN.

On The Move: Hi Jorrit, hi Marijn ! Thanks for having us. For our readers to understand your work as HAEVN, can you explain how you started in music ?

Jorrit Kleijnen: Our band is actually one big coincidence in its start. I’ve always been playing piano and I have been a composer for advertising and films. I have been doing that for ten years now. Actually, three years ago, I composed music for an ad about a blind skate-boarder. He was blind but he could go down that skating ramp on his intuition. It was quite a special moment and I wrote music for this, on a piano-ish vibe. I got a call from the advertisement director, saying "You made a great piece of music but we think it should be a pop song." I said "Well, I can’t sing, I don’t write pop songs. I think in film music. So it is not possible." He said "Well, I know someone who can sing very well, and who write pop songs." At first, I was a little bit afraid of the collaboration, of that feeling of being forced to collaborate with someone. One hour later, I had Marijn on the phone. He said "Hi, I just heard your piano piece and I sang something to it."

Marijn van der Meer: Yeah, I got this amazing music video, with this guy going on a ramp without even seeing. I got goosebumps. I ran upstairs in my little studio and I sang whatever came in my mind. I sent it back to Jorrit just to see if he liked it. And then, he was really amazed by it. Actually, I thought "Who is this crazy guy yelling?" He was like "I love this!" And that was something that we did only out of intuition, we didn’t know each other at that moment. Which is really nice because something new happened when we collaborated. We started making music together...

Jorrit Kleijnen: As friends, actually! Without any goal. We were just very charmed by the influence we had on each other. Because Marijn at first was this guy on a guitar, like -if I may say- the cliché type of singer-songwriter. And I was the cliché film-composer working with orchestras but never with a voice. It was really sort of a chemical reaction who flew in when put together! And the funny thing is that I was working with other musicians but that was also very professional, you always have to pay an invoice at the end of the day, right? But this was really a musical friendship because we’re very different, we’re very good friends now, but I think Marijn would have never been friends with me if it was at a bar, you know what I mean...

On The Move: In terms of personality, what do you find in each other that is complementary ?

Marijn van der Meer: I think I am the calmer guy of the two. And Jorrit is more the guy of the initiative. When we got a call from a big car agency that wanted to use our song, Jorrit said "We have to spend that money to start a band and record this song properly with a good producer and stuff". And I, on the other side, wanted to save it. But he said "Let’s use all this money to go further." That’s what I really like about him. He had been his own boss for 7 or 8 years. And I still had my job at an agency. And in the middle, we meet. Some times he wants to spend everything (laughs) and I’m like "No, let’s try to do the small shows first". We’re pretty different but it works!

Jorrit Kleijnen: On the other way around, Marijn’s calm inspires me. Already from a musical perspective, when he sings. I think Marijn is so incredibly good at what he does that we can allow ourselves to also just do that. Many have to pull out tricks and stuff but from a musical perspective, Marijn is really the hand over your shoulder saying "It’s gonna be alright you know ?" I’m always busy in my mind. He brings calm to me but if we would only pull up our shoulders saying " fine", we wouldn’t be here in Paris doing a concert. So, it’s a perfect balance! I think you can only collaborate very well if you’re either completely the same or you’re different enough to be complementary. We’re definitely that last possibility.

If a song doesn't give us the chills we got from each other when we met musically we don't go further" – Marjin van der Meer

On The Move : Your stage name is also ambivalent. "HAEVN" is a mix between the words "heaven" and "haven". Why did you choose it ?

Marijn van der Meer: When our first song came out "Where The Heart Is", we got emails from different people saying "it sounds like heaven" and "it sounds like coming home" and we decided to get these two words together in one new word "HAEVN". It’s a bit of a weird way to write it but at first, it really worked for us because in Holland, there was a certain mystery around us, everyone knew our songs but they didn’t know the band, they didn’t know it was from Holland, which was also a nice thing... We liked that idea of not being too Dutch, of sounding international.

Jorrit Kleijnen: Even the producer from London Grammar which we worked with emailed us saying "Are you going to London or should I come to Denmark?" He thought we were from there (laughs) And when you pronounce "HAEVN" , there is already an expectation from the music, right? And you can adjucate Google also... Because when typing "HAEVN" it would instantly correct you and redirect you to "heaven" and say "you mispelled!" but now, if you type "HAEVN" you get only us as an answer! It took a while but we did it. And sometimes I joke and say "How many Facebook likes would we have add if we had a more common or simple name?" Because there is this thing, if you know how to write it, you can feel part of a club, a secret, this little band HAEVN... So it was a little bit bold to go for that name.

While making the album, we became more and more fighters for patience" – Jorrit Kleijnen

On The Move: Your debut album "Eyes Closed" came out last May, three years after your meeting. Why did you took all this time while other artists would have surfed on the first single’s success?

Marijn van der Meer: It was important for us to find our own sound. Because in our career, it was the other way around, we had this song out that became a huge hit and we had to think "Okay, what is our sound ? We just made this one song together." So we had to find our own sound and the best way to do that was to make an album together. So we did, and it took two and a half years. It took a while, everyone was talking about the momentum. It was the word that we got every day. "You have to bring more music. It should have already been out yesterday" but Jorrit said "If something is good, it is also good in two years. If we have something out now which isn’t that good, then people will think it was a one shot." So that’s why it took a while.

Jorrit Kleijnen: We also needed that for ourselves because we didn’t know who we were. We only knew that when we are together, we resonate and we make nice music. But we didn’t have a clue how we would sound if we had thirteen tracks. I can give a lot of examples of Dutch artists at least that have been releasing just singles, and if you listen to them, one after each other, you still can’t tell what the artist stands for because it is just fragmentary, it is just moments. During that process actually, we became more and more fighters for patience. I think we are the examples of being brave, against the stream enough not to go along with all this fast stuff. And that’s why we called it "Eyes Closed", I remember us being in the studio with another producer and I closed my eyes to actually be able to feed back better. I thought "If you just shut down one of your senses, the others become more intense". And we had calls from radios asking "Can we have the intro be shorter?" and we said "No, it can’t." In 2018, it seems like people are not willing to just get in the mood of the songs. Your instagram films can only be 30 seconds, everything is just shorter. On radio, they’re showing you 5 seconds clips of the songs that will come in the next ten minutes. Are you f*cking kidding me? And maybe, we are old men but the thing is we both had a good job, we are not in this for the money so we had the sort of madness to say "f*ck you all, we’re gonna do it our way" and if you are one of these few people who wants time, patience, who is ready to take time, then please, join this HAEVN club. If you wanna keep on living the fast life, that’s fine too.

Marijn van der Meer: The nice thing is that in the Spotify place, you can see that people are actually listening to the whole album and not just to one song picked out of it. Of course, all these songs are also in playlists but they can see that people are just going through the whole thing, hopefully with their eyes closed. Normally, with new artists, this is only two or three songs having millions of streams and the other ones having 100 000. And you can just see it is going equally on "Eyes Closed". We even had a phone call from someone in the UK saying "This is a very rare thing to happen".

On The Move: There are a lot of themes tackled in "Eyes Closed": relationships, nostalgia, choices, regrets, vulnerability, letting go, hopes and dreams... Very human and timeless feelings overall. Is it what music should be about to you ?

Marijn van der Meer: For us, it is. It is called "Eyes Closed" because we want the listeners to make his or her own images with the music. We don’t tell "this song is about this or this", that’s why the lyrics are sometimes less clear. We actually like that you can have your own interpretation of the songs. It’s the same when I listen to albums and I think "this song is about this" but the next year, I think differently. It is about your own perception of the songs. And that’s what we embraced and what we really like.

Jorrit Kleijnen: We don’t pretend that there is one universal interpretation of the song. Some writers have this thing "we don’t tell you but this is what you should actually be making out of it" and we don’t even wanna go that far. It’s like we just put you in a van and drive you to a mountain in Island, or in the middle of the night in the streets of New-York. That’s really important that we don’t try to push you anywhere. It’s about you, if we can help you feel a certain way, then it’s the greatest thing. We don’t want to adjucate your feelings.

We want the listeners to have their own interpretation of the songs" – Marijn van der Meer

On The Move: You two have backgrounds tied to visuals, either as an advertising man (Marijn) or a film-composer (Jorrit). Which links do you draw between music and visuals?

Jorrit Kleijnen: The cover album was so important for us. The funny thing is that we are music makers not video makers. But we are as picky and as thorough about everything, the whole visual aspects. I think you’re right, it’s in the roots of both of our careers. And I think, at least for me, it has established a certain mindset, as well. I need images to trigger me musically. I’m not the type of guy to just sit and write music. Volvo for example, they’ve got beautiful imagery of cars but only 15% of the time, you see an actual car, the rest is people, going though the city. And I would make ten times faster music for that than me sitting anywhere because my mind is like trained on making music that way. And also our mind is trained on catchiness. I won’t say everything we make is super catchy but it always leads to it somewhere.

Marijn van der Meer : And we try to find goosebumps. If it doesn’t give us the chills we got from each other when we first met musically. Then we won’t go further with the song.

Jorrit Kleijnen: That’s also a curse and a blessing because we made "Where The Heart Is" when we weren’t even in the same room and it raised the bar so high, we said to each other that that was the bar we had to cross for everything we would make together from now on.

On The Move: You’ve released a series of videos illustrating your album, where people from all around the world tell their stories in front of the camera, with each track as the background. Where does this idea come from?

Jorrit Kleijnen: It was a collaborative idea with the label. We were really looking for a vehicle helping us carrying out the message "It’s about your story, not ours". And I think it was the most obvious and best example to underline that. It was really hard to find a format again, "a fast format". All these interviews were 45 minutes actually. They were cut down but we also didn’t wanna have the feeling that they were cut down so it was a very hard process. But we are pretty happy with the result. But being very vulnerable telling you that here, I’m not so happy with the result of the Facebook campaign. It is not shared that much as we hoped for. It is again another example of how fast time is going. You know what I mean? This campaign is demanding a certain awareness of the viewers you know. And if you don’t have it, you’re just "Ho, someone telling about their lives... " then you’re zapping it.

Marijn van der Meer: But it is also made for the people that are diving into it, like you did. That’s really cool! It is the same with our name. If you want to find it, you have to be prepared. If you want to find more about this, you can dive deeper.

On The Move : What can we expect from HAEVN live?

Jorrit Kleijnen: If you would have a cross reference with a dutch shows, you’d say "hey, the guys are more chilled". In the Netherlands, we’re playing venues from 500 to 2000 people and tonight, in Paris, it is of course a lot smaller but I think, it gives me more chills, and I think you’re going to see guys who are enjoying (of course, we are always) but tonight, it is more intimist, and I hope that the songs will speak to you and you will have a very constant line with Marijn’s vocal but also we try to take different routes.

Marijn van der Meer: The most beautiful compliment we’ve ever had was from a woman saying "I’ve been crying and I’ve been dancing and I had never been at a concert where I did both on the evening." If only a little bit of that would happen tonight, it would make us very proud and thankful for that. No pressure (laughs).

Interview by Coraline Blaise | Photos by Nazym Hermouche exclusively for On the Move