We love to make music that makes your ears bleed said Jochem Jacobs, one of Textures guitarists. Things seem clear. Here's an interview with this great dutch band of modern metal, their 2nd & brand new album is just released on Listenable records. Do you like to bleed ?Hi, to begin this interview, could we come back to the foundation of the band ? Where / when did all begin ?
It's kind of a bizar story how we ended up together. You must know that we all (except Eric) come from a tiny city in Holland called Etten-Leur. We all grew up in a specific part of the town where every street in named after an instrument. Guitarist Bart lived in Cellostreet, Jochem and Dennis in Clarionstreet for example. Bart, Dennis and I spend our time playing in a few local progressive death-metal bands (Lost Sacrament, Empty). Jochem and Richard on the other side worked on their band (Ground Control). Something like progressive cross over. After the split up of those bands Jochem and I launched the idea of doing something progressive. I knew Jochem's guitar skills and I definitely wanted to play with him. After a few sessions we decided to create a mixture of the bands Empty and Ground Control, the two most promising bands in the area. It was funny to discover that we both got kind of the same musical skills and ideas. Besides that we knew each other quite well, so there was a good friendship bases relation. In 2001, one year after the start of the band, a friend came by in the rehearsal room. He proposed the idea of recording the songs and to skip the demotape crap, but go directly for a full length album. You're nuts, we said. But he responded: No, you have producers, artworkers, a guy to do the contacts, computerfreaks etc : enough to produce an album on your own. So, go for it. The next day we planned the whole production for our first album Polars. The rest of the story: We signed to Listenable records (Soilwork, Scarve, Gojira) We played with Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Sepultura, MachineHead, Morbid Angel. We won an dutch award for most promising act. We toured a lot through Europe and got amazing press responses in the magazines.
Your first album "Polars" was a real shock in the metal scene for fans of Meshuggah, Cult Of Luna & Devin Townsend. How do you judge it now?
Polars was our musical statement : here we are, this is how we sound, deal with it. The album was quite unconventional, but professional in every way. Drawing Circles is a new step ahead. The combination of all our elements, taken from thrash, math, fusion, prog., rock, singer/songwriter, soundtracks has expanded even more. The most important thing is that the songs and the album in general are far more coherent than our former album. That was one of our main goals. Besides that, Polars was the first full-length record our guitarist Jochem ever produced. He's far more experience now, and in our opinion one of the leading Dutch producers. If you speak about metal, he's maybe one of the top producers in Europe.
Why did you change your singer ? Was it because the old one sucked? Or is it for relational problems ? Is Mike Patton an influence for Eric Kalsbeek ?
Haha, after our first album we talked a lot about the vocals on the album and the musical goals for the next piece. It became apparent that our former singer was not exactly what we had in mind for the future. You must know that on Polars he only did the screams. Guitarist Jochem did the clean vox. We wanted someone with more variety in his voice ; someone who could do the screams, grunts AND clean vocals himself. A bit too much to strife for ma
ybe, but we found the right guy quite fast. When we saw Eric's inspiration list with Faith No More (Mike Patton), Peter Gabriel, Dillinger Escape Plan, Jeff Buckley, Meshuggah we knew immediately that this was the right man on the right time! Eric was the last piece of the cake to make the band complete. Eric is, like us, inspired by many different kinds of music. The use of his voice created a lot of freedom in making music. He even expanded our musical frame we worked with on Polars. Eric can deal with bizarre rhythms, song structures and he is a fan of weird chord progressions. For instance, take a look at the song Illumination. That's a song almost totally written by him. Your first album's production was not so good. "Drawing Circles" 's one is far better. Where did you record it ?
We record it again in a new self-built studio. But a permanent one this time. Last year july we started building it and we finished just before the pre-production of Drawing Circles in october. Look at answer 2 for further info.
I find "Drawing Circles" very different. More melodies, more fluidity, but unfortunately less jazzy parts except on "Touching the Absolute". How did you try to evolve musically ?
I think we differ from other bands because we want to keep our perspective wide open. While most bands delete inspiration or aspects out of there music to gain a simple song-formula, we approach every song different. The music is, in fact, a direct representation of who we are and how we think about aesthetics. We all listen to the most bizarre genres of music. All kinds of rock, soul, metal, singer/songwriter, classical stuff, soundtracks, fusion, even Arabian music. As I said, we don't think in a particular formula. It just depends on the mood of the day in what context we place a melody, riff, harmony or rhythm. In Touching The Absolute it sounds maybe like fusion and sympho rock. Stream Of Consciousness is more straight ahead pumping metal. It differs in every song.
>What do your texts deal with ?
Our lyrics deal with patterns; patterns in all kind of shapes and on all kind of levels. Just like Polars the theme is very much related to the topic consciousness'. We talk a lot about that last topic if we hang around with the band. We consider consciousness as a key to progression in life. But to become conscious we have to be aware of patterns in life. Patterns emerge for example in history, psychology, physics and also our own social and mental life. For ages mankind study patterns of processes to learn something from them. This also counts for our own beings. We have to zoom out to look at the overall structure and to face and reflect on our beings and to let us ask the right questions. Drawing Circles is about these patterns, not only lyrically, but also musically. An example: the 5th song Stream Of Consciousness deals with impulsive living and the moments of enlightenment we experience. The following song Upwards is representative for this very moment of clearness; the melodies, harmony and rhythms flow into each other and strengthen each other to a climax; a symbol for positive energy and life in general.
How do you compose inside the band ? Is it always the same musician who bring the skeleton of a new song ? Does it need to grow very long before being recordable ?
The basis of every song is the tension structure. Sometimes we set up a structure before we write the song, sometimes is evolves directly with the parts we create. We always maintain focus to the total structure of the song. It's not just riff after riff but a synergy of rhythms, melody, harmo
ny, speed varieties and breaks. We consider songs not as static but as dynamical, like water. It goes up and down, from left to right. It's just a matter of picking the right ingredients to give the right touch to the drive you have in mind. If you take enough time to work on this process it's not necessary to check them out live, although it is exciting to check to vibe of the song in another context. I saw you on stage with In-Quest last year & i was like hypnotized by your intensity. I saw you will tour Europe in may with Gojira ? Do you know their music ?
Of course we know the music of Gojira! In fact; From Mars To Sirius is one of the most important metal statements in years. Besides that, the Gojira guys are very cool, we met them at the show in Elysee Montmartre, Paris and a month ago in our hometown Tilburg, Holland. They give the french scene and the total european scene an impulse with their mammoth-metal as we call it. It's SO fucking heavy. They do everything themselves just like we do. And I think they have the same positive drive. They are friendly guys and smile and have pleasure making music; NOT like brutal, ignorant and weird metal crappers. That vibe is also representative to us. We gain an enormous amount of energy from our audience, but we want it also to exchange with them. The energy has to flow through the venue!
>You will also play in june at the french Hell fest in Clisson with tons of great bands like Celtic Frost, Opeth, Satyricon, Obituary, Alice In Chains Are you still excited like young kids when you met musicians you admire ?
We never saw musicians of a well-known band as different from us. Maybe we dutch people are to sober for that haha. We're all the same: musicians most of the time, sometimes assholes that make mistakes, sometime happily in love, sometimes tired, sometimes hyped up. It doesn't matter if you play in a well-known band, because it's all very relative. For some people Textures is a huge band and some people react a bit shy if they meet us. We don't consider ourselves as a huge band at all. BUT, to other people we are just a tiny band and Alice in Chains is a huge band. But I think the guys of Alice in Chains think the same as we do; they don't consider themselves as a huge band. They think; man, Rolling Stones are a great band, not us haha'. We're all just a bunch of people that like to create music haha. And you know what guys of Rolling Stones or U2 think? Gnagna, we are the greatest! But why does everybody react so strange when they see me. It's fucking irritating.'
>Who did draw your cover ? Very nice one.
Thanx for that. Our singer Eric and guitar player Bart worked on that for a couple of weeks. They are both into lay-out things; paintings, drawings, website lay out etc. The cover of Drawing Circles is a follow up to the cover of Polars, if you may have noticed.
>Thanx for your time guys, last words are yours.
Aaarghh@**_#+S@###{XMX!!! We're so fucking hyped up to come over to France again and to throw out all the energy we have. We're not joking if we say that France is the country we got most positive responses in Europe. We want to thank every french guy and girl for that; in Lille, Alencon, Paris, Boulogne, Woippy, Nancy, Nantes, Rennes, Quimperle, Le Mans, Bolbec, Le Havre and the whole south of France! You rock! We hope you like our new album Drawing Circles as much as our predecessor. Hope to see you on our French tours. We're gonna rock your city! Check out the dates on our website www.texturesband.com
www.texturesband.com
www.listenable.ne
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interview réalisée par DJ In Extremis
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