THIS LOVE IS DEADLY is a much promising band from Berlin, Germany, that is heavily influenced by shoegazing gods MY BLOODY VALENTINE (aswell as, say DINOSAUR JR.) and also reminds me – especially regarding Lisa's vocals – of PATTI SMITH and PJ HARVEY.Misery is their first EP. And it is excellent!
Grab this monster!
Q: Do you want your real names mentioned? If so: What are your real names?
Louis: Sure! Our names are Lisa & Louis. Our drummer wants to be called H.D.
Q: Who involved? Who played what?
Louis: Lisa on bass and vocals, me on guitar and vocals and H.D. on drums.
Q: Where exactly are you from?
Lisa: I was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up all over the world.
Louis: I originate from Italy. H.D. grew up on a farm near the border to Holland.
Q: Since when are you into recording music?
Lisa : I guess, like probably every ambitous young musician, who starts to write own songs, we all had our first dilettante tries at recording music in our teen years on old-school cassette players. I remember, at one point having this really shitty and defect head phone set that my father'd given to me because he had no use for it, and it came together with this computer program to record voice samples and stuff like that. I recall how excited I was about its overdub option, which allowed you to record over your first take. That's how I did my vocal harmonies, after having recorded the guitar together with the lead vocals. The program even had a special effects section, enabling you to reverse a take...it felt like heaven to me back then! However, about five years ago Louis and I started to build up a home studio where the first tlid recordings were recorded. Everything was still very amateurish and low-fi, it still is actually! We sort of made a virtue out of necessity and have adopted this style to our overall band sound. But it was a great way to gain experience and since then especially Louis has become quite skilled at the art of recording, mixing and producing.
Q: Any previous bands/side projects that you've been involved in worth mentioning?
Louis: I played with a band called the amber light before, H.D. played with EL*KE and Lisa's currently got a solo project under the name Amour Fou.
Q: How'd you "label" your music?
Louis: I dunno, maybe Alternative, Psychedelic, Pop, Punk, Grunge...
Lisa: I always find it difficult to categorize ones own music... Motor.de recently wrote a review about us describing our music with german words such as "Edelgrunge" and "Rauschrock", which sort of appealed to us.
Q: What's your favourite track on this ep? Why?
Louis: We love 'em all equally. I think Midiverb stands out for it's uniqueness in terms of sound.
Q: How do you write your songs? What comes first, words or music?
Louis: Music always comes first then we write the lyrics. We write mostly on acoustic guitars.
Lisa: Yeah, when the music and the idea of a song is there, we play around with a melody...sometimes the melody inspires the lyrics...certainly the feeling of the song does. Rarely do we have a distinct idea of what exactly the lyrics should express... it's more a mood, a general feeling. The first idea of lyrics are mostly improvised and we often experiment with the phonetics of words, the sound of a word can be very inspiring. It's sort of an unconscious process, a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. We might not understand it while in the process of creation, and often it only makes sense after completion.
Q: What’s the best song you’ve ever written?
Louis: I believe it's Wasting Time.
Q: Favourite line from a song you've written?
Lisa: Hm...I don't know. Our lyrics can be quite trivial and insignificant. If a song of ours carries a message, I believe it's more of an emotional than an intellectual nature. Perhaps that is the reason why our vocals are more often than not very low in the mix. Due to the fact that we mostly utilize the voices as instruments, it's more important to us that the melody or the way something is sung carries a certain feeling and thus contributes to the whole atmosphere of a song.
Q: How do you record your albums?
Louis: Mostly we record demos at home first on which the final recordings are based upon. Then we go into a studio and overdub the drums, preferably on tape.. We end up using a lot of tracks from the demos because of their feel. It's always a mix between lo-fi and hi-end.
Q: Any plans for live gigs?
Louis: We wanna play live as much as possible.
Q: What are your main musical influences? Do I hear a MY BLOODY VALENTINE influence or is that by chance?
Louis: Sure, MBV is a key-influence. But so is much of the music I think they were also influenced by, like sonic youth, dinosaur jr. the velvet underground, ramones, stooges, jesus and mary chain, hendrix, neil young...etc.
Q: Favourite band at the moment?
Lisa: Scott Walker is much adored at present.
Louis: I agree, I might have said Neil Young a few weeks ago. His latest record is a masterpiece.
Q: What was the first record that really blew your mind?
Louis: In Utero, Nirvana
Lisa: Nirvana, In Utero
Q: The last five records you bought/downloaded?
1. Neil Young - Le Noise
2. Tocotronic - Schall und Wahn
3. Air - Love 2
4. Portishead - Third
5. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Q: Anything that you think is interesting, that you'd like to inform the blog readers about...
Lisa: Our MISERY EP is now available as a FREE DOWNLOAD! Via this link: http://www.thisloveisdeadly.com/ThisLoveIsDeadly-MiseryEP.zip
(or you may - of course - use the links below (m-f))
Q: Website?
Favourite track: Wasting Time, but every track is a winner!
THIS LOVE IS DEADLY: Misery (GER 2010)
(mp3-zip, 4 tracks, 13 min, 18 MB)
Wasting Time
Everything Is Nothing
Misery To You
Midiverb
Get it here!
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2 comments:
Very beautiful EP!! It reminds me also a bit of slowdive. Thank´s for posting this! They should be oppening the shows of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart in Germany!
http://420defenders.bandcamp.com
http://hlady.bandcamp.com
http://fleshelephant.bandcamp.com
http://mikehlady.blogspot.com
music ! pass it on
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