Messed!Up
Eau Rouge have been building up momentum for a few years now with a following of fans growing and growing by cooking up a hybrid sound “that’s part indie and part electronica”, placing them alongside bands as Editors and M83 in British media.
When the Stuttgart three-piece made a stopover in Hamburg to play Nochtwache, Messed!Up sat down with Jonas, Magnus and Bo to talk about reaching out to fans, the social-mediafication of the music industry and their strategy of releasing a constant stream of singles.
And in terms of singles, they premiere their latest one today. Listen to “Melt” at Spotify
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Starting out in Stuttgart in 2013, Jonas, Magnus and Bo quickly established themselves on the scene and built up quite a following with their self-titled EP a year later. With a large sound down to some great polished production skills, some of the songs sound like anthems made for larger venues, and their addictive rock sensibility and propensity for “killer hooks” drew lots of attention when they released their debut album “Nocturnal Rapture” 2016.
Fastforward two years and the release of their third 2018 single, “Melt”, today, there’s a lot of interest concerning a second album.
“Constantly releasing singles”
You have a very British electronic indie sound in what you do. Is that where get your influences from? To be honest, I just happened to stumble upon you in 2016 because of a recommendation through Last.FM who put you up next to bands as Editors.
Bo: I guess there are some electronic influences and we also use stompboxes and that kind of electronic devices for the guitars, and we basically try to simulate electronic sounds somehow.
Jonas: But we’re not really that much into real synthesizers, it’s all simulated with the guitars and that’s why it’s still rock music for us. And live the sound is a bit rougher than on record.
It’s a bit over two years since your debut album “Nocturnal Rapture” came out and with two singles this year, “Jupiter Drive” and “Closer”, there might be a second album in the works. Do you have any plans about a second album to tell us about? Or anything related to a new album in the near future?
Bo: We have a new single coming out on December 14th [today], and the idea at this point is to constantly release singles over a short period of time and we’ll see where we end up. I mean, we plan to do a second album at some point of course but now it’s better for us to release stuff step by step, single by single.
Both singles from this year seem to point out a new musical direction for you. Have your sound developed and changed from the first album, and in that case how?
Bo: There has definitely been a developed and we use more instruments on the track, we actually have a bass guitar in there and also a bass guitar on stage, and that’s a change because we used to pitch down our guitars before.
Jonas: It’s a bit more diversified now. If I listen to “Nocturnal Rapture” today I just feel that the sound is very compressed and full of sounds, at times even a bit too much, and we discovered that less is more to make today’s sound more dynamic.
But how important is it to release an album? Today many bands just focus on EP’s and singles just to feed fans with something new once in a while and some bands even say that the album is dead.
Jonas: We have a new EP and how that one will evolve, if it’s a start of the second album or an EP standing on its own, and how it will be connected with the next EP in terms of sound will decide the next step I guess, but at the moment the plan is an EP.
Bo: It’s a good question because it’s an interesting time we live in because we might not need albums anymore; do we even like them or do people even listen to that kind of format anymore? It’s sad in a way because I really like to put together songs with the same sound and get a complete story of songs and sounds in a row.
The reason I ask is because we’ve had bands that tell us that although it’s better for them to just release EP’s, music media only review albums and if you don’t do it you don’t get any attention.
Bo: We had to learn that the hard way, right? [turning to Jonas and Magnus]
Magnus: We’re really into the idea of making something that tells you a story in more than just one song because we like to connect the dots and create a bigger image of us that will give you a kind of atmosphere and mood. And I really don’t see how one single can do that, not the way we want to do it at least.
What we’re trying out now – I just figured that out now guys (laughs) – is that we’re doing singles but we’re really focused on connecting the singles in terms of artwork and the way we play them in the set. They’re kind of connected in the set, I didn’t see that until yesterday.
The cover for the new single “Melt” is a photo taken at the video shoot of the previous single “Closer” which makes them merge together and build on each other.
In a way we’re bending over for how the media circus works out right now (laughs), but we’re still trying to do this one piece of music.
Jonas: Maybe even more now; if you would make an album and then release some singles it’s kind of clear that they are from the album or connected to the album, but we need to show the connection with these singles without the album as a framework. In that way we really need to put some thoughts on how to do that.
Maybe everything just changed because previously you released the album and then a few singles but now it’s the opposite where you have an album after you put out a few singles.
Of course it also depends on how you produce your stuff. Even if you record a full album and then release the singles one by one, just like in electronic music where it’s way easier to release a song immediately, it’s still an album in the end.
From what you’re saying it’s kind of clear that you have to think in strategies about how to release singles and albums. Is it like that?
Bo: That’s the interesting part of it. Somehow it’s sad because I love music, I’ve always loved the medium of the full album, but apparently it’s not the way you should do it anymore. That said, it’s not a bad thing that’s happening; new strategies evolve and it’s another way to deal with it.
Magnus: But bands have always been thinking in strategies. I just saw the Queen documentary and with “Another One Bites The Dust” they were responding to contemporary dance beats and the club sound of the time, and they were actually trying to pick that up and go with it. Queen were never like “Oh, that’s the riff I came up with”, they tried to do something that would fit with the current trends or the music movement on the club scene.
Everyone goes like “Queen were so creative and free in their minds”, but they also responded to trends of the time and what was to come on the scene, to what people were listening to.
We just have to adapt to how it is now and still pull through our vision to find our way.
What I also learned is that most of German indie bands sing in German, and it seems to be popular among German music fans as well. In fact, I even interviewed a band saying that “having a German band singing in English is a suicide”. How come you picked up on English lyrics?
Magnus: And we have defended our way – many times (laughs)!
Bo: We had to defend that choice many times and say “Our language is English”. I don’t know why we started with it from the beginning but maybe influences of music we grew up with, like Nirvana and stuff like that, had an impact. I’ve always felt connected to music sung in English.
Magnus: It may also be our way to think strategically because when people keep telling you that “You’re a German band and you’re really good but you haven’t thought about singing in German?”; that’s not a creative question at all, it’s just a question about capitalist strategies and commercialism. And it happens many times, countless times!
We’re really open to new influences but that’s where it stops (laughs), that’s where we draw the line. English is our language.
The social-mediafication of creativity
Before social media, bands and musicians had to wait on the goodwill of their record label for promotion – that’s if they ever had a recording contract to begin with. However with the advent of the Internet there has been rapid progress in terms of marketing opportunities and the rise of promotion spaces in Facebook and Instagram.
Social media has made self-promotion for indie artists easy. The main problem is that there are too many different platforms and it’s difficult to know where to start. You don’t have time or money to waste, but you want to get potential fans hooked and buying tickets and downloads. And in the end you don’t know if it helps you out at all to put all that effort into reaching out to fans in the massive competition about media space that’s out there.
As a relatively new band it’s very often tough to get through the crowd of bands and reach people with your music. How is the competition about stage time, festivals slots and just reaching out to people in Germany for you?
Bo: It’s hard, it’s really, really hard. It’s actually devastating to think about it at times, how hard it is to get people interested and come out for your shows.
Jonas: And it’s not about quality, it’s about reaching out. It’s all about gatekeepers like people running bigger blogs, radio stations and how labels work. A big label can do a lot because of their network and all the people they know. Some of these may do something for you if you do something for them, some sort of exchanging favors. And it’s even more frustrating when you see bands getting a push and you just think “Why them?”.
I’m also a numbers guy and often check our stats on Spotify and compare it to other bands, and we have more monthly listeners than many of the recently hyped bands. So, there are many people who like us but it’s very hard to reach them even when you play in Hamburg and can see how many listeners and subscribers you have here, but they don’t come out to see us.
You can run into Hamburg fans and they’ll ask you “When is your next show in Hamburg?” and we say “It was two weeks ago” (laughs), and you wonder why they didn’t found out about it. For you it’s obvious because you posted it a million times, but the algorithms really don’t work with you so it’s hard to reach out.
The whole modern music industry is about promoting yourself all the time and you can get lost in social media for instance. How is your relation to social media in terms of promoting the band and stay in touch with your fans? Do you find it rewarding to work with, for instance, Facebook and Instagram? Or is it just pointless because the algorithms work against you all the time?
All: Yes!
Bo: That’s a good thought and something I have in my mind at times. Everybody is just posting stuff and it’s just such a huge flood of pictures and people’s lives and sometimes I just think “Let’s just not be part of it” and do our stuff, but we can’t do it like that and still exist in this kind of world as a band.
Magnus: It’s kind of the same for me but I try not to think of how many people we actually reach and try to focus more on what we want to display with social media and add that to videos, live show visuals, the music and many other things. You can see it as one tiny piece of the whole picture where you create an atmosphere or a mood that you want to get people into.
If you see it like that, social media becomes something creative where you can think of how for example you show Bo in a certain light when we’re on stage or just having a photo shoot. Of course we want likes, no lie about it, but that photo on Instagram should add to the whole experience when you listen to us on Spotify. When I think about it like that, it feels a lot better.
You manage yourself on social media and that’s a bit weird, but it’s the same with sports where you have all these soccer players and their huge presence on Instagram and you just think “You’re just kicking the ball” (laugh). But it is a weird marketing machine.
Bo: But there’s also all these people without a profession or any talent in anything but they still have thousands of followers who like pictures of nothing really. It’s just weird.
But how is the scene for you in Germany? Do you think it would be easier to reach out if you would move to Hamburg or Berlin for instance? I always associate Stuttgart with hip hop as well and bands as Massive Töne and Afrob, huge nineties bands.
Bo: Yes and that’s usually what people connect Stuttgart with.
It’s been in our minds, just an idea we’ve had, to maybe leave Stuttgart and go where the scene is bigger and more music is happening. We also have the problem in Stuttgart that lots of clubs have closed down and that becomes a problem when there’s no venues for bands like us left, so that has definitely been an idea.
For our music it was always good to not be part of the Berlin or Hamburg scenes though because we want to stand on our own and not go in the same direction as everybody else does.
How important is to reach out of Germany in the future? Since you picked up on English lyrics, Germany might not be the most important market for your music?
Magnus: It is important and kind of early on there was this guy from the US who reached out to us and was the main reason for us playing at SXSW in Texas two years ago and then went to LA to play there, and then to Brighton and The Great Escape.
We kind of feel that our music is something they can relate to in the US.
Bo: Even better than in Germany actually; to be honest it felt like Americans were much more open to our music.
Magnus: And they were like “Yeah, you’re a good band, you’re English, right?”; they just accepted our music.
Jonas: Nobody really cares about which language you sing in except the music business executives (laughs). Just look at other bands from Germany singing in English like Leoniden – nobody cares, the fans don’t care.
Bo: But we’re not focusing only on the German market of course but that’s where we are right now, that’s where we live. At times we may experience that it’s hard to reach out to Germans because they like many German singing bands, especially now because of a hype. So yes, have we thought of moving to LA and start all over there? Yes we did (laughs).
2019: Showcase festivals across Europe
To wrap things up, what’s the next step for you? What’s the ambition for 2019? You said you will continue releasing singles but what else?
Bo: That’s what we build everything else on next year, constantly releasing new music, and then of course playing shows. We got this INES showcase festival thing meaning lots of different showcase festivals across Europe.
Last question; where do you want to be with the band in five years?
Bo: I knew this question would come some day but I don’t have an answer (laughs).
Jonas: I really don’t know either. You know where you want to be now but in five years – impossible. You always want to play big festivals in front of a big crowd and since we love to play live one of the main goals is to play in front of a big audience, that’s the biggest reward you can get.
Bo: Personally I see myself still playing music with these guys, it’s still something I really enjoy to do.
Jonas: I think in five years we might still be sitting here and be in a great mood because of the new songs we’ve made, talk about the feeling we had when we recorded them and how eager you are to put them out. If we still sit here in five years and talk about the new songs with the same kind of enthusiasm as we do now and still are crazy about going out there to play the new songs, that’s good enough for me, then we’ve made it.
Photographer: ©Jule Rog
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