Textures pour l'album "Drawing Circles"

First, could you please introduce your band to our readers, your main influences and the style which could best define your music?

Textures consists of 6 individuals which want to create some odd metal, influenced by every genre you can imagine, but still keeping it metal. So we don’t have main influences to start with, our list of music that we adore is just too big; it goes from classical/singer-songwriter/filmmusic to rock/death-metal/thrash to fusion/jazz/bebop to Arabic/Indian/latin-american music. In every genre you have very interesting bands/groups which all experiment with odd rhythms and melodies, and with those musics in our heads, we compose our own music, with Metal as the thin red line through the whole.


How did you come up with the name of the band and why did you choose it?

It resembles the textures of audio we build in our music; there are layers of synths, vocals and guitars, but also layers of styles crossing each other; it is a result of our different personal interests; we try to combine all ideas from everyone in the band to one whole; this way the result gets very ‘textured’/layered; a patchwork of musical ideas.


Do you have other influences, apart from music (literature, movies, paintings...)?
Yes, we like movies and books a lot, and paintings as well of course; I think when you would have to compare the music of Textures with a style of painting, I guess it would be something like Dali; Surreal; you can still recognize some elements, but all parts are pulled out of their context and painted into a different composition.
Some movies we like; Solaris, The Shawshank Redemption, Amelie, Lost in Translation, Natural Born Killers, all movies that encircle the heavy subjects in life such as love, violence, communication. These are subjects we treat within the lyrics of Textures as well.

You have released your new album "Drawing circles" on Listenable records. What can we expect from this one, compared to "Polars" ? What do you think is better on this record?

The biggest difference is our new singer; Eric; with him we had a totally new approach to the writing of the new songs; Eric has the ability to scream, grunt AND sing clean parts whenever he wants, so that makes the whole a lot more varied. We used some ingredients we created on ‘Polars’, and created some new ones; we stretched the tension a lot more through the songs, and also across the album; so the songs are more coherent. The album has grown out to a concept-album; there are links between songs, in the lyrics and also musically.
So, we have grown since Polars, we learned a lot and stuffed all this knowledge to this one disk.


How did the recording go as far as this second album is concerned?

The recordings went very smooth, we had Jochem’s studio all for ourselves for 2 months, so we could do what we want and we could make our own schedule for recording. During the recording-session we are VERY critical on what takes we approve, everything has to be PERFECT, no matter how much sweat it costs. You can only record it once, so we just want the best for ourselves. So sometimes we repeat a part a few hours, to see it’s still not good enough, so we take a break, and after a few more coffees we go up again and record the damned riffs, and then it works! We had a lot of fun in pushing each other to get the maximum out of each other, haha!


You self-produced both records. When and why did you make that choice?

Well, Jochem has graduated as audio-engineer/producer, and he has his own studio now, which is mainly used for mixing and mastering bands, but also commercials and things like that. So that is the main reason we do it ourselves; together with that studio and all composition/production-focused minds in Textures we thought we can create this by ourselves. Everyone in the band has enough knowledge to influence the composition process, and Jochem is the one putting it all on disk as well. Eric and I have experience in design, so we designed the artwork and website.
Only the mastering is not done by ourselves; Bjorn Engelmann (Soilwork/Rammstein) has taken care of that; he could give us just that little bit of extra punch..!


How does the composition process usually work?

Everyone in the band brings in ideas; we usually work them out together; at home or in the rehearsal room. When we create some riffs at home, we all learn them by head and play them in the rehearsal room, to see if they work when played with the whole band. So we have lots of different ideas, and we play around with combining these ideas to whole a lot; we try all sorts of transitions from one part to the other and choose the best.
During this process we force ourselves to zoom out constantly; we ask ourselves; where are we in the song? Where do we go? Does this work with the rest of the song? Etc.. This way we don’t get too weird parts in one song, which might break the continuity of the album.


How did you come to work with Listenable, one of the (rare and may I say, good) metal labels in France ? Is it better/worse ? What are the main difficulties and what do you think is easier working with a French label ?

Listenable was one of the first to contact us for a deal, and definitely one of the most enthusiastic. They really love our music and that’s what’s important to us, they really have a heart for the music and you see that in the results of what they are accomplishing.
Of course communication with France is a bit more difficult as someone in Holland, we cannot call each other everyday for a question, so most subjects are discussed via email. As far as we know, distribution with Listenable is better than any label in Holland, so that’s why we chose Listenable as well.


Is there a tour planned for the release of this new album?

Yes, we have a UK tour of 2 weeks, and next to that some shows in France (Hellfest!), a few in Spain, and at the Czech Republic Brutal Assault Fest. More shows are adding up every week, we’re really looking forward to do these shows in the other countries; we just want to spread the music!


You have played as an opening act for Gojira in France. How did the French audience respond to your music? What did you think of the public?

Yeah, that show was awesome! A full venue and the crowd liked us as well! They liked it when our singer Eric tried some sentences in French, they were really enthusiastic and I think we were a good warm-up act for Gojira. The guys of Gojira are really cool guys, very friendly and sincere and they seem to have the same influences as we have, we can get along very well. They played an amazing show that night. We’re looking forward to the shows we do in Holland with them.


Since you're label mates with one of its finest talent (i.e. Gojira not to name them again), do you know more of the French metal scene? What do you think of it?

It’s growing and growing very fast, that’s for sure, bands as Gojira, Hacride, Dagoba and Outcast for example are real pioneers in France with this new heavy-tech-metal generation. It’s very promising, and I’m still discovering new bands from France which are really great, so keep bringing it on!!


If you had to do a cover album, what song/bands would you choose?

Usually we don’t like to do covers, but if we had to, we would do something like Pantera, or Tool, Gojira would be cool, or some song a bit more off-track such as songs from Soundgarden or even Jeff Buckley would be a great challenge.


What do you do for a living apart from the band?

Most of us work freelance (audiodesign / production / webdesign / jobs for Interims) because we cannot accept full-time jobs because we do many shows on Fridays and Thursdays. Stef and I are the ones not working; we both follow studies; Stef does conservatory and I do conservatory for composition and production.


If you could organize your own metal festival, which bands would be invited?

Tool, Strapping Young Lad, Meshuggah, Gojira, Necrophagist, Tesseract, Hacride. That would be a nice party, I guess, haha. Oh yeah and maybe Textures as well, haha


What are you listening to these days? Any good metal / non metal albums to recommend?

The new Cult of Luna is very ok, and Decapitated – Organic Hallucinosis, very good death-metal album. The new Tool is good as well. Non-metal artists we listen to; Andy Summers, Philip Glass, Toto, Sting, Fiona Apple, Mogwai, Boards of Canada, Planet X, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Level 42, Django Reinhardt, The Beatles, Lagwagon, aaaaargh, too much interesting to mention!

What do you think of music downloading? And porn downloading, do you think, like myself, that it should be all free? (NdA : à en voir la réponse je crois pas qu'il ait compris que je déconnais…)

I think music downloading is not good for the labels; they lose quite some money with this, but for the bands is actually quite good; the music is spread faster and more widely; this way music can get to South-America, Philippines, Indonesia and New-Zealand, we even get reactions from there now, so that’s very positive..!
I don’t think you can make porn-downloading free, I must not be available for everyone, you don’t want your kids to be able to access such sites, do you?
For music, it has already come to the point where it is all free to download, but luckily there are still a lot people who just want to buy the cd because they want the complete product with nice artwork etc..


Can you name 3 people you'd be glad to see the world get rid of? (oh and Britney Spears doesn't count because we'd all be glad to see the world free of her.)

I’m very sorry, but I can not think of anyone I might want to get rid of, I’m just not easily agitated by people, because everyone has good and bad qualities. Britney’s good feature is that she designed a music for a special target group; and she earns big money with it, it’s just a shame indeed that it’s very boring music, used to decorate her image instead of interesting music with her image on top.


Last words are yours!

Merci pour l’interview et merci pour votre support ! haha
We’ll do many more shows in France in the future, I hope we can see you at our show someday! Check www.texturesband.com for more updates on shows in France and other countries!