The Ocean

Saturday June 21st (Hellfest 2008 2nd day)

This afternoon we have the chance to talk a bit with The Ocean’s Leader Robin Staps. Quite hard to describe, the band’s music is quite experimental, with an unique mix of punk rock, progressive and classical music. They released late 2007 an amazing LP: a two CDs concept named “Precambrian”. A must see: THE OCEAN has a beautiful real-time computed light show for their stage performance.

Fab : Could you introduce yourself for those who don’t know you yet ?
Robin Staps: I’m Robin and I play in a band called THE OCEAN. We’re from Germany although we’re kind of a collective band with members from all different kinds of countries actually, our guitar player comes from Switzerland, one singer is from the U.K., as the bass player... And we play music that I have always a hard time describing, it’s orchestral-epic music, with lots of different influences from seventies, prog, classical music to modern days technical metal…You really have to listen to that to find out what it is.

Fab: Whose idea was that collective kind of band?
Robin: Mine I guess. It wasn’t like a conscious thing, it was something that developed over the years. I came to Berlin with an idea of a the band in 2001, seven years ago, and found the people gradually and it just happen that we start working with some classical musicians in our friends, among our friends, and they were never, like a part of the live line-up that we, but we put them on the recordings. The same is true for all the graphic designers that are in the collective right now, they’re all people who are important parts of the whole thing, but not in the actual band.

Fab: It seems that, at this moment, the line-up tends to be more stable. What is the reason?
Robin: That’s true, yeah.

Fab: Are you abandoning the collective concept?
Robin: Not really. Like I said, it was never like a conscious thing, it just something that has evolved over the years, and right now, it just seems that I found the right people to work with, and they’re all like…one of the reasons we had so many changes of members over the last couple of years was also that, people started getting families, getting married and just couldn’t cope with the big touring schedule that we had anymore. But now it seems like we have a team of six people who are really dedicated, who want to do this, and have the time and resources to do that as well. And we’re perfectly working together as people and friends, as well as musicians, and when it is like that, there’s no reason to look for other people. So I really hope that it’s gonna be more stable, but all these people around it, that I spoke about earlier, all the classical musicians, they’re always gonna be part of the whole thing, in a way, but that does not involve live performances. So the collective is still there, it’s just that what you see on the stage is an actual band with hopefully, not so many changing of members in the future anymore. But there are more people behind the scenes, on the recording instead of on the stage.

Fab : You said on “Revolver” (US metal magazine) that you were against the digital age shallowness. Less quality sound because of all the filters and streaming on the internet, My Space where you only have short excerpts of music…Could you tell us a little bit more?
Robin: Well, we’re not entirely against Myspace, we have a site ourselves. We use it as a grass roots promotional tool, and I think for that, it’s a great thing. It gives band the opportunity to reach a public without a big budget, and without the industry. That was not there a couple of years ago. So in that regard, it’s a positive thing. But as you’ve just mentioned, some of the negative aspects that comes with it as well. And a lot of people nowadays listen and consume music mainly through Myspace, they don’t even go out and buy albums anymore, or don’t download entire albums but just clicked themselves through Myspace because there’s so much music for free there. It’s just endless basically. If people only listen to music through Myspace, then it didn’t make much sense for me because you can only get four or five songs that don’t give you an insight into the band’s creation. It’s random songs for all albums. We just released a concept double-album where I think every song has a certain position in the scheme of the great whole, and it’s quite important. And I’ve always been amazed by albums that were albums, in a way that you wanna to listen to them from the first to the last track you know, you didn’t wanna miss a single track. And all this mentality of appreciating albums is getting lost with sites like Myspace who only offer you like short excerpts and all that, as you also mentioned, a terrible streaming quality. Why would you spend thousands of dollars in making a really good sounding album when most people listen to the shitty downloads streaming quality. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. So we do take a stand against that, and encourage people to get the album as an album that involves like artwork, lyrics of the songs and the concept behind the whole thing, rather than just listening to random tracks. And I think, if I can add that, that essentially it also affects the paradigms of writing music for a lot of bands today, because most bands tend and focus in writing the perfect song that will work on Myspace, it’s the classical hit single fetching that was never really prevalent in the metal scene, but I think through Myspace and stuff like that, it is becoming very prevalent now. And that is something that I think is also scary because it essentially means that bands do not focus so much more in writing a good album that works as an album, but more in writing like single isolated twelve tracks. And then when you buy the album, you’re disappointed because you get three of four good tracks and the rest is shit. And that’s what I’m realizing a lot of times these days, and that’s another side aspect of the internet in a way. We’re kind of weary about all this.

Fab: It’s very interesting and true. Do you come yourself with this concept of the Precambrian era? (ndlr: PRECAMBRIEN = EARTH HISTORY, ERA; Longest period of time between the formation to the apparition of life - Two parts (two cds) : - Hadeen/Archeen & Proterozoïc ).
Robin: That was my idea. I have to say I have studied geography so it wasn’t so much off track. I came across it by visualizing the music, I always do that when I write songs, I listen to them, record pre-production, listen to them on my headphones and try to imagine…you know, my mind automatically comes up with images. And in this regard, it came up with a lot of, kind of prehistoric images.

Exploding volcanoes, streams of lava, and all that was kind of fitting the music that I was hearing, so that’s how I came across the all Precambrian thing. And also, with this album we tried to represent the band as completely as possible, which we haven’t done with our previous album “Aeolian” which only focus on the heavy side. “Precambrian” really tells everything that THE OCEAN is about, and we wanted to do that by taking the two sides, the two approaches that we have to music, as far apart as possible, rather than trying to merge them on one album. One side being the epic, atmospheric songs, and one being the really heavy, you know, more of a short-focused songs. And we were looking for a concept that will support that idea of separation, and the whole Precambrian thing works perfectly because it describes the way that the earth has evolved from a place with no atmosphere and oxygen, and just rocks and plain lava, to (the beginning of life).

Fab: (cutting) The main definition is very interesting, two periods, two cds.
Robin: Exactly. That change in the music is reflected by the whole evolution of the earth.

Fab : Yeah, the music itself is kind of complicated, in a good way I mean. How do you manage it?
Robin: It’s something that happens naturally. I take care of the writing, I write the songs myself basically at home, with my guitar and my machines. I program drums, record pre-productions with drums, guitars, bass and samples. And then I play it to the people that are in my band, and of course, we discuss it, we rehearse it, we try… sometimes we realize that certain transition doesn’t work out as intended, and we change so. But mainly, most of the song’s writing takes place at my home place without the other guys. I think when you have such orchestral and epic music, for me personally, I couldn’t imagine that happening any other way, because if you have 26 people playing on the album “Precambrian”, you can’t put them in a room and ask them to jam together. I mean, bands like GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR apparently do that, they say they write the music, jamming on, with like 11 people or something.

I think that’s completely amazing, I couldn’t imagine how that works. Even with 4 or 5 people it’s hard to get it together, with 26 it would be impossible. So I think you have to have someone who guides the whole thing, who tells people what to do in a way, and rearrange stuff. That’s what I do. It’s more like guidance really. Just taking what the people are offering, and putting it in its place, putting all things together.

Fab: Have you planned something special for tomorrow’s show?
Robin: Not really. We’re just gonna play a solid show focusing mainly on the “Proterozoic” material, with some “Aeolien” songs as well, and maybe also one or two tracks of “Hadean / Eorchean”. We’re not gonna have our projections, because at the tent stage there are no projections. So we do have something special on minds about the lightings, we probably gonna have our own light show, which is LED light show as usual plus additional lighting done by a hosted technician who knows our songs, who’s really aware of the material, so hopefully we’re gonna have a kick ass light show tomorrow. And we’re going to try to make (the) most out of this 40 minutes we have.

Fab: Is it not hard to compile all this on such a short amount of time?
Robin: Of course it is. You always have to compromise, you know, and I think, forty minutes it’s a pretty good time. Any band that is not capable of getting their point across to the public in 40 minutes can go off the stage and go rehearse again. I think 40 minutes it’s alright. It gets difficult when it’s only like 25 minutes, like on some of the bigger festivals, then you really have to make a selection. I think with 40 minutes we’re doing well, but of course it’s compromise, we have to leave lot of songs away that we’d loved to play. Normally we play for 60, 70 minutes when we headline. But it’s a festival and I think the selection of songs tomorrow really represents the band, where it is right now, we’re very confident about that.

Fab: Do you adapt yourself to the HELLFEST, which is very about extreme metal?
Robin: Yeah, we do. We always adapt to the kind of setting that we play in, like, I could very well imagine myself touring with a band like TRAIL OF DEAD for example. Then we’d play entirely different songs as when we were playing with, MESHUGGAH. So we can adapt ourselves to the kind of surrounding where we play, and THE OCEAN is a band that is representing a very wide spectrum of music, and in this case, this is the whole benefit of it, I think it’s great. But we’re not gonna play mainly heavy songs tomorrow, we’re actually gonna try to focus more on the atmospheric stuff, just to, you know, make it different from most of the bands that are playing here, and the bands that have played before and after us. I’m very confident about the calm material, and usually live, it works sometimes even better than the really heavy material.

Fab: Because you have to please everybody in a festival. Some people are coming for you, some other didn’t even know you.
Robin: Yeah, that’s right. I think the kind of set-list that we’ve chosen for tomorrow is doing a good job with that. It will be a little bit of everything.

Fab: Concerning the visual effects on stage, apparently you recently had misfortune in Arras, and as you need an heavy amount of computers on tour, with all the lights and projection, how do you manage it? Or are you going to consider your live performances differently?
Robin: Well in Arras we had to improvise because the computers fucked up. It’s as simple as that. And it was our second one. We usually have a spare laptop but that one broke two days ago. So we were really fucked and we couldn’t have, I mean, if our computer dies that means we don’t have a light show, that means we don’t have our effect channels settings because they’re controlled by the computers as well. We don’t have our visuals and we don’t have recordings of the samples that we don’t have with us live, we don’t have the channel player with us on stage, you know, the recordings of the studio tracks actually, so we play just sequencer and sampler. All that, died with the computer that night, and we couldn’t do it.

We still decided to play, of course, and play some of the songs that do not rely so heavily on samples, and we just played without our light show, and played a really punk-rock show. Personally, I think it was awesome, the crowd loved it, it was great. And sometimes it’s just good to do that, be aware of the fact that you can still just play, that your music still works despite of all this technical stuff that’s in it, that’s still works as a five people on stage, direct punk rock approach that’s just there in front of people that dig it, so. It was very reassuring because apparently our show is based around a lot of technical aspects usually, and it’s good to see that the show still works without all this stuff, and that the music just speaks for itself.

Fab: The music is good already. All the visual effects is just a bonus, it ads another dimension.
Robin: Exactly, it’s another dimension, and I think personally for me, it’s very important because people react a lot to visual stimuli. When you see a band playing atmospheric music, and they play in shitty club where they have like purple and yellow light flashing, it doesn’t make sense. I personally don’t get into it that much. But when I see them in a haze of blue, you know, it’s completely different emotionally itself. I think it’s important, that’s why we do it in the first place, but then again, you have to keep in mind that in the end it’s more about the music than about anything else. And it’s good to see that it’s still works and that you can still have fun and play a rock show, you know, without all that stuff.

Fab: What are your plans for the near future?
Robin: We just got back from the U.S., we just finished the U.S. tour and flew back to Paris yesterday actually. Now we’re doing HELLFEST and then we’re touring with CULT OF LUNA next week until the beginning of July, like 10 or 12 shows mainly in Europe and the U.K.. And this is gonna be the end of the tour, we’ve been out on tour right now for three and a half months. So it’s been a massive tour. We’ve toured for ROTTEN SOUND starting in March, and after that went to eastern Europe for an extended tour, to a lot of countries where we’ve never been before, then we had 4 days off and flew to the U.S. and now we’re here. So we’ve been doing a lot of shows and a lot of touring this year and the near future is gonna be seeing us take a short break for two or three months, just dedicating our lives into something else than THE OCEAN, because the last four months of our lives had been nothing else but THE OCEAN. Sometimes you need to kick back a little, you know, seeing your girlfriend, and doing something else so you keep your energy focused.

Fab: You need this for your inner balance.
Robin: Yeah, exactly.

Fab: But it’s a good sign for the band anyway.
Robin: Yes, or course. We’ve done as much as we could so far with this album, and there’s gonna be more touring towards the end of the year, then we’re do a another european headlining tour in November or January, together with EARTH from Sweden and two more bands. That will also go back to the U.S. in probably November. So there is more touring on Precambrian but not in the next three months.

Fab: Do you have time to watch the EURO?
Robin: Absolutely not. And I really regret it, that’s the only thing I regret about going in the U.S. at this time. I honestly had no idea, someone just told me yesterday about Germany playing against Turkey now, and kind of like what happened.

That’s gonna be amazing, I’m very sad that I’m not gonna be in Berlin at this time, because we have a very big Turkish population in Germany. Whenever Germany play against Turkey, it’s a huge fest. Sometimes turning into battles but mainly peaceful the last two-three times it happened and it’s a huge party in the whole city, so I wish I could be there but I’m gonna be playing some fuckin’ show.

Fab: Do you have time to watch the EURO?
Robin: Absolutely not. And I really regret it, that’s the only thing I regret about going in the U.S. at this time. I honestly had no idea, someone just told me yesterday about Germany playing against Turkey now, and kind of like what happened. That’s gonna be amazing, I’m very sad that I’m not gonna be in Berlin at this time, because we have a very big Turkish population in Germany. Whenever Germany play against Turkey, it’s a huge fest. Sometimes turning into battles but mainly peaceful the last two-three times it happened and it’s a huge party in the whole city, so I wish I could be there but I’m gonna be playing some fuckin’ show.

Fab: Do you enjoy France?
Robin: Yeah, that’s been great. I enjoy a lot of things about France. We usually have really good catering here, it’s better than anywhere else in Europe, and the food is just amazing. And generally, most of the venues we’ve played here were really good too. Like in the Netherlands, in France you always get very professional venues, and just coming back from the U.S. now, I did really see a big difference here. In the U.S., even in the bigger and more professional venues, for example, the whole technical side of the thing is, a lot of times, a lot worse than in the Netherlands or in France. We have good conditions here every week in that regard, it’s always a pleasure playing, and it’s a beautiful country. I lived in Montpellier for about a month and a half, but it’s been a long time ago. It’s an area of France that is extremely beautiful.

Fab: A last word for the readers of BSPIX?
Robin: Well, hopefully we’re gonna play a killer show, tomorrow at HELLFEST. If you have never heard of THE OCEAN, go check it out our latest album “Precambrian” which is pretty much representative of what we do right now so you may want to pick that up.