Oceans of Sadness – Tijs Vanneste
Greg: I’m with you on that. So let’s talk a little about your last disc, The Arrogance of Ignorance. That’s an interesting title. What was its inspiration?
Tijs: The inspiration for the title was actually a documentary I saw about Michelangelo. It was the story of his life. He got the assignment from the Pope to make the Statue of David. And when he finished the statue he went to see the Pope to say, “This is my work, how do you like it?”
And the Pope wasn’t satisfied, he said, “I want you to change the nose, it’s too big. And I want you to change this and this… all these little details”
And Michelangelo, he was a stubborn guy, he said (to himself), “Fuck it, I’ll take it to my (studio) and I won’t change a thing about it.”
But he said out loud), “OK. I will fix it all.” And the Pope was happy and everybody was happy. And a few months later, he went back to the Pope with the same statue. And now suddenly the Pope felt “this is great,” while he didn’t change a thing about it. So he [Michelangelo] wrote in his diary about the “arrogance of ignorance”.
Greg: So did you feel a kind of kinship with that, because you’ve heard from perhaps label people, critics, friends, that perhaps you should do something a bit more mainstream or accessible?
Tijs: No, no, no, no, no. We covered the title more because of the lyrics. Because the lyrics… I intended to write them about how we can behave without losing ourselves or doing stuff we don’t want. It’s kind of the philosophy of all the songs.
Greg: I suspect all bands try to top themselves with each subsequent release. I would say you accomplished that with your latest release. Do you feel that way as well?
Tijs: Of course. It’s the best disc we’ve released so far. Because if it wasn’t, we should have quit the band.
Greg: (laughter)
Tijs: We’re really concentrating on a new album right now. I think we’ve thrown away five or six songs, finished songs. We really need to challenge ourselves with each album. It’s kind of a quest to reach the core of things. The first album was still a search for our own sound and what we had to do. But on the Send in the Clowns album, we kind of went over the hill. And from them on, we decided we really have to focus more and more on the core of the songs, and less to the fancy stuff. So, we’re really working hard on the next album. We have four songs already, but we are really hard on ourselves. The saddest thing we could do is release a sixth album that’s not better than the fifth album
Greg: … So as the new album takes shape, do you get a sense of how things are progressing with regard to the direction of the music, compared to your previous works?
Tijs: Again, it’s the next step in the evolution. With the first two songs I thought we were getting more melodic and we’re not as hard any more. But then it changed, and it’s still evolving with each new song we make. Its not that we plan it… this time we’re going to make such a song, and then we’re going to make (?)such a song, because the album needs some ballads. No. Each song is a different story. And we start with a song, and we finish it. When we finish that song [we] start with the next one. That’s kind of the way we work.
Greg: So do you care at all where it lands, so to speak? So if you completed the album, and you realize that you have eight very mellow songs, does that matter?
Tijs: No. Because we really don’t think when we write our music.
Over the years, I think we’ve found our style. Even with the Arrogance of Ignorance, three or four songs were written at one rehearsal of two to three hours. So it’s really coming from a gut feeling, from the moment itself. Someone has an idea and five others fuck up his idea, and at the end of the rehearsal you have a song.
Greg: (laughter) Is that really how it works? Because when I listen to a band like yours, and I hear the melding of so many different styles, and musical sub-genres, with so many layers and tempo changes, I often sit back and think, how did they write that? I mean, if a song goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus, it’s pretty obvious how it all came about. But how does it all come together for your band?
