...David Eering from THE MACHINE...
I know THE MACHINE since the first album, I have followed your style how it transform. I think "Solar Corona" is the album with the biggest cojones.
What do you think about the sound changes in these 5 years?
What do you think about the sound changes in these 5 years?
It’s actually four years and a bit I guess hehe… but yeah it changed. That’s only natural, the first album was recorded when Hans was in the band for two months you know. It was sort of a try for us to be honest. After that we jammed a lot, which resulted in Solar Corona (half of it was jammed/written in the studio). Drie is much more composed and structured, also a little bit more rocking I think. It’s good to keep evolving and not to make the same album again and again. Do you like the cojones in our sound? Prepare for our upcoming album then, we never exposed our balls like that before hahahaha.
The Machine released three genius albums (Shadow of the machine, Solar Corona and Drie). Will another follow soon and what can you say about it?
Yeah the next one will be called “Calmer Than You Are” and it’s almost finished (mixing/mastering etc.). It’s quite different again, it has more shorter/straightforward hardrocking songs too with more vocals, but it’s also a little bit more progressive ‘cause we sometimes abandoned the standard 4/4 time signature. 7 songs, 46 minutes so it will fit on one LP. I hope it will be released somewhere in February/March next year, out on Elektrohasch again. Some of our jamming/noodling fans might be disappointed because there’s less of that this time, but it at least will be different. We want to keep challenging ourselves by making a different album every time, but still leave the typical The Machine sound in there. The best thing is that this goes naturally, I mean, we don’t force ourselves to write different songs. It’s a natural process. We’ll see how the audience/fans react to it. The most important thing is that we like the result and playing the songs live.
What inspires you while songwriting? What would you say is the hardest part about it? Whats your method?
It’s difficult to say what inspires me and the other guys. It’s rock and roll you know? We just have to play music. There’s also not really a method we use. I can bring in a riff or a song idea I came up with at home, we jam to that and we see what happens. Sometimes it’s Davy or Hans coming with a cool idea on drums or bass and we just jam to that. Other times we just start jamming out of the blue, something magical happens and we suddenly have a song, structured and everything. That’s the best part to me of playing with these guys: we all got so used to each other that even the smallest signs during a jam can mark a change or switch to a next part of the song. The hardest part to me personally is writing the lyrics and fit them into the melodies/making them the melody. And then remember the words hahaha. I started doing this at Drie, paying more attention to the singing and melodies, which was quite new to me. It sort of became fun to do so I did it even more on the upcoming album, Calmer Than You Are.
16 minute long songs, 10 minute-long solos...do you play everything exactly right or do you improvise sometimes?
It’s a combination of both. Especially with those long solos, I have certain themes that were composed and are the backbone of a solo section in a song. These parts also come in handy as a reference point for the other guys, this way everybody knows when to switch to a different part of the song. In between these points I like to improvise, this keeps it challenging and fun for me to play. Especially our songs Jam no. Pi/Phi/Psi only have the main riff as a constant factor, all the soloing on these tracks is always improvised.
Which song of yours do you like playing live the most?
During the last 16-shows tour we played a new song called “Sphere (… or Kneiter)” which I really like to play live. Besides that one First Unique Prime is always nice: sometimes we open a show with it, sometimes we end a show with it and sometimes it’s somewhere in the middle of the setlist hahaha. At the moment I actually enjoy all the new songs the most, ‘cause they’re still fresh.
How long do you play guitar and what kind of equipment do you use and makes you horny?
I got my first acoustic guitar at 10, my first electric at 14 but started to tune it and take it seriously when I was about 17, which is ten years ago now. I have like 8 guitars, a bass and a sitar but use my Ibanez Artist from 1980 as my main guitar now, which basically is double cut Les Paul. My backup/second guitar live is always changing from a humbucker-ed Telecaster to a SG to my recently bought 1974 Pearl Custom Les Paul (cheap Japanese copy but it plays really nice). I have 11 pedals on my pedalboard, including my custom made Lava Machine as a booster/overdrive/fuzz (by Black Effect Pedals). I use two big heavy single channel amps, a Sound City from around ’74 (which is being converted to a Hiwatt 100 Custom right now) and a Matamp GT120 of the same age. One amp goes into a Hiwatt 4x12”, the other is going into a new cab I finalized yesterday. It’s an 8x10” basscab, but I built some other speakers into it. It’s now a 2x15”+2x10” bass cabinet and it sounds heavy as hell hahaha.
I cannot wait to start using this beast live. All this stuff makes me horny by the way, that’s why I play guitar!
As much as I like Dio and besides the fact we should have named him The Boss instead of the Springsteen dude, I have to go with Ozzy. To me, the one and only Sabbath is Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and Ward. Don’t know about this reunion though. The last one they had with this original line-up was in 2005 and I was happy as a little boy that I got the chance to witness the original Sabbath live, all the little mistakes didn’t matter because it was fucking Sabbath on stage together you know. Don’t know in what condition they are now and if they can still do it, the future will tell. I have absolutely no problem with them cashing in again, I mean it’s their legacy so go ahead. If it’s affordable I’ll go and check it out. At least it’s all of the original members together on stage, quite different from The Reunion of a desert band which made everybody so excited earlier this year…
Which type of music or band do you think is so bad that it should be prohibited?
Hahaha that’s a tough one. I like a lot of music and a lot of styles so yeah… Even the really bad ones shouldn’t be prohibited because it guarantees you a laugh or two! But I think we can do without The Eagles hahahaha.
Except for Hotel California of course.
Whats your favourite albums in this year 2011?
To be honest, I didn’t buy or checked out a lot of new stuff this year, I mostly bought older records from the 70’s and other pre-2011 music. The new Roadworks live record from Motorpsycho was released this year, I got that one and liked it. The new stuff Causa Sui keeps spitting out is cool, I like their krautrock stuff. Oh yes, Aum from Seven That Spells is amazing (they’re assholes by the way hahahaha, I love you Niko and Jerry). Chances are I’m forgetting something here though, I really suck at this “list stuff”.
What do you think about the UP and Smoke Tour Vol.3, how was the tour for the band?
The tour was amazing, really. It was our first big tour, playing 16 shows in a row and traveling in a nightliner. It was a real personal highlight of 2011 to me, since it’s Christmas now it’s a good moment to evaluate this year J. I think we did a good job at promoting ourselves to a bigger audience and even more important, learned some new things as a band. You cannot do anything else than improve from playing 16 nights in a row I guess. We changed the line-up every night which was cool, everybody had their share of opening and closing the evening. Sometimes we had to start really early because it was a night with four bands, so it was a five headed audience haha. Even if there’s only five people you have to give everything on stage.
What moment or concert do you think was the highlight of your rock career until now?
To me personally this was the entire aforementioned tour. Besides that, to name just one show, it’ll probably be our gig at Burg Herzberg Festival earlier this year. There were I guess about 2000 people enjoying our stuff to the max, which was really unexpected and really amazing. I think we played over two hours and nobody got bored haha.
Do whatever you want to as long as it makes you happy, stay true to yourself and experiment a lot. Rock and roll!!
THANKS FOR THE NICE WORDS AND THE GREAT INTEVIEW...
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