"Pop music can change your life," says Das Pop frontman Bent Van Looy, his eyes ablaze. "It can make you aspire to certain things and escape from other things. Nothing in music has the same power as pop."
He's talking about Michael Jackson, Daft Punk, Hüsker Dü , Neneh Cherry, the Spice Girls, Fleetwood Mac and anything with a chorus so amazing that you want to hear it 30 times in a row and then 30 times more. "It's just a very simple three minute noise that will do incredible things to you," he says. "As a band, we set out to make the very best pop music imaginable."
It takes only a quick listen to Das Pop's eponymous new album to hear what Bent means. Built around hooks big enough to tug down the BT Tower, the band's spirited guitar-pop is hummable, danceable and utterly infectious. Imagine a more chipper Strokes being produced by Joe Meek in Motown's Studio A and you're nearly there.
Das Pop were formed a decade ago, in a school playground in Ghent, Belgium, when Bent met Reinhard Vanbergen and Niek Meul. Bent had just been expelled from his previous school in Antwerp for taking revenge on some bullies. "I had to do a runner, really," he explains. "So I moved to Ghent, aged 16, and lived alone in a small attic room. It was brilliant!" Given that Bent had grown up in a remote Belgian forest with parents who only let him listen to classical music until he was 13, you can understand why he enjoyed the newfound freedom Ghent offered.
Bonding over a love of listening to and playing music, the three schoolfriends formed a band, initially called Things To Come. Bent was the band's singing drummer, with Niek playing bass on the school cello and the prodigiously talented Reinhard on guitar. "Reinhard is a classically trained violinist," explains Bent. "He was trained by gypsies from the north of France. He used disappear for ages and come back with the most amazing riffs. You could barely see his fingers move."
Initially, the band would write songs in different genres each bearing the name of the genre they were in. "So we had 'The Jazz' and 'The Disco'," says Bent. "But it was clear that pop in all its forms was where we were heading. That is why we became Das Pop. After a couple of years of playing bedrooms and birthday parties, we decided this is what we wanted to do it full-time. So we quit our studies, our jobs, everything. From that point we existed on the bare minimum, but we were a proper band."
Before very long, Das Pop started to get noticed. After winning a high profile Battle of the Bands contest, they were picked up by Belgian radio. Soon, their woozy, electro-tinged psychedelic pop propelled them into the charts and their powerful live shows took them to the top of Belgian festival bills. Success in Spain and Germany followed. "We could've kept going exactly as we were for years," says Bent, "but, somehow, it just wasn't exciting us. Then these new songs started appearing and they were the spur to quit everything and start again. These songs had to be played differently to the music we'd made before."
Das Pop left their label and their management. They even toyed with changing their name. "The thing is, Das Pop is a very, very good name," says Bent. "It was really too good to throw away. But that was really the only break from the past that we didn't make."
Bent moved to Paris and threw Das Pop into the music scene there. "Nobody knew us," he says, "so we used it as like a test tube country for our new start. We constantly played nightclubs and impromptu gigs, just trying out the new songs to people who hadn't heard us before." The response was overwhelming. Eight months after they'd begun their Parisian adventure by playing support gigs in bars, Das Pop headlined a sold out show to a thousand dedicated fans.
Das Pop's new sound was rawer and more direct, but hookier and more memorable too. Their previous dreamy haze had evaporated, leaving a strikingly assured garage pop band with some belting tunes, charting the highs and lows of life in a big city. Parisian dance heroes Justice were sufficiently impressed that they included an earlier version of Das Pop's debut single, 'Underground', on their 2007 Fabric Live mix.
Meanwhile, Das Pop's old pals from Ghent, Soulwax, took a break from touring and remixing some of the world's biggest acts to produce the self-titled new album. "There wasn't a budget, because they didn't have a record deal" explains Soulwax's Stephen Dewaele, "But we really wanted to do it. We saw them live for the first time in ages, and it was just amazing. I was completely blown away. Their energy was incredible."
Instead of the usual big producer fees, the two bands came to a friendly arrangement whereby Soulwax would let Das Pop use their studio and produce the new record if Das Pop would cook some meals for Soulwax. "Niek is the one who does all the cooking," says Bent. "He can do delicious stuff with anything you hand him; from truffles to Mars Bars."
The first rule Soulwax set Das Pop in the studio was that they wouldn't be allowed to use any of the synthesisers or sequencers that had peppered their previous work. "They're such a brilliant live band that we wanted to capture that on tape," explains Stephen. "So we literally just recorded them playing together in a room. And because they're such good musicians and songwriters, the results sounded amazing."
He wasn't the only one who thought so. Having recruited cat-loving Kiwi drummer Matt Eccles (who'd previously hit skins for Liam Finn's band Betchadupa) Das Pop played a showcase gig at 2007's In The City conference in Manchester. With Bent finally freed from behind his drum kit, he proved himself to be a frontman of the highest order, leading the band through a raucous set of their new songs.
Bent is understandably happy with what Das Pop have achieved. "Belgians are generally perceived as too modest, a little unambitious," he says. "But I think we've made an incredible record. Things were going OK for us before and it was a little bit risky to start from scratch. But it's all worked out better than we could have ever hoped. Now we just want to be back in the van and on the ferry, taking this record on the road. This is the best music we've ever made, by some distance. I really can't wait for people to hear it."
hello lovely people! very good to hear the album is on its way :) we can't wait for it! oh, and those tops you designed are very suave looking! nicely done. the new myspace layout is also very cool, you have been busy bees haven't you :) well enjoy your summer gigs and festivals, and dont forget to come back to glasgow soon yeah? lots of love, fiona x
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