HORSE the band Interview
Interview with Erik Engstrom from HORSE the band
Words by Brendan Monteiro / Photo’s by Marcus Maschwitz
The name of your band is at times type set with ‘HORSE’ in capitals, what is the idea behind that?
I think that we just did it, we formatted it that way for our first demo and then we just liked it. It kind of made sense because sometimes people think that our band name means horse the band, like do something to the band, as if horse is a verb. It doesn’t mean anything but I do get mad when people capitalize ‘the band’ or don’t capitalize the ‘HORSE’ bit, I get really angry.
I would best describe you music as kid at metal camp on the toilet playing gameboy, when all of a sudden he is attacked by an oversized hyena. How would you best describe what it is you do and how you intend on evolving such a unique sound for the new release?
We used to say it’s a kid playing gameboy on the street and he gets run over by Pantera’s tour but, I think that was our tag-line four years ago. Now I think that we have gotten a little bit sadder, not like Emo, there’s a truly sadder and nostalgic feeling in the music. And a little bit of a new wave influence. Kind of like an 80’s soundtrack of say ‘The Terminator’, but not like hair metal 80’s, more new wave. Yet we still maintain the heaviness and energy at the same time. All those 80’s movies with that de-tuned analog keyboard sound that is instantly nostalgic. We still have the nintendo noises and still use the gameboy, hopefully more proficiently on this album though.
With all the weird synth sounds, do you ever delve into circuit bending?
I haven’t done it yet, I’m interested in it. The furtherest we have ever done is I have this gameboy cartridge called Little Sound DJ and it uses the gameboy sound card as a sequencer. You can program music on a gameboy and use the little stereo out jack and record it. So that’s what we do but I have never sat there and tweaked old toys and stuff. I guess that is what ‘Crystal Castles’ did for a lot of their stuff and it sounds cool but I feel like I wouldn’t know where to start. We also try do everything so we can play it live and not have samples going. We try to play all our stuff live.
You seem to have a reputation for being creative in your approach to your music, and also an energetic on-stage reputation. What do you think attributes to that?
I don’t know actually! I feel like we don’t have those reputations here in the UK because no one comes to our shows. We used to have people at our shows here but that was like in 2004 – 2006. I guess the only reason we have those reputations is because the are true.
You have also been known to have a few unique crowd dances, were those encouraged by the band or is it just something the fans came up with?
Some kids made them up, it’s really a small cult although we had one last year in the Ukraine and we were like “what the F***”. But it’s mostly in the U.S. and we have only toured one month there in the last two years. For some reason our reputation there is so horrible that we can’t get any shows there anymore.
That is something I have heard about, why is it that you cant get shows in you home country?
Our whole mentality is kink of like our music. We are not the type of band that shows up on time, playing on our laptops backstage, play the show and get back in the van. We are all really good friends, we like to have a good time and if we are out in a different city we like to go and actually see the city instead of sitting in some shitty room for five hours. That really makes promoters nervous, it makes booking agents mad and it makes headlining bands angry because we are shunning their system, and I guess we are to an extent. It’s a broken system and it doesn’t have to be that way. I guess we actually believe that if we are some division of punk, which we think we are, then we can do it our way. As long as we play and people are happy with the show then it’s fine, but it’s not fine in the music industry. In the U.S. it’s also different, it’s a lot about making money. We feel no connection to all the bands that are big there now, we can’t even think of bands that we want to tour with besides bands that are as old as us and that we respect, like ‘converge’. But other bands that are huge there now, who even care, there fans done even like them so why would they like us.
Does that feeling coincide at all with the remarks that you find a lot of bands to be boring?
I’ll stand by that one, I hate going to shows because I cant stand watching a band that is struggling their hardest to play their instruments and their parts aren’t even that impressive. They’re just standing there and can barely even move because they will f***ing mess up. You shouldn’t be performing in front of people if your at that degree of inability, you have nothing to offer the audience. There is a huge difference between a band that takes the audience and completely enraptures them. Take for instance ‘At The Drive-In’, they’re such a huge influence on us, we saw them live and we were like “holy shit”. That is what a band should strive to be like, not just playing the they’re music but also showing the passion behind the music physically while playing it. If your playing some heavy part and you cant even head bang to it then it’s not really moving you that much, you should be going crazy and display as much energy as the audience. And if you cant convey it then why should I bother watching you try to get through a song. I’m not even saying that we are that good but I think that we at least feel our songs onstage that we cant help but to move so much. I just don’t understand why you would be in a heavy band if your not moving on stage, how can you be playing that type of music and not let it be the release that it is supposed to be.
A while ago you did a massive DIY tour around the world, visiting over 40 countries, how was that experience for you?
We learned a lot on that tour, we booked our own tours from the start in the U.S. and learned early on how to not get ripped off by promotors over the years. We knew on that tour in Asia that we were going to lose money. It costs five or six thousand to fly to each country for everyone that we were bringing. So we decided if we were going to lose say 60 000 dollars in Asia, that we would tour europe for two months after and make all the money back. We are always up to go to any country though, if someone offers us and we want to go there we will trust them even over email and we will go buy our flights and hopefully they will put us up and work something out.
Can you tell me more about the departure from Koch Records? it states on your wikipedia page that you were dropped for being unprofitable.
We were so happy with that, they actually released us from our contract because we asked them to. We did ‘Earth Tour’ and we wanted to release our album in all these countries. We were talking to record labels in China, Korea, Turkey and many others but we had to go through Koch for licensing and they just f***** it up so hard. They delayed everything and made it impossible for those labels to put out the record and eventually it only got released in like three of the countries. We were so frustrated, and finally they made this deal that we could sign it to whatever label and they would get 50% of the resulting money which was cool but too late. Then they were supposed to do a video to promote that tour, we had it all laid out with extras and we had the deposit paid. They were supposed to send us a cheque and the day before the shoot they said they weren’t going to do it. So all those people lost all that money and we were just like “you guys are impossible to work with”. So we asked them to let us out of our contract and they did, and then some 15 year olds put that we got dropped for being unprofitable on our wikipedia. So that wasn’t true.
Your outlook on the industry itself is not always positive, what do you feel is wrong with the industry now and do you have any solutions?
It’s people who are in it because they love playing music verses people who are in it because they see an opportunity to make money. There is also problems because people only want to be in a band to look cool, they don’t care about what they are playing, they’re just following a trend. Then there’s all these sick parasites of the music industry that see the opportunity to take a cut of something successful. They are the first one’s in and then they have that cut if the band ever succeeds. It’s stupid, it’s a conflict of interest to the art and enjoying music for what it is. It’s been that way for a long time and it is not going to stop.
It seems that the media highlight your band as a full on joke, the press photo’s and the whacky interviews, but it never points out the fact that you do take all of this pretty seriously, what are your views?
To me the funniest joke in music is when you see a band so fully convicted about the stupid shit they are doing, I think they are just a caricature of themselves and are completely ridiculous. In your normal like you joke around all the time, you can feel strongly about something and tell a joke the next minute and I don’t get why bands have to posture themselves as so serious. Taking themselves so seriously makes them more of a joke band than what we are, except nobody gets it! So we take press pictures and we cant help but to poke fun at every other stupid press picture you have ever seen. It’s a backlash and hopefully other bands see it and realize how stupid they are. On the other hand I think we take ourselves more serious than almost every other band that I know, we didn’t tour 45 countries as a joke, we didn’t max out five credit cards to be comical. We actually believe our music is worthwhile and even if we tell jokes on stage, take stupid press pictures and say things that people are not expecting in interviews, it doesn’t mean that we are not serious about our music. I think a quarter of our fans realize that we are not just a nintendo joke band, and the other three quarters are probably like “I love nintendo and they’re funny”. We at least offer something real. We started this band because it would be fun and we called ourselves ‘HORSE’, then we had to change it so then we changed it to ‘HORSE the band’. We weren’t trying to make money, we just thought “f*** it, if they’re going to sue us then lets change our name to HORSE the band”, at least it’s real and not an attempt to be cool.
