VNV Nation Interview with Ronan

I haven't seen you guys in a few years…
"Well, it's been two years since we really toured. So this time around, with the new album and all of that fun stuff, we've got to do it!"

Actually, that's where I want to start. You've got two releases coming out, one is the "Reformation" box set and the other is your new album, so you've been pretty busy.
"It's kind of mad actually, because I've been working as intensely on music as I ever have been for the last three months. The main thing that happened was, we were setting up our own label, so we started work on that in June of 2007. And the "Reformation" box would have come out in February (2009) but we had to get the contracts done and everyone had to get their end signed off and stuff like that before we could commit. So I had the "Reformation" box ready, which worked out because it didn't come out on the heels of the new album. It came out on May 12th.

We set up our own label, we officially did that in February and announced it. The box set came out during the end of April in Europe and the beginning of May in the United States. And the new album ("Of Faith, Power and Glory) comes out on June 23rd in North America! So they actually came out with a month in between, but it's been mad getting the buzz going. Because some people are totally mad that we're throwing out so many releases. "Reformation" was quite an achievement, it's quite a formidable box. You've got our first live album and then the second cd is remixes and unreleased tracks and all that fun stuff.

The work on the box set was, well, "Reformation" was something that was planned to come out a number of years ago and we kind of got that delayed. Something that happens in North America that doesn't happen in Europe is that you have get, not just the permission of the venue to use the live recording, but in a lot of cases you actually have to end up paying royalties to the venue which is a concept that Europeans do not understand. Because it's just extra income for the venue. If I'm recording a live concert, and I'm recording it at, say, Joey's house, and I've got to pay five to ten grand just to use it, I think that's a bit steep. And a bit restrictive. Some venues charge you three grand, some charge you a grand. If you know it exists, you should ask upfront. The House in Williamsburg, where a lot of the tracks were recorded, didn't ask for anything. They didn't want anything. And not only that but their local techs had set up the whole hard drive system, all the mics, everything, and really fine-tuned it. The recording quality could not have been better."

That's good to hear, because often with live recordings you have to go back and tweak them in the studio.
"We had festival recordings that needed serious tweaking and we were remixing songs, because maybe I fucked up some lyrics on one song. We had some issues the first time around with the concert we recorded, and the problem was that we went back retroactively and asked the venue if we could use the recording and asked what they wanted and... I think they went back and did an internet check and said, "Oh this seems like a pretty big band, let's milk them." So we ended up in negotiations over that because it was a brilliant recording. There were other recordings we made, like we made recordings in New York where there was mic hum on about five of the tracks. So we ended up with about eight shows we had to work from."

I think the box set is going to be real cool even for people who have all the stuff....
"Most of it is new! The stuff on CD 2 is unreleased, and all of the live tracks are unreleased. And you know, you've seen VNV Nation live, so you know that our live experience is very different than just sitting at home listening to an album. It's a very, sort of, driving, motivating experience.

But we put a ton of work into "Reformation," we added in everything that was available. We even, as a last minute decision, threw on a DVD. The third disc is full of cuts that a TV station had done; a local public access station here in Hamburg that has a show about the "Dark Scene," as they call it here in Germany. So we have a bunch of edits that they'd done from different tours, and we decided to use those and add on a bunch more. But the box itself, when you see it, it's a thing of beauty."

The cover art can always help sell a record. I've been drawn in many times by covers of bands I've never heard...
"It's a pretty important thing. I don't think a lot of bands pay as much attention to it as they should. They think that something minimal and not at all interesting will describe it. We've been working with this guy Michal Karcz from Poland, who's an amazing graphic artist. I found him by accident and he ended up doing all the art for "Judgement," the poster and everything in about the space of three days. But this one, "Of Faith, Power and Glory," I gave him the title and I gave him an idea of what I was thinking that this album is about and he came back with this incredible artwork."

Let's talk about the new album. You guys have been doing this a long time and have been evolving through the years. What's going to separate this new release, both musically and lyrically?
"This is an album that sounds very much like a VNV album, but it's become very diverse and it's moved a big step on from what "Judgement" was. In fact, general comments that I've heard from fans that were at a listening session last weekend- where we played the album for about 400 people- was that this blows "Judgement" away."

What I like about your music is that you change and you evolve over time, but you still have the same core sound.
"I can't make the same music I did ten years ago. There are some people, a minority thankfully, who want us to always be the same band they heard ten years ago because that was their teenage experience. You know what I mean? They heard the band, it made a massive impact on them, and they want that experience forever. If we made the same album forever it would be really boring. I want our music always to have the same emotional impact and the same intellect. I don't want it to be dumbed down, I don't ever want it to be anything other than music that inspires me in the studio when I'm writing a song and I feel that it makes me want to move around or that it's really affecting me in the way that I want the sound of the song to do. And maybe it's just a criteria for me. Sometimes I'm just sitting there alone jamming in the studio, and there are influences that intrude. But I'm not going to ever go out and try to sound like another band."

There were a lot of bands that copied your sound a few years ago- when you, Covenant, and Apoptygma Berzerk were at the top of the heap- and they didn't really try to make it their own.
"It's a blessing and a curse. If you come up with a sound and you really enjoy that sound and you find it comes naturally and you're enjoying making music that sounds like that, it's unfortunate when suddenly a lot of bands are taking too much influence from that. Over time it evolved into other things and takes a different path, but it got a bit samey after awhile. And I agreed with the DJs who said, "Jesus, doesn't anyone make any music that sounds like anything else?"

It's not about the sounds and it's not about the sequences. You're making music from the outside in, but you should be making music from the inside out. It comes from the soul first. Whatever instrumentation and whatever melodies you use, they come from the basic core concept of "I want to write a song." If you want to write a style, that's a totally different thing altogether. That's not our music. And that's what set us apart."

So you’re pleased with "Of Faith, Power and Glory?"
"The new album is a rollercoaster of melody and emotion. I'm so proud of this album."

That's good to hear. Because musicians are always complaining about this or that on an album; they'd change something…
"They're artists! An artist has an idea in his mind or her mind of how something should be and whereas other people in the room might be totally accepting of where they were halfway through before they threw the whole thing out, going, "Hey what are you doing? That was brilliant!" "No it doesn't feel right." The danger is that you've got this idea in your mind and you try to achieve that idea, but sometimes you've got to say, "Okay, what I've created isn't what I set out to do. And that's happened to me with a lot of songs. But I've ended up creating something completely different at the same time which is really new to me. "Savior" would be a really good example. Somebody hit the wrong button on the computer and the tempo doubled. Everyone just stood there quietly for a second and I went, "Ooooookay, let's put a drum track under this!" The main thing is that you're writing music where you feel like you're creating your own nightclub soundtrack or the soundtrack for your car. And you're writing it for yourself."

I know you're playing some festivals now, how are those going? And will we be seeing you on tour in America soon?
"We just played Wave Gotik Treffen. For those who have never been to Wave Gotik Treffen, it's when 25,000 people who like every element of what they call the "Dark Scene" in Germany- which unites everything from medieval-inspired rock music to synth pop- converge. We headlined on Saturday night. At Treffen there are concert halls all over the city running events. And people dart backwards and forwards between them. We rammed the hall as far as it was possible, 11,000 people. I've never seen a crowd like it. We played the outdoor Mera Luna Festival last year and everyone said it was this outstanding show. Then on the Sunday we had a listening session for our fans and that was phenomenal. These kinds of festivals give us the opportunity to do things like that, which is great. We'll be playing the Blackfield Festival in Germany and then a week after that we'll be starting our American tour in Los Angeles!"

I know that you love playing in Florida and Tampa and you have such a huge fanbase here.
"I have so many great friends there. It's a bizarre state. I've made more friends there than I have anywhere else in the United States."

You travel a lot and your music is loved by a lot of people, so it's inevitable that something like that is going to happen.
"It's a wonderful thing... If I'm playing a gig, there are people who are daunted by the fact that we’re a band and they treat us like a band. But we're sitting at the bar, if you've seen us at the Castle, we're sitting at the bar laughing and joking and running around like mischievous children. We like to have fun We're regular people at the end of the day, we love talking to people. As you know from interviews, there's nothing I like more than just sitting around and chatting for hours. It doesn't matter what we're talking about as long as we're having a conversation. That's what important.

When people ask what to expect from our next tour, I think our audience since 2004 has diversified a phenomenal amount, which is a great thing. There were people who always wanted us to remain this gothic-industrial band and always have the gothic-industrial audience, but through word of mouth- because we never forced our music on anyone or engaged in a major advertising campaign or some bullshit like that- our audience has attracted people from so many different backgrounds and so many different music styles. They find the same elements attracting them, which is a great compliment to us. We get a lot of hardcore kids at our shows, which I guess is due to the kind patronage of Davey from AFI who is always talking about us and wearing our shirts. But then there are people who started listening to us from totally different directions. We get these general alternative people. And we get the new wave kids, we get the rock kids, we get the dance scene kids, and we get people who like everything, and they're all there for a very similar reason - that they find what they're hearing unique. They don't necessarily like electronic music as a whole, they just like what VNV do, which is a serious compliment to us.

The next album, I would say, satisfies both existing VNV fans who like our sound and people who listen to a wide variety of music because it's quite a diverse album, though it has a very general flow and a very general sound. I think that it's the best sounding album so far. But it's got a great deal of depth and an awful lot of soul and emotion. It's got probably the saddest song I've ever written on it, but it's also got the happiest song I've ever written on it. The album cover inadvertently describes something about the album that I never intended; it expresses the schizophrenic nature of humanity, which is that we're always trying to express our greatest ideals and our greatest notions of ourselves, but usually at the tail end of a display of our greatest, darkest extremes. The notion of the cover of the album is a pseudo-monument to our greatest intentions never to war, to live as better human beings. But it's a monument that's in the middle of a wasteland; the metaphor being expressed is that we erect these monuments… you know, we have the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in almost every capitol city in Europe, it is there as a testament to the horrors that Europe suffered and things that we don't want to have happen again. And we have these great, wonderful notions about humanity, and sobriety is always in display in excessive amounts after our displays of brutality, because everyone suddenly sobers up and realizes what they've just done is an extremely bad thing. Humanity is always like - we express our greatest intentions only as a result of seeing our worst side."


www.vnvnation.com