LOVEBYRD
2015 is gone, and it was certainly another good and interesting year in music. One of the best new bands emerged, were undoubtedly LOVEBYRD, a cool psych-pop duet, hailing from Saarbrücken, Western Germany. Their self-titled debut released last October on Hairy Records and was really beautiful, a trippy and genuine music experience that lavishly gives you 40 minutes of coolness and adventure. Having Steffi Krauth and Mark Wernet for an interview was a great honour and pleasure. That's all from us, here's the interview:
The Basement: Hi LOVEBYRD! You are a new band, so at first we would like you to introduce yourselves... How did it all start for you? How did you meet and decide to play music as a duet?
It wasn't really a decision, I would rather say that everything just fell into place like this. And ever since we try to keep everything as natural as we can by not deciding too much.
The Basement: How did you come up with your name? Are the legendary band The Byrds behind it?
Yes, we guess so. But in the end there isn’t a deep meaning behind it. Just wanted a nice name that fits a boy/girl concept.
The Basement: Are you only Steffi Krauth and Mark Wernet or are there any other permanently members that support you?
Basically it's just the two of us. That's the concept and how it works for us with the songwriting and all that, but for playing live we’re working together with some friends of us. We used to be 5, but we recently changed our live set up in a three piece.
The Basement: You’ve just released your debut, that is the beautiful self-titled LOVEBYRD. Are you happy with the final outcome?
Yeah we’re still happy with it. We put all our love and money in this record. Although we think that this album’s like it should be, we would do some things different now.
The Basement: Was it easy for you to find a label to support your work and release the album?
It took us a while to “get around” with the music. Because we had this album DONE at the end of 2014 and just didn't knew how to start of. Then somehow Ongakubaka Records found us and released the EP. After this, we hoped of finding another cool label for the album release. It was a gut decision somehow and we are pretty grateful that these two guys of Hairy Records are supporting us in the way they do.
The Basement: How would you describe your debut to someone that has never listened to your music before?
Everybody has his own ideas about what a genre sounds like. So, you better listen to it on youtube.
The Basement: We don't know many bands from Germany that sound like you. Is there a movement you think nowadays concerning this psy-rock revival?
Well, can’t really think of many bands doing it in Germany rigth now. You can see a few bands popping up and some that have already been there before. But at this point we wouldn’t say „movement“ actually.
The Basement: A great album in general, but we stick out the gem Shot From The Sun. What’s the story behind the song? How was the song at first inspired and written?
The funny thing about Shot From The Sun is that it was an almost completely different track a few days before we went from our room to our mixing guy. The vocal melody was a lot different and there were some guitar parts we didn't feel comfortable with. We put some new vocals and the twelve string melody on it and yeah, it turned out like this.
The Basement: Which bands or artists would you consider as your main influences?
Well, we are inspired by many bands and songs. For sure, you can point out Tame Impala, especially on the sound, or Mac DeMarco and UMO, but it’s actually not possible to sum it up in bands. At the moment we’re more influenced by moods and atmospheres for example.
The Basement: What are your plans for the near future? Any gigs ahead?
At the moment we're having our focus on getting our live set done properly but we also started writing/recording for our second album. Besides that, we’d love to play some more gigs the upcoming year. There’s a booking agency taking this part from now on. So yeah, hopefully we get some festival slots in summer and maybe a few nice gigs before.
The Basement: And what about long term plans? What are your ambitions as a band?
Not really into long term plans. We're just trying to get more sensible for songwriting and for what we like or don't like. Just try to keep on going.
The Basement: What things you enjoy doing apart from making music ?
Steffi: I like traveling and with that getting into foreign cultures and philosophies.
Mark: And I just like to do some artworks.
The Basement: What is your biggest fear or worry as a band ?
Fear and worry is what happens outside the band.
The Basement: Do you think that every artist should have a superior purpose apart of making a living and writing beautiful music, in the case of being a musician ?
That is something everybody has to decide for himself.
The Basement: LOVEBYRD we would like to deeply thank you for this interview. 2016 is at our doorstep, lists with the best music of 2015 are about to emerge all over... :) Which were your favourite albums of the year ?Thank you for having us and all the support you already gave us! To be honest – We couldn’t get much time this year for scouring record shops like we used to do it the last years... too bad. But we need to point out „Multi-Love“ from Unknown Mortal Orchestra. We absolutely love this record.
You can listen and order Lovebyrd's self-titled debut here.
