On the outskirts of Cologne, two people met in 2010 and fell not only in love with one another but also with creating music together. She has always been interested in writing and singing, whereas he is a professional audio engineer and musician. The two occasionally collaborated on various demos in their adorable apartment. A straightforward idea quickly developed into a significant project. The two decided to go into the studio with all the accumulated material and finally record the songs in a professional environment. Their first demo song, “Small Town Blues,” was the first of many demos that slumbered quietly on hard drives for the following few years, gathering digital dust.
With a dark undertone and a general sadness and melancholy, Small Town Blues is minimalist indie electro pop at its best. It immediately hooks the listener with its beat and driving sequencer Bass line. A heavy synth-pop song with danceable beats that shimmers in dark neon hues.
The ominous lyrics create a contrast by informing the listener of unrealized dreams and a deep desire to break free of the mundane. Small Town Blues is a song about starting over and letting go of everything in the past because there is always hope for the future. Check out their original singe ‘Small Town Blues’ and the exclusive interview below:
1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES: We’re a husband and wife synth pop duo from Cologne/Germany. We started making music together in 2012. On a lazy sunday I showed my wife one of my many demos I had sitting on my hard drive, collecting digital dust. She immediately had a lyric idea and started humming a melody and we put together “Small Town Blues”, our debut single, in a couple of hours. The rest is history I guess. 🙂
2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?
GORILLA: I’m a trained audio engineer and had some bass guitar lessons back in the days. And I used to play in bands. I couldn’t be more thankful for the invention of MIDI, since I’m a crappy keyboardist. So thank you General MIDI! 🙂
VAMPIRE: For me, singing is something really intimate and private. I always loved to sing, but never sang for others and the introvert in me never thought I could. Putting my singing and my lyrics out there was a big step out of my comfort zone and in the end felt really liberating. Writing is something I do for quiet some time now, mostly short stories and character development, but all this helped me a lot while writing lyrics for our band.
3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES’?
GORILLA: There are so many different influences, they vary from Pop Punk to Synthwave to even Country. For me my first musical influences were Green Day, Bad Religion and Blink 182, I’ve always liked poppy Punkrock Music. The raw and rebellious energy of a cool punk riff paired with a sing-a-long chorus has always been fascinating to me.
Vampire: I’m more of a ‘likes a bunch of genres girl’. But I always was and am very fascinated by songs with dark and moody tones and story telling in music. When a melody or a lyrics part catches you off guard, gives you goosebumps and evokes a certain feeling. That’s what I love about music.
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES: Our band name, (yes, we know it’s quite long), was inspired by two stuffed animals, a gorilla and a vampire. These two mean a lot to us and even travel with us. We would never leave them home alone. 🙂
4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES: We’d say the key elements are the melancholy and the somewhat dark vibe in our music. Also the simplicity and catchiness of the songs that hopefully resonate with listeners. Our music should trigger emotions within people, whether they are good or bad. The sound is definitely 80ies influenced, minimalistic and synth heavy. A friend once called it “Minimalist Electro Pop”, that describes our sound perfectly.
GORILLA:
I come from a rock music background and for example the first demo of “Small Town Blues” our debut single used to have some more guitars on it. Over time I replaced a lot of these guitars with synthesizers. I honestly can’t tell you why I did it, it just happened. But this led to purchasing analog synthesizers and our songs got even more synth heavy. But on the contrary I always wanted to have real drums on our songs, not just programmed ones, that’s why we rented out a really cool studio to record drums.
6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative and entertainment?
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES:
Music plays an integral part in all aspects of society. It’s important that there are f.e. political bands out there who write songs about what’s going on in the world. For us our music is more of a personal expression. It’s important for us to tell a story with our songs and hopefully people resonate with this story. When people listen to your music they give you 3 plus minutes of their personal time so you better tell a good story and entertain them.
7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?
GORILLA: It’s definitely fulfilling to get all the creative energy out of you when you write a song. Making music is the only thing I do where I lose track of time and forget the world around me. You can’t put a price tag on that. On the other hand it can be quite frustrating when you see how much work you put into your music, and you don’t have much listeners as a newcomer because nobody knows that you’re out there.
VAMPIRE: The whole creative process of making music together, working on a melody and finding the red string of your song and what’s it all about is something really rewarding. On the other hand it’s something really intimate. You put something of yourself in that song and putting this particular part of you out there can be quiet overwhelming yet really exciting.
8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES:
I usually start with a beat or a chord progression. And then everything kind of develops around this beat or chord progression. I often times put things through some weird and glitchy guitar pedals, those pedals can really change the vibe of an instrument completely and can push a song idea in another direction. Then I arrange everything and hand it over to my wife, she starts working on the melody and lyrics. For one of the new songs we’re working on at the moment, we are trying to do something different. We watched a short movie the other day and we’re trying to write a song with the visual aspects of this particular short movie in mind. That’s something we’ve never done before.
9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES: It was definitely to have the guts to actually release our music. This band has been going on for quite a while but we’ve never released anything until 2022. This little creature called self-doubt wouldn’t want us to release. It literally took years, actually 10 years, to win the battle against self-doubt.
10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far? ABOUT GORILLAS AND VAMPIRES: Setting our music free in 2022. 🙂 It was such a relief to finally putting our music out there, it was a big step for us as artists but also as human beings. That’s something we’re really proud of and we got much more music to come.
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Photo credits: TonBildWerk/Aljoscha Schewetzky