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Interview written, conducted and transcribed by Robert Crandall, photographed by j. ward [COMA] Alright I’m here with Ronan at the sound check, and let’s start with the first question, in all the previous tours you’ve come here, especially the last two you’ve made it a point to come to Tampa first. What is it you like about here and why do you always come here first? [Ronan Harris] We always start in Florida because, traditionally it was kind of a logistical thing we got a chance to get adjusted to the time change somewhere that was warm, somewhere that was nice we got a bit of a holiday for a couple days, and the more sunlight the faster the change to counter jetlag, it’s the sunlight does it, and I like Florida. So we started last night in Miami and it was fantastic, it was really good. [COMA] Awesome. I know that tomorrow night you’re playing in Atlanta, but they’re having the afterparty at the Castle, do you think you’re gonna make it over there? Or is it too much of a trip since its all the way in Tampa now? [Ronan Harris] My answer to that because everyone has been asking that today is “try to keep us out of the Castle” Just try it. We’re definitely gonna be there. I mean it’s a club we like, we’re very close to the people that own it, and we always have a blast there, so I mean we can make it to Atlanta, that’s not a problem of getting there. [COMA] So I don’t suppose you sleep at all… [Ronan Harris] Oh no, we sleep enough, we have all our sleep places on the bus, but its an eight hour drive and the driver’s ready for it, he’s picking us up right after the Castle and we’re heading off straight so.. We just go around, meet everybody, say hi, do the usual schmoozing things and re-acquaint ourselves with all the staff at the Castle we know really well and then we’re on our merry way up to Georgia. [COMA] Perfect. Now in the last few years your live setup now has evolved to have two keyboard players. How has that been working out for you and do you think that you’re going to continue to evolve your live show. [Ronan Harris] We did try lots of different variations. We tried with the electric monkeys and the sorceress, they didn’t really work out. It was more of an American thing. In Europe people didn’t really have a problem with us having an electronic drummer and a live singer and that sometimes Mark played keyboards. For them, they were used to sort of minimalized Techno projects and whatever else so they never really had an issue with it. In America, you have a lot more people who don’t consider you a band unless you have more musicians and their all playing something. It doesn’t matter how many people you have on stage, you can’t play everything, not for a VNV song. But we had wanted to do this for a long time regardless of what people think in an audience it wasn’t about that it was we wanted to do it for flexibility so to have some other options as live was concerned, We always wanted to have, and I think we will do in the future, one song that was played completely live, which is maybe sort of piano and string or something, kind of moving and slow, a slow version of one of our songs. But then we have a lot of flexibility with the guys playing keyboards with the live set, and its worked out really really well. I think they’re great. I mean we’ve gone through a few different live keyboardists, it was never meant to be a permanent thing. Now we’ve got Marko and Andre who seem very very committed when at the time where as when we started out we had Kolja from Soman, Vasi from NamNamBulu or now, Frozen Plasma and then we had Christian from Northborne or from Icon of Coil, we had Frank from Project 2501 but now its kind of a more permanent setup. And it’s a great crew, and that’s the main thing is that the vibe has to be that everybody kind of connects and everyone kinda works together, and it’s gotta be like a bunch of friends on tour. [COMA] Excellent. Alright can you tell us a little bit about Judgement, like for instance you only have one instrumental track which is a bit of a break… [Ronan Harris] Two [COMA] Two, Yes. I would say that I think that… [Ronan Harris] There’s the intro and there’s the outro. Why did you say Instrumental, cmon. [COMA] … [Ronan Harris] Why make the point about Instrumentals? Why mention that in the question, that’s what I’m wondering. [COMA] Because your Instrumental tracks have always been excellent. Like Momentum, seems like an instrumental track with your voice as sort of an instrument.
[Ronan Harris] I take that a little.. kind of a lot of different ways because I know in Europe there are some people who are so addicted, it seems, to my voice. I don’t know why. They can’t stand having an instrumental anywhere. Even through there have been instrumentals on every single album. I mean Empires had very few, Futureperfect had quite a few, Praise the Fallen had, I think, the most, other then Matter + Form, both of them are the same number of instrumentals. To me, its part of our music is kind of soundtrack oriented in a way, and “As It Fades” which is the very last song on the album, is like the closing of a movie. Some people have written to me saying that on hearing this, it wraps up… they never thought an album could actually feel like a film or a book, that it finishes like this. I was doing the piece a day before the album had to be ready, I was finishing it, I had completed it to a certain level, I was finishing it up and it was about 5 in the morning and it was the most amazing feeling doing that song because the way it plays the way it slows down, starts, stops, everything I just thought “this is perfect, this is exactly why I do music.” I think Judgement is our most consistent album to date. I think for us, personally, it’s the album we walked away with the best feeling from. And we felt that the making of it was a really energetic and extremely emotional but in a positive way, affair. The album took about two years to write, and I let it grow and then I’d work on the music, and I just let it build and build and build from ideas and songs I was writing in my head, and I write a lot of the songs in my head, [Ronan Harris] On the other side of things, there are people who are only interested in VNV Nation because they do really peachy-keen melodies and some nice beats, and “hey my friends like me cuz I like VNV”. And there are those people. As long as they’re getting something out of it, and it makes them happy then I feel that’s good, that’s at least something positive. They havn’t got a clue what the song’s about, but that’s alright. And there are some people like that and I don’t, ya know, you have to take all those who like your music for different reasons and embrace all of them. But the album’s got a much more Rocky vibe, and I don’t know Rocky in a sense of like a bad Italian boxer. (laughs all around) [Ronan Harris] I’m a really bad comedian, I should warn you. So, in the last five years in the United States more so then anywhere else in the world there’s been a real serious wave of Underground, Avant-Garde, I don’t know what you want to call the, all these kind of Indie bands that don’t fit any category but they’re all exploring some different territory, and some are trying to sound like they come from 1980 and some try to say they’re from 1982 like there was a big difference except for the size of the flairs that people were wearing that they inherited from their older brother when their parents were giving them the clothes they had to wear to school, because that was what 1980 was like. No I’m being absolutely serious. I had argument with a guy who was covering a festival that I was playing, or that we were playing at rather, and he was uh..
(At this point, Gabe, one of the stagehands (I assume) came in the backstage door)
[Ronan Harris] It’s alright Gabe, just doing an interview for a very important station that you just ruined but don’t worry about it, that’s just our backliner Gabe who’s just ruined everything because he… did you find the tub? You did!? I love you. Not in that kind of like other way, more kind of like kidney-punch kind of like man-on-man kind of military type thing, ya? Right. Alright, take it easy man. (laughs) [Ronan Harris] We just found a $1000 tub of connectors for our stage setup. [COMA] Holy Christ! [Ronan Harris] The stage set is an extremely expensive piece of kit that my friend loaned me, and I’m like “wow we’re very lucky to have it” But good God if we lose any of it, its like “I’m sorry we’ll have to sell the bus now!” We’ll have to rent Mark out or something for odd jobs, I’ll have to go into experiments, ya know, like medical test and whatever, have wires come out the back of my head. [Ronan Harris] Anyway, meanwhile, back at Judgement. It has definitely taken a lot of inspiration from all these kinds of bands that don’t fit in any categories, but seem to push the borders and just come up with different takes on sounds. I don’t know how you classify, say, the first album by The Killers, or The Feint. I really like The Postal Service, or as I mentioned to someone outside, I really like She Wants Revenge, because it reminds me of the music I listened to when I was young. I mean that’s how it felt when I was young, and I got such an incredible vibe listening to all these bands coming out, they’re all underground, they’re all small, there’s thousands of them, they’re all called “The something”. Which was kind of an epidemic that happened in the middle of the 80s as well. Our 80s was very alternative, American 80s was not necessarily alternative, it was quite horrific, wasn’t it? Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, and Prince and really really big-budget crap. When it all comes down to it, there was a couple of hits in there which you like hearing on the radio, but generally it was crap. We had Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Psychedelic Furs, which were played on Alternative radio stations here.. (phone rings) [Ronan Harris] I’m gonna divert that call because I don’t wanna speak to anybody, because I don’t like them. Any of them. Go Away! I should describe for out listeners, in case anyone’s listening to this, I’m holding a bottle of Jack Daniels and saying that, and so I’m looking kind of disgruntled and emotional. And “I hate my life.” I think I’ll write a song now!
[Ronan Harris] So.. It was like listening to that vibe of all these bands coming out, and I was talking to Jade from AFI about this, and he said he’s so happy hearing all these bands and cross-pollinate, they influence each other, and any scene, our scene particularly, has benefited from taking in a wealth of influences from other genres. You take Skinny Puppy when they started out they were listening to the Bauhaus and Portion Control who weren’t in any fit category and definitely weren’t in the same category. Front242 equally had influences from a ton of different projects. Likewise Nitzer Ebb and into the 90s with Nine Inch Nails or even Ministry or any of these other bands like Frontline Assembly, they were all taking their influences from proto-bands because there was no set formula to this genre. Neither did Depeche Mode have any kind of set format to how their music should sound. Now that we have a scene and its well-established, there’s this kinda formulaic structure to everything, which I dislike because I like too many different styles of music to kinda fit into any scene mentality. I very much like that with what we do we’re able to take influences and not really conform to, I hope not conform to formulas and just do what feels good and what feels right because we do and it feels honest, and that was one thing about Judgement that I really liked was that we didn’t have this two months with a producer tied to a strict timeline when we had to have the album done. If its not done, ya know, tough shit. It HAD to be done in that period of time, and I think the album suffered for it although I reached a certain goal I didn’t reach my desired goal with that album, or the full 100%. With Judgement, I couldn’t say its more complete. It’s the weirdest feeling, but when I walked away, I said that album has everything on it that I wanted on it. You can listen to it from sound, some people can analyze music from the styles on the album, some people can analyze it form the emotions, for me it’s the whole package. It’s everything combined that is VNV’s music. It’s how you feel listening to a song. And the style of music helps you along to that feeling. And that’s very much what VNV Nation’s music is about. Those people that say “oh this song sounds like this” and “this song sounds like that” are missing the point completely as far as I’m concerned. So. Next question. [COMA] Do you feel, perhaps, the album would have been more complete if you’d been able to record the vocals on the skateboard? [Ronan Harris] Uhm, we did record it. It’s quite scary. We tried to test the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect is, for anybody who doesn’t know, is that effect that happens when a car is approaching you, it gets louder in volume, then when it passes by, the pitch changes. It goes nnnNNNNnnn, that kind of thing.. we were trying that with a skateboard, it was just kind of sleep derived nonsense. That was the thing about making this in this complex, this studio complex, is we could just muck about, we were doing things seriously, and we were really spending all our efforts and our energies making this album. But just sort of the weird stuff we did. We just, ya know, it was fun. And then there was that thing that turned on all the lights, we’ve since figured out something about that. [COMA] What track exactly was it that you were trying to record the vocals on the.. [Ronan Harris] Oh no, it wasn’t for any one, its just there was a skateboard there. Some of my friends showed up from a hardcore band, one guy showed up with a skateboard so I kinda like tested it out. Cuz there’s a really big live room where we recorded vocals, and normally they have these panels around the vocal booth, and I took the panels away and just decided to muck about and one guy was doing skating, skateboarding down the corridor, and we were just having a laugh and its part of the whole vibe, its like everyone’s kind of relaxed, and chill, and you’ve gotta keep that whole atmosphere going. Ya know, everyone’s having fun, and the emotion is still there, you’re not going “Oh God, oh God, we’ve gotta have this album ready” and that ruins it. [COMA] Well that plays into what I was going to ask you about next. You have sort of an interesting view on the music industry as you are carried by what would be considered more independent music labels, Dependant and Metropolis Records, and you havn’t had a whole lot of problems with like, like you said, you have more of a free range for creating records. Have you ever felt like you’ve been in any way constricted by your contract with your company, or if you ever felt you’d been held back by Metropolis? [Ronan Harris] (laughing) Oh God I could answer this in a dangerous way. Never with Metropolis, they’re the most wonderful bunch of people, they’re also what people wouldn’t realize is that they’re very forward thinking, I mean they’ve taken on a lot of bands from different categories, to kind of bring a new spin of new sort of life to the label. We’ve never really had a label that kind of constrained us I think what constrained us is our frustration that we were very ambitious in that all we wanted to do was reach people. We didn’t want to, ya know, money is not our goal. Money was never our goal. We were working in really good jobs and we were having fun doing this, and that was the main reason for doing it. It was just that we enjoyed what we did no other reason to do it at least we wanted to break even when we did a show, but hey, ya know, what the fuck, cuz we’re having a party, and we’re having fun and we’re having a great time off hanging out with bands that we liked and people we loved to see then it was all that mattered, ya know? We got offers from major labels all the way. After Empires they all said “Oh this is a major label album” and I went “actually, no its not.” Maybe they think its sounds like a major label album because its all nice song on there, but it wouldn’t work had it been released on a major label, it works because of where it was released and how it was released and how it was recorded. It sounds personal, it sounds like your friends did it. It doesn’t sound super high super quality recording and it just works because it seems sentimental and special, do you know what I mean? So that’s why we’ve always sort of opted to do things our own way. We’ve never really had a label tell us what to do because no one actually knew why it was working. That was the weird thing, when we were on Dependant, they hadn’t really a clue why we were suddenly becoming successful and the other bands that they were concentrating on weren’t. We were just, we put our efforts into a number of things which we feel were important to us. We very much like our fans, and I mean I don’t like the word fan because it sounds like an industry kind of setup, like we are the band, you are the fans kind of thing. Because people that appreciate our music and we very much appreciate the people that come to our shows, and we love them to have a good time. We wanna give the shows we would like to see and we’ve been working on that over the years. That we try to develop our show to such a level that people get to see what we would like to see standing in the audience, and same thing as far as records are concerned, we’re not as influenced too much by what people expect from us, because if we were to do that we’d be probley making Empires over and over and over which I don’t really see the point in doing. [Ronan Harris]We do keep in mind that there are people who do have their sensibilities. Or sensitivities I should say. Sensibilities is the German word for it. Sensible in German means sensitive. Which is kind of weird because it really screws you up when you’re trying to translate things. You’re like “sensible? What? Sensible shoes? What do you mean?" The only thing that’s really restricted us is sometimes may be we weren’t brave enough in certain places or we were naive and people took advantage of us and probley the only restriction that we had but nobody can ever blame their naivety on themselves, its just that is how the world works. You have to be a kid at some point. You have to develop and you don’t go from A to B without going through a chain of points you can’t just jump straight, it just doesn’t happen. [COMA] Excellent. Now since you guys are back on tour and you look like you’re going to be on tour for a while now are you thinking about doing another live DVD like Pastperfect?
(Mark is soundchecking the drums in the background) [Ronan Harris] That’s Mark mucking about with the drums there, by the way. We do not use sounds like that live, like it’s not Miami Booty music or something like that. But we wanted to release the stuff from the Formation Tour, from the Matter + Form shows and we had some really amazing recordings and then we still have some issues that we, ya know, we still have to license our songs from Dependent if we want to release them, if they’re from Empires or Futureperfect. Which I, anyway, kind of ludicrous. We will do that, we will definitely do another DVD. [COMA] Awesome. Now that, going back into the past you’ve been talking a long time about how you were interested in doing a movie soundtrack, and now that the opportunity finally came along, how was it working on Gene Generation, and do you think that you’ll be doing more in the future? [Ronan Harris] I would love to do more. It was a bizarre thing Because when you write your own music you don’t have any set timeline to it any set pattern or anything that’s supposed to play out. You’re looking at someone’s scenes and you’re supposed to be describing the emotion of those scenes. Writing the theme music, that was easy, in a way. We wanted something that you can’t whistle but something that creates the atmosphere. This is what I love about soundtracks, its all the emotion, at atmosphere, the tension. Its those first notes of Lord of the Rings, ya know, when you see the very very first film, the very first credits, ya know, the New Line Cinema thing flies away or any kind of movie. For me it was Hunt for Red October is one of my favorite soundtracks as well because it’s the beginning of it is… (laughs) sorry, Jackson is just gonna be playing Electro Body Pop for the next twenty minutes for his soundcheck and I better go down and start doing some breakdancing… they’re like writing stuff on stage! This is great, they’re like kinda “JA! Ve are so electro! JA!” [Ronan Harris] Uhm but, it would I mean… like, for example, with a love scene, you’re supposed to give the impression that these two people like eachother and mood music is very much the element of the movie that really gives you the indication. It’s the absence of or the inclusion of music and what you use for music that makes you think. It gives you the atmosphere. You think of Silent Hill, the soundtrack is an abstract collection of sounds. An incredible, incredible soundtrack, really beautifully put together. Yeah, that’s not a soundtrack, you can’t whistle it. It’s the sort of stuff you want to put on in the background in your apartment while you’re, I dunno, shaving the cat or something like that. (laughs) Sorry, I don’t encourage in any way to do bad things to animals at all, sorry. I would definitely want to do more. I loved it, and I think when you see it, or when you hear it on its own, its gonna be one thing to hear it on its own.. Sorry, “Farthest Star”, I really, I love this song. And their going to need me for vocal check soon, so we better move on with the questions. [COMA] Alright. One of the most important questions is: At a lot of the interviews you’ve done and a lot of the questions that you’ve gotten form fans you make it a point not to explain in detail any of the inspirations for your music… [Ronan Harris] Inspirations? [COMA] Like Beloved you’ve always said that you would never tell your fans what that song is about.
[Ronan Harris] Its too complicated. I have actually said beloved can be interpreted in five different ways, you have to take it subjectively or objectively. If I were to say that Beloved is about every person who appreciates the song, they wouldn’t get what I’m about. They wouldn’t have a clue what I mean by that. And if I said, “why do you like the song?” Think about, you have an emotion in you, a longing in you to feel that way about somebody, maybe you do feel that way about somebody, the fact that you like that song, the fact that those words describe to you how you feel, describes you as a person. That says more about you then, this is very psychological. But its an element of a song that a lot of people miss, and its something maybe I see as a writer. I like something because it says something about me personally. What Beloved is about as far as the story is concerned, the story is a mechanism to express an emotion, to express a longing. It does have an inspiration in real fact. Every girl I’ve ever known is always asking “Who is Beloved about?” Its hard having a girlfriend when you’ve written a song like Beloved, believe me. Trust me guys, if you’re ever going to go into music, don’t ever write a song like Beloved, just tear it up throw it away. You’ll just have trouble the rest of your life. “I’m sure its about someone wonderful, I just want to know who it is.” You’ll be spending your life explaining it. Its bad, my sister asks it, my mom asks it. “who is she!?” What does it matter who she is? Its something actually… it is about a real person its about something from a very, very long time ago in my life I had people surmising [COMA] Beautiful. Real quick question, if you could tour with any group any musical act out now or in the past who do you think it would be? [Ronan Harris] Its about the band themselves, and how we feel when we get on tour. The band I think we’re best friends with is Imperative Reaction. I love these guys. We get on so well, we’re like brothers. All of us, it’s the weirdest thing and I definitely want to take them on tour with us. (The piano breakdown from Farthest Star comes on for the soundcheck and Ronan has to pause for a second.) [Ronan Harris] Sorry, this part of this song just does something to me, makes me *sigh* It was inspired by a band from France actually, that part, because it’s something that they do in their songs I find it to be the most beautiful, emotional part of their songs, so I wanted to borrow it, as a reference, and kind of a homage. Anyway, I would love to tour with them forever because their just a great band, they’re a lot of fun. The good thing is, we love their songs, we love their music. Every time they play live with us, we’re out there singing their songs, standing at the side of the stage bobbin’ our heads. And they’re great people, what can I say, that and Rammstein. I’d love to do a fuckin’ tour with Rammstein, I mean serious kinda yess! I don’t know, I don’t think our music and theirs kinda fits, but I know I’ve met Till, the singer, a lot of times, I met the keyboarder. I’d love to go on tour with, as far as a musical perspective, I’m a huge Social Distortion fan, which might sound really weird. Yes I do like a lot of electronic music, and I’m primarily an electronic music person but, I’m a very big Social Distortion fan, and I would love to say, tour with, She Wants Revenge would be a band I would love to… I think actually now, at this point in our career, and their career, that’s the kind of package I would like to see on the road. Them, headlining, doing their thing, and us coming on and doing our thing, that would be amazing. [COMA] Alright and just one question that I came up with personally: the song on your album “Illusion” is just absolutely beautiful, can you give us a little bit of an idea what the idea around that and the inspiration for it? [Ronan Harris] Everything you’ve ever wanted to say to somebody. Maybe this was by virtue of me kind of looking at myself saying, “Oh Ronan, you’ve become an old bastard.” It was everything I wanted to say to somebody who still had to go through all the processes in life that bring them to who they ultimately want to be. It is intended for so many people that I’ve met and its just me saying something that I said over and over and over its based on a person who badly needed some words and just refused to accept advice because they were ruining their life and they were screw themselves up and the one thing I didn’t want them to turn into was a bad person. But I knew that the road they were traveling was going to make them that. We all get lost at times in our lives especially when we’re teenagers, look for an identity, the thing is that I didn’t want to say that it was aimed a man or a woman, my sister described the song perfectly as a practical description. When she heard the song she almost fell over, she said this is an incredible song, she called her kids in and said “alright kids, listen to this song. This is everything you need to know.” And that blew me away. Cuz that is what that song’s about. Its telling someone who doesn’t yet know how things work, who’s suffering and lost and whatever, about to face all the problems that teenagers and people will face in their lives that this is the way it is, this is the way the world works. Its not that the world is a cruel place, there’s a higher level to it. There’s something much more magical to this world if you wanna see it. [Ronan Harris] And I think that’s our cue for soundcheck. [COMA] I don’t want to keep you any longer, thank you very much Ronan. [Ronan Harris] It was a pleasure! It was an absolute pleasure. [COMA] Thank you, that’s it! VNV Nation's new albumn "Judgement" is available now.
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before they every reach the studio. I had a theme for the album, I think it is a commentary, not just on the present world we live in but also how people view their own lives with sort of a mysticism or a magic to them. Something with a deeper meaning then just the two-dimensional breeder mentality. Which has always been a very quintessential part of VNV Nation’s music. Singing about the depth of human experience and questioning what it is to be human and questioning what it is to feel and to experience things in a certain way, and how we derive meaning from them. Is it just a random series of events or is there some greater purpose to it? And that’s always been my take in questioning that. I don’t prescribe to any particular religion although the album is littered with quasi-religious references, because its meant to tie into a very fanatical time period in human history. We haven’t had a period of such fanaticism since, say, the 1100’s. SO it is meant to be contemporary in a way.
[Ronan Harris] We are thinking about, we recorded a bunch of shows. We recorded… its harder to record in America because a lot of venues don’t let you do that unless you pay them wads of money. We recorded a bunch of shows in Germany we’re gonna record some more towards the end of the year. What we wanna do is do something very very special that we actually aimed to have it recorded. But we have recorded a lot of live material which we wanted to release, on a CD called Reformation, the missing CD. But the place where we recorded it we had to legally have them sign a form that said “yes we’ve agreed to your recording, no problem, you can have it, thanks very much.” And a new manager at the place went “hang on, we can make some cash out of this.” And asked for a serious large amount of money. Even though they had agreed to it in person and verbally, which is normally how things are done in Germany, and then wanted a large wad of cash for doing it. We couldn’t give him that. We said sorry, we can’t do it. And we pushed the CD because we kept negotiating and negotiating and negotiating until we reached a point where releasing a CD that would have clashed with…
that it must be this person, or that person. There’s probably about two people on this earth who know who its about, me and that other person. It’s something that just because I’ve moved so many times that my connections to my past and who I’ve been involved with or what somebody meant to me or whatever. But it is about… to say that human love is what Beloved would be about is like saying that… I’m trying to think… To say that Beloved is about human love is like saying Star Wars is about a robot shaped like a salt shaker. It’s something so far beyond that its indescribable. It’s a very spiritual and a very mystical song in its own respect, that’s the best way to put it. Its not about some chick I met in a club. I can guarantee you that.
