INTERVIEW: Anneke van Giersbergen – Vuur

Formed in 2016, VUUR have released their debut album, In This Moment We Are Free – Cities, and are already on a headline tour with sell-out shows in the UK. VUUR is the outlet for singer Anneke van Giersbergen’s heavy, progressive music, creating a separation from her softer, acoustic side. Distorted Sound’s Dean Martin sat down with Anneke to chat about the debut album, the current UK tour, and freedom in the world.

How has the tour gone so far?

Anneke: This is day five, and it’s the last of the UK shows, so we did five UK shows, so we will be going to Germany tomorrow and it’s going well, I have to say. We have our headline shows, our first headline tour with this band and we started at small venues again, but it’s really, really nice, it’s personal, the way we do it now; it’s really close to the audience. Everyone that shows up is really enthusiastic so it’s really cool after a long period of writing and recording to tour. We did some festivals and some support shows and it’s the first time it’s just us and the audience who have come for the band and that’s really cool. It feels very different.

What do you like best about touring in the UK?

Anneke: I like the audience, in general they’re really good because they’re loud, and they show us a lot of love, and that’s great. They’re not timid, they don’t have a feeling of ‘I should be polite’, they just shout if they really like it, they will shout if they don’t. So that’s good, honest crowds, and I really enjoy that.

Is it different to touring in mainland Europe?

Anneke: I think so, mainland Europe, the further south you go, the louder people get, like in Italy, but I think, somehow in Germany people are more quiet, people in England are not. Maybe it’s also a harsher environment in most cases in the UK, it’s an island, from the old days you had to be strong and harsh, and I think it’s something that’s still in your culture. You’re used to fighting for something, you’re used to showing what you want or you can’t get it. And it comes back into how you live in your culture, your art and your music and also the bands that are from the UK is amazing. You know, THE BEATLES and all the heavy bands that come from here all the historic bands that come from here, it’s amazing, so people are, in a way spoiled, and so they really let you know if they like what they see. So when we come here to play then it must be good, otherwise they will show you it isn’t.

VUUR was started as an outlet for your heavier music, have you created the separation you were after? Is there still work to be done, or are you happy?

Anneke: Yeah, we’re kinda establishing. People of course, need to get to know the name because sometimes when you say VUUR to people they have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you say it’s my band, and like you said, it’s my heavy outlet so they start to get to know the band, and band name, and that’s good and it takes time but the people who already know me, and who know what I’m about and what I’m doing with VUUR and my solo stuff they already totally adapt to that and it’s more clear now anyway. So I do solo acoustic stuff under my own name and anything else like projects or whatever. But I’m focusing really a lot on VUUR, we started to write a new album, we officially started writing and we want to release something next year. So this train should keep on going so that people also know that it’s not just another project, although it’s never just another project because I do fully everything that I’m into, but this is here, really here to stay. But we have to establish a name, like I said some people don’t know the band name yet, or they see it but don’t know it’s me or the guys, and on the other hand people think that, okay, I’ve formed a heavy band and it should be THE GATHERING, but it’s not, it’s something totally different, it’s heavy, it’s metal, it’s prog, but much more harsh, it’s very guitar orientated, and people have to get used to the sound and that takes time, it’s takes more time than I anticipated to establish this whole thing really. We really started from not much, we had my name, the names of the guys in the band and the rest everything is new.

Starting from the ground up again.

Anneke: Kinda yeah.

Towards the end of last year, VUUR released their first album In This Moment We Are Free – Cities. Each song is dedicated to a different city, how did this idea come about?

Anneke: I love travelling, it’s a good thing because I’ve been doing it for so long and it’s a blessing that I’ve been able to do it for twenty-five years or so. You always come back to certain places to play and to gig, some places they really stick by you and you really want to go back to when you tour again, so I have my favourite places. There’s also places you go to that are uncomfortable and strange or out of this world, places like Moscow that’s huge and it’s heavy and it’s dark and it’s almost sinister place. And if you play there people are heavy, but also warm-hearted and you kinda get into the culture, every time you come back you kinda dive in a little bit more and I always am very inspired by travelling. I write a lot on tour, but I never write about, almost never write about these places themselves so I started doing that and I thought I should do a concept album about cities and then I started this band and then I thought this cities concept is really good with heavy music.  Some things are just sitting and waiting in my head or on a piece of paper, you know and I have this plan for a long time and I wanted to form a heavy band for a long time and these two things are really nice that it came together.

How did you pick which cities to feature?

Anneke: Yeah, it’s difficult, and every place is significant. I didn’t want to only take on the capitals, but the places that I love or that mean something to me. I had my favourites, Berlin, London, Rio De Janeiro, so that was easy but then again still you have to find away to make the lyric, have to have an idea, you can’t just chain a lyric “oh this my favourite place in the world” you have to come up with something beautiful. All these places have such a history, you think of a place you’ve been visiting often and there are always ideas that are coming up in me. Sometimes we would make a song, we’d start writing and we would have a version or chorus, for instance with London, I would say this is London and in the back of my mind I wanted to write about this city but you never know which song so they really came out of nowhere.

Is there anywhere you wanted to write about but couldn’t get the song together?

Anneke: No, not really.

It talks about the differences between cities and countryside, and a feeling of freedom, how do they fit into your life?

Anneke: We live on one big planet, if you look at it from space, it’s just one big ball of water and land it’s just us who make boarders in the sand and then made war because of money and land and fossil fuels and everything but really if you think about it, we are free. You and me sitting here talking about music, we are free. We don’t think, an hour from now we don’t think about yesterday we’re engaged in something which is really nice and sometimes I realise how ridiculous everything is with money, with power, with everything, with Trump, with everything that’s going on in the western world but also further away a lot of conflicts and, call me a hippy, but I believe if we really came back to here and now, you and me, this moment there’s no problem, there’s no conflict, no worries, no fear, so that feeling is possible , and we should focus on that more. The news focuses us on dark shit, all the time.

Because that’s what sells…

Anneke: Yeah! But why? Why do people want to know this? And why do people want to engage in that all the time? It’s easy for me to say because we live in a free country but if we look at the news and then we go back and talk to everyone about what we saw we give this energy, when we could give energy to beautiful things like art and music and work and nature. So, sometimes I’m just lost about how the world works so I write a bit about that, it’s an underlying theme, I’m just being a hippy, I’m a fan of positivity, it’s what I wanna write about, put my energy into something good. And we did have a war, only 70 years ago, we still feel it in Holland, the devastation of a world war, we still feel it in Germany, our neighbouring country, there’s still people around who were there, who fought in that war, not a lot of people but still, and I think we shouldn’t forget, and we should now help those in conflict, and refugees, we should help. We should focus on that rather than just watch the news and gossip about it.

I’m a little bit younger, and obviously I know all about it but it’s never been a reality. I’ve been to Germany lots of times in my life and it’s just another place I can go that’s generally very friendly, has great food and I’m grateful for that in a way because that’s the past, let’s move forward and be positive.

Anneke: Exactly, that’s how it should be. That’s wonderful, and it’s cool that you’re young and you think about these things and that you’re grateful and something like this wouldn’t happen with you because you already have a conscious mind about it and that’s wonderful, that’s all we need in the world. And we can just cross the borders and just enjoy what we see and what we can do.

Borders are really completely man-made.

Anneke: Yeah! It’ so strange, I’ve been to this three country point, is it Luxemburg, Belgium, France? I don’t know, maybe Germany? And then you step here and you’re in Germany and you step here and it’s just so strange.

Was there anything you’d have liked to do differently on the album?

Anneke: Not a thing, and you know why, like we talked about just now I live in the moment and this moment we had this band, this producer, this studio, this state of mind, these lyrics, it’s the best I could do at that point. I’ve never been lazy, I’ve never been doubtful so probably a day later, the day after the release of the album you could think, yeah that could be different, that could be done better, but then I think, yeah, that’s good for a next album so you evolve with the next album and not within an album itself. I also never have regrets, I also never listen to something back only in the beginning period when the album is first released because you need to play them live so need to learn the songs again but sometimes I hear something from twenty years ago, or something of THE GATHERING, if you’re in a pub and they play it, and I’m always surprised how good things sound, I’m always happy but I would do this, this, and this different now but then you should do it so I always think in the now and the near future.

It’s a way of you knowing you’ve grown as a musician because you can say, ‘oh I’d do that differently’…

Anneke: Yeah! But there’s a balance between that and being satisfied with what it is now. I never look back on YouTube or pictures because I always think I can do better, that’s why I love touring because tomorrow I’ll play better, tomorrow I will sing better. I never watch anything back unless it’s to learn from it. In the beginning of a tour I look at how the band and the lights look, so I look at YouTube and how I sing and move and how I use the stage and then if I’m sort of satisfied, it’s okay, but then you actually see what happens on stage.

What’s the most different thing between VUUR and THE GATHERING or THE GENTLE STORM?

Anneke: I think the main difference is VUUR is very masculine, THE GATHERING and THE GENTLE STORM have folky influences, or have influences from strings or orchestral stuff which makes the music softer in a way, and VUUR is very harsh, though the melodies, and lyrics, and my vocal sound is feminine. I wanted to make a really contrasting album of masculinity and beauty and that’s, I think, the main difference from anything heavy I’ve done in the past. I am working now on new songs and I want the next album to be a little more smooth, the contrast a little bit less, and that’s what I feel now and what I feel live. These days songs start to come alive in a live setting, for instance, Helsinki has a little bit of orchestration, it’s a little bit softer, and works live very well, and they’re instant favourites of people. I like that too, I like accommodating that and I love playing these songs live because there is a lot of emotion, it’s not just heavy, heavy, heavy, like London, for instance, it’s very harsh but I love this song live too, but I think the next album will be a combination of the smoother songs.

Do you have an idea for the next album?

Anneke: Lyrically no, I’m still randomly writing stuff, but musically I kinda have a direction so more songs along the lines of Beirut and Berlin, they are more melodic.

What’s next for VUUR?

Anneke: A lot of playing, I am happy to say, so we do this tour, we have some festivals, next year there is some playing, this year is filled up with tours, this year we are writing and next year recording, and hopefully end of next year will be an album. And myself I do some solo acoustic shows in Holland just to keep on playing. So, until the end of 2019 we are fully booked.

Over your career, you’ve performed and recorded with a huge number of musicians, is there anyone, alive or dead, that you would love to perform with but haven’t yet?

Anneke: My main favourite singer in the world is Freddy Mercury, but he’s dead, he’s a big inspiration to me. But I would murder to sing with Mikael Åkerfeldt, I think he’s, next to DEVIN TOWNSEND, one of the best vocalists we have in our scene, and I love his music and I love OPETH. So, yeah, working with Mikael would be a wonderful thing. I’ve talked to him a few times and he knows my name, he loves my singing so I can already die happy. So maybe one day.

In This Moment We Are Free – Cities is out now via InsideOut Music.

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