Fossil Collective Interview
Fossil Collective: “Our songs are much more important to us than the shoes that we are wearing.”
Interview by Elke
The difference between being a regular pop music listener and someone who prefers Indie bands is that perception of this special magic moment of pure little happiness on the ways to your sense of hearing in the moment you have found a band which makes you forget the rest of sounds and tunes you have heard the rest of that day. This lovely felt joy of colliding to new music, which fascinates all of your body-cells is something what may happen to you, when you love Indie rock and Indie folk songs, Americana or when you love in general music, made by brilliant musicians who do know what they do behind and in front of their instruments.
Bands like Fleet Foxes and Midlake. Two of my favourite bands of the last years. It’s never good putting a band into a salad bowl with other bands and musicians as I think, every band does deserve an own level of attention and it doesn’t taste well anyway, as if you like to mix Strawberries and Bacon Beans. So, it’s not “oh they do sound like Bon Iver”-music-check. No, it’s an Indiana Jones found. A real one. At least you can give a hint in which musically sunny valley or mountain a band built their house.
Yes, I like in general comparing music with landscapes. As it is maybe the best suiting metaphor for something what does have so many different layers, fields of genres, houses of styles and from time to time some citizens feeling that much Wanderlust to move to neighbour-cities for starting side-projects or simply exploring the huge travel-offers music in general tries to get you with. And well, all I may say is, Fossil Collective are not to mix up with other bands as they do have their own way how they celebrate music. Either you can say, “they do sound influenced by that one too much” or “…. of this one”.
An art which is in times like these not easy. But Fossil Collective do have a “natural otherness” which you don’t find that often. They already found their way. A way you will maybe fall in love with as the result is perfect harmonic music, full of melancholia, nostalgy, hope … without sounding cheesy or “kitsch sells” (own word-invention, but just imagine Jane Austen on Acid).
Interview with David Fendick of Fossil Collective
You are five guys from England who creating brilliant Indie rock and Indie folk music. I for one was hyper-enthralled whilst I listened the first time to “Let It Go” and felt directly kidnapped to another sphere by your music. Do you guys listening privately to bands of that genre, like Fleet Foxes, Midlake or Bon Iver, too? Can you name a few fave albums or musicians you currently love?
We love all of those bands, as well as classic artists like Neil Young, Nick Drake, Simon & Garfunkel – on tour we listen to everything from Air to Sigur Ros to Elliott Smith to Ravi Shankar – we love all music really.
There is a little mystery already around the aura of your band. Usually I don’t have problems, finding all the press released material of a band. About “Fossile Collective” it is different. When you try figuring out more about of your guys’ music, you land on a website on which a fairytale’s folded page is popping up and tells a very beautiful story in that awesome handmade video “Let It Go” from your recent released EP. And the other info is your current tour-date list. So, the music and your tour-dates. That’s your website. Neither to find any band-bio-legend or something of a self-made Band-hype, only honest music. Is that your band’s mantra in general, to want convince by your music rather than by looks or styles? How you guys got known each other and where was the band found?
We have all been friends for a while now, and have all played toether in various bands over the years from the Leeds Music Scene. For us it is all about the music and we do like to keep a certain sense of mystry about us – the songs are much more important to us than the shoes that we are wearing.
Your EP “Let It Go” includes five songs and was released last month in June. Your video Let It Go does have almost 100,000 visitors.That’s already fantastic success for this fresh young release. And a sign that many people love your track. Can you remember what the inspiration was to write this beautiful song and its lyrics? And who made that artistic and stunning video with all its symbols as metaphors?
The song means a lot to us and the lyrics have some references to our past that some people who knew us before Fossil Collective have picked up on. Our previous band ended quite suddenly and there was a lot of bad feeling going around as we put our hearts into it – although the song is not directly about that there are a lot of lines in the song that can be interpreted as such and I think we indirectly had this in mind when we wrote the song.
The video is done by a good friend of ours called Ash who was in a very successful band from Leeds called ILikeTrains – it is all stop/start animation and it took him nealry 6 months to make – it was a ‘labour of love’ (Liebesdienst …I hope this phrase translates OK)
Your recent tour-dates are mostly located in the UK. Do you plann in the next time touring through other European cities?
We are hopefully going to come over to Europe in Novemeber to promote our next EP as well as some gigs in America and Australia – fingers crossed.
When you’re going to write lyrics. Which style your prefer writing about? Something what is fiction or something what happened personally to you as sources of inspiration? How you get your ideas for writing lyrics?
A lot of the songs are loose interpretations of things that have happenned to us, but we like to be quite abstract about it so people can enjoy the song and interpret it in their own way. Sometimes we write together and sometimes we write the lyrics alone – there is no set pattern really.
Is an upcoming album of Fossile Collective planned? Maybe in 2013?
The album will be coming out early 2013 with another EP coming before this out in October 2012.
