Your name:
Louie Bo Charles
IV (bass guitar).
Where are you from?
Where are you from?
Auckland, New
Zealand.
Name of band:
Vessel.
Who else is in your band?
Who else is in your band?
Elmo Strauss (guitar/vox). Drummer pending (Friday Drive EP was recorded w/ Alfons Peeters)
How would you describe yourselves?
Well, I could start with poorly dressed, over-polite, awkwardly nervous, fairly educated and somewhat hairy but exceedingly handsome individuals who have grown up on great music. But really, Elmo and I share a very similar musical palate and together attempt to bring joy to ourselves and others with raucous noise whilst trying to keep the rock n’ roll flame alight by remaining unaffected by the pitfalls of trends and clichés. We also both have a really weird sense of humour that keeps us grounded and others guessing.
Who are your main influences musically?
I tried to answer this question in our debut interview (this is our second) and found it really difficult. We both grew up being influenced by the likes of Michael Jackson, that phase was rudely interrupted by Nirvana, which was then disturbed by metal acts such as Pantera. But the subsequent phases are too numerous and pointless to continue, so this time I will try to describe Vessel as a mixture of five bands - Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, The Datsuns, Kings of Leon and Led Zeppelin.
What do you hope to achieve in music?
I suppose it is to achieve harmony between the ying and yang or the selfish and the selfless elements of making music. What I mean by that is avoiding going down the road of forgetting our roots and the people who have supported us from the beginning but also tending to our own ambitions and not letting the sometimes arduous side of making music diminish our love and drive for what we do. I think our Friday Drive EP is a good start because we aimed to replicate how we sound live and not disguise the blemishes with production tricks i.e. we left the bells and whistles at the door.
What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
This is also a curly one but once we started gigging as Vessel we had gone further than we had ever thought as young and impressionable musicians, so I would have to say right now. We have just released our debut EP and have a legend of a publicist from Last Libretto Music helping us get our music to the likes of yours truly so it is a really exciting time for us. The only thing that stopped the momentum was the unfortunate departure of the well-loved Alfons Peeters (drums) due to our country’s bullshit bureaucratic sinkholes. That was a spanner in the works but it did give us time to put a bit of time into structure and planning which had never been one of our strongpoints. Cheers Brent!
And what’s the moment you want to forget?
For me it was in a previous outfit called Mister Lastboat (a covers band I played in with Elmo) where I accidentally spilled bourbon down the grill of my amp which fried the circuitry and left me fairly red faced.
I don’t want to answer for Elmo but I would say it would be staring Friday Drive without tuning back up to Standard from drop D. The embarrassing thing was that he didn’t notice for quite some time. Poor Elmo, we both tried to blame it on Fons but he was too smart a creature.
If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
Friday Drive – I think this is a song where we have tried to bring everything to the table and have kind of got it. The recording is fairly true to how we play it live so I imagine it sounds pretty epic on the other side of the FOH speakers.
Where can we listen to it?
How would you describe yourselves?
Well, I could start with poorly dressed, over-polite, awkwardly nervous, fairly educated and somewhat hairy but exceedingly handsome individuals who have grown up on great music. But really, Elmo and I share a very similar musical palate and together attempt to bring joy to ourselves and others with raucous noise whilst trying to keep the rock n’ roll flame alight by remaining unaffected by the pitfalls of trends and clichés. We also both have a really weird sense of humour that keeps us grounded and others guessing.
Who are your main influences musically?
I tried to answer this question in our debut interview (this is our second) and found it really difficult. We both grew up being influenced by the likes of Michael Jackson, that phase was rudely interrupted by Nirvana, which was then disturbed by metal acts such as Pantera. But the subsequent phases are too numerous and pointless to continue, so this time I will try to describe Vessel as a mixture of five bands - Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, The Datsuns, Kings of Leon and Led Zeppelin.
What do you hope to achieve in music?
I suppose it is to achieve harmony between the ying and yang or the selfish and the selfless elements of making music. What I mean by that is avoiding going down the road of forgetting our roots and the people who have supported us from the beginning but also tending to our own ambitions and not letting the sometimes arduous side of making music diminish our love and drive for what we do. I think our Friday Drive EP is a good start because we aimed to replicate how we sound live and not disguise the blemishes with production tricks i.e. we left the bells and whistles at the door.
What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?
This is also a curly one but once we started gigging as Vessel we had gone further than we had ever thought as young and impressionable musicians, so I would have to say right now. We have just released our debut EP and have a legend of a publicist from Last Libretto Music helping us get our music to the likes of yours truly so it is a really exciting time for us. The only thing that stopped the momentum was the unfortunate departure of the well-loved Alfons Peeters (drums) due to our country’s bullshit bureaucratic sinkholes. That was a spanner in the works but it did give us time to put a bit of time into structure and planning which had never been one of our strongpoints. Cheers Brent!
And what’s the moment you want to forget?
For me it was in a previous outfit called Mister Lastboat (a covers band I played in with Elmo) where I accidentally spilled bourbon down the grill of my amp which fried the circuitry and left me fairly red faced.
I don’t want to answer for Elmo but I would say it would be staring Friday Drive without tuning back up to Standard from drop D. The embarrassing thing was that he didn’t notice for quite some time. Poor Elmo, we both tried to blame it on Fons but he was too smart a creature.
If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?
Friday Drive – I think this is a song where we have tried to bring everything to the table and have kind of got it. The recording is fairly true to how we play it live so I imagine it sounds pretty epic on the other side of the FOH speakers.
Where can we listen to it?
Where can we
find out more about your music?
http://www.facebook.com/vesselnz
Anything else you’d like to say about your band/music that I forgot to ask?
Three pieces are where it’s at – no frills, much fuzz and love, Vessel xoxoxoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment