Haling from Berlin, Germany, The Ocean are one of the most accomplished and revered post-rock & post-metal acts on the planet having toured with the likes of Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Anathema, Devin Townsend, and many many more. With Volume 1 of their 8th album, Phanerozoic I: Palaezoic released on November 2nd, the band will once again show the world why they remain atop of the progressive music scene. They return to Australia in 2019 as part of Progfest so we caught up with the main visionary behind the band, Robin Staps to find out more on the double Phanerozoic album and what fans can expect on tour.
Andrew: So obviously exciting news here for everyone involved, it’s good to see you coming back to Australia and also with a new album!
Robin: Yeah we are super excited to get back so soon, I think it was 2 years since the last time.
Andrew: Yeah I remember the very first time we talked was right before the very first time you came down to Australia, so I know that you have been here a couple of times now so how have you been finding it in Australia over the years so far?
Robin: It’s been great, since our first tour it’s always been an awesome experience. We love touring the country, it’s very relaxing because it’s such a short mount of shows that you always do. A limited amount of cities compared to the US where you always have to do a 4 week run to make it worthwhile. So it’s comfy and we love Australia, I’ve been there on my own a bunch of times. Driven up the west coast from Perth all the way to Darwin so I’ve been up the country a fair bit. We love touring there, it’s awesome and it’s actually a place I could imagine living in at one point so we feel very comfortable in your country [laughs].
Andrew: Oh that’s good! What was that drive like from Perth to Darwin? That must have been a very long drive!
Robin: It was epic! I took 3 months to do it, I bought a van in Perth and sold it in Broome actually and then I jumped on a 4WD with a bunch of people that I met and did the Gibb river route through the Kimberley and then up to Darwin. It was beautiful, there was a lot of beautiful solitude! Especially on the first part of the trip, I was on my own and just slept in my camper every night and parked randomly somewhere which actually turned out to be quite difficult. I didn’t imagine that but the no camping policies are very strict there so it was a bit of a challenge. But it was great, beautiful, epic nature and just being by myself and driving through these very epic landscapes was an amazing experience.
Andrew: Sure and Europe has it’s own unique landscapes as well so that kind of thing where you have that solitude, does that inspire you in any way creatively with your music?
Robin: Yeah it does. Actually “Precambrian” was basically written in Australia and that was the first time I was over there but I was travelling the east coast at that time and I was going through a pretty rough time in my life. That’s when I had the initial idea to write 3 of the long tracks on the “Precambrian” and “Phanerzioc”, so yes being in places and travelling by myself is exactly the environment when I get creative and write music. Basically all of the last 4 records were written in a place by the sea here in Europe, in Spain. It’s also a place that I always go to write because I have the wide horizons there which is very different from where I live in Berlin where I’m always looking at the next building across the street wherever you are basically. This place is also very close to the sea and whenever I get there I simply get to writing mode, I have to do that. I couldn’t write at home, I never write on tour, I have to put myself into a situation where there’s no distractions and it’s somehow inspiring in regards to the actual environment as well in order to be creative so that works very well for me.
Andrew: So you obviously have a new album out and from what I can gather it’s a double album concept with the second one out I guess next year or the year after?
Robin: It’s going to be out early 2020 but we haven’t set a release date for the second half yet.
Andrew: So was that intentional to keep them split a part like that or was it simply logistics or time?
Robin: Well it’s always that I write a lot of material and by the time we’re ready to hit the studio, there’s always more than we can fit onto a single record and I like to split things up. We’ve done that with “Fluxion” and “Aeolian” where the more orchestral songs ended up on “Fluxion” and the heavier faster tracks ended up on “Aeolian”. “Precambrian” was the same, also with the 2 discs that we had there and now it’s kind of happened again. We just had a lot of material and what ended up on the first half was this very consistent vibe to it somehow so it was clear to me that those songs belonged together and had to be on one half of the record. The material on the second half is a bit more experimental, it still has this vibe somehow but it’s just a little more out there. It’s more intricate songs, longer songs as well and stylistically it’s more diverse. This first record is really reduced and I wouldn’t say minimalist would be wrong which is within the realms of this band but it’s pretty stripped down. We’ve really taken time to get rid of stuff and to really try to focus on what is really the core musical idea here and what else is absolutely needed, and what is not we might as well get rid of.
So that’s what we’ve done with this record, try to think it out a bit in the mix process and there are a lot of parts where we had a great guitar part, drum part, bass part, piano part and cello part but while listening to the whole thing we were like, ‘This is all too much, we have to choose one of them.’ Although all of the voices were great individually, we have to pick one and focus on and emphasize that in order to stay efficient. And that’s what we did with this record more than with previous records, so it is more of a stripped down record and that second half is quite elaborative again.
Andrew: Yeah obviously you guys are known for a lot of the prog kind of stuff with the concepts and all that, I mean is it hard to filter yourself out? Do you have a process for that at all or is it just because of the way you write music?
Robin: I guess it’s the way we write music. I mean as a musician you’re always oscillating between extremes somehow, you reach one extreme and then you’ve put so much effort and thinking into it that you really don’t want to repeat this again. The next record is usually then decisively different and that’s the case here as well. “Pelegial” was a very conceptual record that was written in the studio, a record that was recorded before we ever started worrying about how to perform it live and then we ended up playing the record in it’s entirety for almost 300 shows playing every single song in the same order every night because that’s how the record was meant to be performed. That was a great challenge and I still love doing that but we also got to the point where we got a little tired of it, like OK it would be great to play some older material or to switch around song order and stuff like that which we couldn’t do as we were tied to that concept. So there was a desire to have this next record be a little more loose in a way that, we got rid of the video projections for example and we wanted to make a record where we could also combine within a setlist, older material where the songs would still work somehow. That’s what this new record is, it is a bit of anti-thesis to “Pelegial”. A lot more stripped down, a lot less conceptual but it’s still an Ocean record. I don’t think we’re ever going to make that punk rock record with 4 counts and lyrics that don’t follow any thread, that’s probably not going to happen.
Andrew: [laughs] So coming back to the Australian tour and speaking about the setlists and all that and trying something different rather than the whole album, Is that difficult now with another album, to figure out what setlist you want to do for a tour?
Robin: Not really, the second record is already pretty much recorded. The only thing we still need to do is the vocals so it’s pretty much all there, all the material for both of these records was written over the course of the past 2 or 3 summers and we record drums with everything together this February. So the backbone of the record, or more than that is already there so we just need to finish vocals which is still going to change it a lot because that was the case with this record. A lot of the songs the way I initially felt them is quite different from how they feel now because of the addition of Loic’s (Rossetti) vocals which is great because he has a different perspective on music compared to my own and that’s what really transforms the songs in the end. But apart from that it’s not so much of a headache right now, we’re starting to tour on the first half of the record. We already know how to play all those songs because we did rehearse for the first time ever for a month every day before entering the studio back in January, so we’ve all played all the tracks already so we just need to refresh that basically and we’re very much looking forward to touring the first record.
Part of the reason why we didn’t want to release the second half in 2019 was also to allow ourselves a little more time in not getting to that same type of stressful situation where we ended up like earlier this year trying to finish the first record and at the same time we had this “Precambrian” 10th anniversary tour which was happening right when we were recording the new record basically. So all of that was a bit too much so we were like, ‘Ok let’s take our time on the second half’. There’s going to be lots of touring on the first half and then we still want to have plenty of time to really finish on fine tuning the details for the second half.
Andrew: It should be good to see you back on the road and obviously in Australia as mentioned before. I do want to ask you in regards to your record label, Pelagic Records. We have been well aware of some of the bands you have worked with on this label the last couple of years, what sparked the idea to start this label in the first place?
Robin: Initially Pelagic Records was started because I just wanted to get The Ocean’s 2004 record “Fluxion” re-released and Metal Blade, our label back then, and they still are for CD and digital rights, they didn’t want to do it. So Andreas told me, ‘Why don’t you do it yourselves’, so that’s how Pelagic Records was started. Then I managed to set up a distribution network relatively quickly and the guys at Metal Blade Europe really helped me at the time which I’m very thankful to them and then I started to enjoy that and releasing other bands as well. Our first release ever was God Is An Astronaut’s “All Is Violent, All Is Bright” which was a record that sold well so it was working out financially as well. Then it gradually grew and the first couple of years was a very DIY kind of basic operation and since 2015 we’ve grown a fair bit to a degree where we now release about 15 or 16 records a year and we’re 5 people in a team working permanently for the record label.
So it’s grown from a child to an adolescent I would say, there’s still a lot to be improved. But I just love music from all angles, I’m not the guy who will say I only want to play guitar in a band. I also love the marketing side and management and building a band and promotion and all different sides of the same coin, it’s just something I find very rewarding and I get to work with bands that I absolutely worship that I think are spearheads of whatever sub-genre that they do and whatever sound they created. That’s just a great privilege to be able to work with artists and to bring my own ideas together with theirs and try to build up, so it’s a very fun thing and I’m very happy that it’s worked out the way it did.
Andrew: Yeah it’s a great thing to see and you are also tied with Wild Things Records here in Australia as I know you are good friends with those guys. What’s it been like working with those guys?
Robin: They’re awesome! Eli brought us over for a second Australia tour in 2015 and again in 2016 and now it’s the third time that he’s bringing The Ocean over to Australia. So he’s really helped to build the band a lot down under, very professional and the tour manager on all of our tours. We love him to death, he’s a nice guy and it’s always been great working with those guys. We’re very excited to do Progfest now, it’s a great event that they’ve built up. There will also be a couple of extra side shows as well but we are super stoked to get back there. Eli has also now licenced the record from Metal Blade for Australia for his own new record label which he started last year if I remember correctly so it’s great to have him on that side as well.
Andrew: It’s a good partnership and it obviously makes sense as you have a similarity with each other musically and all that kind of stuff. It’s great to see you back in the country again, we look forward to seeing you once again and congratulations on the new record. We will see you at Progfest next year!
Robin: Awesome, sounds good. Thanks!
PROGFEST TOUR DATES 2019
Saturday, January 26: The Croxton, Melbourne
Sunday, January 27: The Factory Theatre, Sydney
Monday, January 28: The Valley Drive In / The Brightside, Brisbane (Public Holiday)
Tickets and Presale Info from wildthingpresents.com
Side shows shows
Thursday, January 24: Badlands, Perth
Friday, January 25: Jive, Adelaide
Thursday, January 31: Valhalla, Wellington
Friday, February 1: Club Tavern, Christchurch
Saturday, February 2: Gelatos, Auckland
Tix from valhallatouring.com & utr.co.nz (NZ)
wildthingpresents.com (AUS)
