bleistiftrocker.de asked singer Renaud Brustlein alias H-Burns some questions via e-mail. These are the original answers in English.
Hier geht es zur deutschen Version des Interviews.
bleistiftrocker.de: Why did you decide to record the new album on your own?
H-Burns: I started working on the demos for the new songs, and then I thought, what if I didn’t ask for the help of a producer on this one? I had a clear idea of how I wanted it to sound, and I wanted to keep it intimate, some sort of chamber music maybe.
Rob Schnapf even made it onto one of your promo pics. What part did he play in the making of „Kid We Own The Summer“?
He threw in his fresh ears and his experience and advice, I sent him the demos, and then didn’t send him anything until I flew over to his studio in Los Angeles, so his ears were still fresh when mine were not! He added his west coast touch on the mixing sessions.
What’s the difference between „Kid We Own The Summer“ and your older albums?
I’d say it is a little more produced arrangement-wise, it has strings, pianos, keyboards, and the way I sing it is way more quiet than before. Some say it is more mature, that sounds about right
The album contains many melancholic short stories. Where did you find the inspiration for them?
From my living experience for some of ‘em, there is an autobiographic side of the short story, others came from what I observed from my friends lives, and some came from movies; I went through a deep Teen Movie phase while writing it, and was looking for a way of describing the loss of innocence that comes when you’re out of your teenage days, when you grow up.
On „Kid We Own The Summer“, sometimes the music sounds much more positive than the lyrics do. Did you do that on purpose?
Yes, i do like mixed feelings, mixed signals. I find it interesting that you can have different „reading“ levels in one song. If you don’t pay attention to the lyrics, it might sound like a dance along song that you’d play in a party, but then you listen to the lyrics and you find out that it is really depressive.
What role does the beatbox play in the songs?
I used an old organ with a drum machine for the demos. I like these vintage drum machine sounds; the studio we worked in was a drum machine museum, who we used some of ‘em to keep the spirit of the demos, and the drummer played along to it.
The question that remains after listening to the album: Is the woman on the cover walking towards dusk or towards dawn?
I kind of like to keep that question open. To me it is dusk, to some people it is dawn. I like not to have a proper answer to it; Maybe it is both, depending of your mood, or depending if it is the beginning or the end of the record.
Is there a chance to see you perform in Germany during the next months?
Yes we are working on it at the moment, and are in touch with a booking agency there. We played Berlin and Reeperbahn two years ago and we loved it.