Expatriate - November 2009

Interview with

Ben King (vocals, guitar) and Dave Molland (bass) from Expatriate

Expatriate is an indie rock band, formed 2005 in Sydney, Australia. After a lot of touring and success in their home land the band got Riverman Managements attention who wanted to take them on and managing. In 2008 the band relocated to Berlin, Germany. At the moment the band has just gotten their debut album “In the Midst of This” out in Europe and are currently as special invited guest out on tour with Placebo on their winter production tour.

Reflections of Darkness (RoD): Could you please introduce yourself and tell me what you do in the band?
Ben King: I am Ben King the singer and guitar player in the band Expatriate.
Dave Molland: I am Dave Molland and I play bass in Expatriate.

RoD: How would you like to introduce the band for those who have not heard about it before?
Ben: Well we come from Sydney, Australia; we came to Europe one year ago and moved to Berlin. We came here to release our first record called “In the Midst of This” which was released in Australia a little while back. Now we are finally releasing it here in Europe and touring with Placebo…and here we are in Stockholm.
Dave: That is a brief summery (laughs)
Ben: Yeah (laughs)
Ben: We have been together for 3-4 years now and it´s our second coming I guess it started in Berlin. We have done a lot of touring, played on a lot of festival this summer and last summer, we played in Sweden at the Siesta festival earlier this year and here we are with Placebo back stage.

RoD: I really like your debut album “In the Midst of This” it was first released in Australia in 2007 and now during October it´s released in Europe, what can you tell me about it?
Ben: Well it´s a really good album! (Everyone laughs)
Dave: It´s got 12 songs on it…
Ben: Yeah (more laughs)
Dave: It has an interesting cover, on the front is a red flag but actually if you look closely you can see a shape of a face. I don’t know whether you picked that up but…

RoD: No I have not noticed that?
Dave: Ok
Ben: We were recording it in Seattle in America for two months, we spend the recording with the guy John Goodmanson and we did it in the studio where Nirvana did their last demons and where Foo Fighters did their first two records. It´s really the first Expatriate songs that we have ever done together, I wrote most of it but then there are a few songs on it that are co written with the rest of the band and we are very proud to have it out in Europe, I mean it´s been a long time coming.

RoD: Are you satisfied with the response the album has gotten from media and fans?
Ben: Yeah well especially these shows that we have been playing with Placebo we were not sure how their crowd were going to react to us. We have just toured in France for two weeks and had a whole our own shows and the crowds were amazing! They were really instantly responsive and cheered when we came on stage and afterwards when we went out at the front and we did a little signing session for the persons who had bought our record at the merchandize stand we were signing their CDs and we were getting between like 15 to 70 record sells per night which is really amazing for us who never had that before. So for us the response is really immediate and really, really positive so yeah. I mean the record has only been out for under a month so it´s hard to kind of engage how it´s going in Europe we kind of have to wait and see for that.
Dave: We have been out done a lot of touring and promoting but it´s still a long way to go.
Ben: Yeah there are still early days for us so we are happy to just be doing these shows and have it actually released and everything that comes after this is just a bonus for us, we take it in small steps.

RoD: What is your current favorite song on the record?
Ben:”Blackbird” is my favorite one, it´s one of the first songs that I wrote for Expatriate and I just think it sums up the record nicely. A lot on the record is about feeling isolated and maybe too much within your own head like you are the only person in the world that is experiencing what you are experiencing, but you are not and that is the beauty of life and things. A song like “Blackbird” for me really sums up all those things about that, about losing people and being alone, not being loved and the tragedy of it but moving on.
Dave: I would like to say that my favorite song is “Are you awake?” which is the last track and it´s always my favorite track to play live, we always finish off the set with it and it´s really high energy, it´s pumping. It feels really good to play live and I love the power of it on the record, it finishes off the record nicely.

RoD: I read on your home page that you are currently working on your second album, is there anything you can tell me about it or is it still too early?
Ben: No we have done a lot of demos for it while we are sitting with our laptops, I think it´s definitely going to be a record where we be a lot more creative with the sounds that we make rather than just taken in a light sound of a guitar or a drum kit in a room and working with that. We will be a bit more adventurous with the textures, the sounds and the atmosphere behind the melodies and the more obvious bits of the song and just spice it up. I think probably it will be a bit more of headphone record rather than a live, when you put your headphones on you really hear a lot of things pop up every time you listen to it.

RoD: Was it a tough decision to relocate from Australia to Berlin, Germany?
Ben: No, not really, we were very ready to leave – not because we dislike Australia or anything but we just spent a lot of time and energy on building up a fan base there with what we do. We could have stayed there and become quite comfortable with what we had but I think you have to allow yourself to get out of your comfort zone as an artist and as a collective band. I think that if everyone wants to do it at the same time then you can only have benefits for you because they will push you in a direction where you never would have gone. They challenge you and you could not have done it if you had stayed in Australia.
Dave: Australia is quite deluded, there are twenty million people living there and Europe is vastly bigger and so for us it kind of made sense to move to a bigger place and experience a little more and see how successful we really could be. Given the opportunity I am sure that other bands would have taken it so we feel very lucky to be here.

RoD: How do you like and manage the European weather?
Dave: We talked about this earlier…(we were doing the interview in the bands dressing room and we sat down and talked to Dave about this and that while we waited for Ben to return so we could start the interview - HT)
Ben: We don’t manage it, it´s managing us (everyone laughs) and we try to avoid the worst bits of it and…
Dave: We have bought big coats now
Ben: Yeah and undergarments things…
Dave: Yeah the undergarment (laughs)
Ben: It´s funny we should be up here, we have spent the last couple of two weeks touring around in France. A lot of that was through the South and Paris and Marseille where the weather was warmer and when we get up here it´s dark at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Dave: This is the highest point on the northern hemisphere that we have ever been.
Ben: We have never been this far before and back home in Australia you think of it as a winter wonderland and then when you manage to get up here it´s great, it´s kind of a mystical part of the world. It’s probably not like that to you but to us it´s quite exotic and so far very nice.

RoD: Yeah well it´s still very special to us too – especially when it´s snowing at least for me it´s very special to just stand still and experience the silence of falling snow.
Ben: I can definitely see that.

RoD: What drives you and makes you keep working with music?
Dave: To just have a passion of being creative and kind of using music to touch people weather energetic in a fun way or on a deeper level with the lyrics or what you do. Especially when you start to become successful and people start to listen to your music more I think that kind of feeds back to you and you realize that you are really blessed to be here. To do what you do and have that effect on people around you that is why you love what you do. I think if you remember that, if you constantly be inspired to do that for the rest of your life or for as long as you want to.
Ben: For me it´s life and death, I could not do anything else than making music really. I did not always realize that but when I did realize it then I just never want to do anything else.Struggling because it or if you are making loads of money or it doesn´t mean, but it always helps to be more comfortable with the things you want to do, for me. I think I would feel pretty much dead inside if I were not able to write music. I feel lucky to feel that way because a lot of people don’t know what they want to do with their life. It´s like one day you just wake up and learn this is what I want to do, being in a relationship with someone then you wake up one day and it all just makes sense it´s kind of like that.

RoD: When it comes to influences, are there any bands that you would like to point out to have influenced your music and style?
Ben: Yeah all of us have a different taste in bands; we grew up with a love of Rock´n´Roll music but apart from that Cristo our drummer over there (pointing to the sofa where the drummer is sitting in a sofa on the other side of the room with a computer in his lap- HT.)
Dave: Don’t be fooled by this and waves the drum sticks he had been playing with during the interview this far. (laughs)

RoD: Hm I was a bit fooled (laughs)
Dave: Yeah…(laughs and does a drum solo on his legs- HT)
Ben: It can be him (Cristo) being form a great background; he has a lot of great music in his past. I like a little dance music and electronic music. I know Dave probably likes a little more pop sort of stuff and Damian is more…I don’t know he probably has a more obscure taste maybe, but we all love music that just kind of connects with you in the right way. More specifically for me as a singer I have always enjoyed and loved listening to bands like Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure and Depeche Mode. When you are having male singers speaking about sort of un-male things like you know coming out of the 70´s when there was a lot of loud guitars and dig rock. Then people started to wear make-up, more black clothes and…
Dave: Talk about their feelings.
Ben: It is, I don´t know, it´s kind of romanticizing the darker elements of one´s life – which is quite brave to do I think. I have always appreciated people who do that and what they are talking about like Robert Smith and even Billy Cogan you can tell it just seeps out of them.

RoD: And it means something.
Ben: Yeah, indeed.

RoD: It adds something, it´s not just something to make money or…
Ben: That is horrible.

RoD: Music has to mean something!
Ben: Exactly. I know that is what struck me with those kind of bands, for me as a songwriter and it’s influenced me a lot. There are also some bands that don’t leave you, like what I love about a band like Joy Division – I find a lot of their sounds leave you feeling hopeless in a way like I am not sure I guess that is their intention. I just think there is a ring of…I don’t know even when the world is falling apart life still goes on, sometimes life is like a tiny small boat in this ocean and you feel so lonely. But you just have to keep going and find your way through things and I think that is why we like all the sounds in the kind of bands that we do.

RoD: What or whom inspires you when you write the lyrics/music?
Ben: Just my life, I mean I don’t write from any fiction, I don’t have any fictional character or anything into my songs it´s all about the way my brain interprets what is going on in my life. Sometimes it´s overly dramatic and paranoid and sometimes it is...
Dave: Quite reasonable (laughs)
Ben: Yes reasonable I guess.
Dave: You are usually there (laughs).
Ben:  A lot on this record was written about a girl that I was in a relationship with for a long time, it ended and I… I don’t know I don’t really think about it when I am writing it´s just so very…I find writing music and especially lyrics very…I don’t know it´s totally subconscious. I can’t even tell what I am actually writing about until I finish the song or even listening to it two weeks later and I kind of work out what it all means.

RoD: Do you need to be in a special mood to be able to create or is this something that just flows?
Dave: Ben is the last who is awake when the rest of the lads are sleeping, he wakes when everyone else is going to bed and gets out his guitar.
Ben: It depends, it´s different if we are all writing in the same room, in the rehearsal room and you have a glass of red wine or whatever and it´s late in night and we are yearning then something comes out and it´s usually quite different than to write on your own so. But if I am writing on my own it’s usually…I need to feel like the rest of the world is gone off to bed or something.
Dave: That is cute.

RoD: You are invited as special guests on Placebos winter production tour, how does it feel?
Ben: It feels great, I mean it´s a great honor to be here and especially coming all the way from Australia were a very few bands get to come over to Europe and tour with Placebo at this stage at their career. The thing is that we were invited personally by the band, it was not something of a favor handed to us or anything like that we deserve this because the band they like us as people, they like our music and that is why we are here. They actually came to us after a show that we played with them and said “we just watched you play and we really like you, we dig you guys, would you like to come on tour with us in October-November?”

RoD: Oh cool!
Ben: Yeah so having that and seeing that that was really…quite I don’t know…it was a bit surreal but at the same time we kind of felt that we deserved it and you know we have been working hard and you know if you work hard enough and if you believe in yourself then things start to happen for you. So it´s a mixture of feeling privileged but also we kind of deserved this at this stage so it´s quite satisfying.

RoD: What would you like to say are the biggest differences to be on tour in for example Europe compared to in Australia?
Ben: We find actually that the people that run the venues over here and who puts together the tours tend to…I would say think more highly of musicians (laughs).
Dave: They just take care of you better.
Ben: Normally it´s just in the way they speak to you, they speak to you about what you do and what they offer you when you arrive, it´s just quite practical in its differences.  So let’s say in Australia people will book you to play somewhere and you always have to remind them to get like your drinks when you arrive. They won’t give you any food really and stuff like that makes a difference to a band playing, it can mean the difference between a great gig and just a normal show and people over here they are just they have more of a concept they have a deal with artists.

Dave: We feel much more welcome and we feel more like you want to put on your best show, if we are going somewhere and you don’t really feel welcome, if there is nothing set up for you it´s just like well what is the point, so that is a big difference in playing a show in Europe. I guess the other obvious difference is the size of this place it´s so open, we can like jump into our van and drive to pretty much anywhere and play. But in Australia you can’t really do that because the major cities are kind of so spread out so you almost need to fly everywhere so then it becomes very costly and it´s a kind of pretty hard road to go on in Australia. Because there is a lot of money and not a lot of big venues that we are playing on, but in Europe there are places everywhere you can just kind of get into the bus and go everywhere – you can tour for 6 months so that is really great to be able to do that.

RoD: When you listen to music, what is the most important for you, I mean do you listen and read the lyrics or just enjoy the music part or kind of take it all in at once?
Ben: For me it depends on what mood I am in, if I am in my bedroom listening and reflecting then I like to kind of pick it apart a bit and listen to the parts and the instruments then and kind of take note of what the lyrics are speaking about. But I guess if I am kind of in a party mood or just kind of listening to just enjoy then there is more about the energy of the song, more about the beat and the vibe less than something deeper like the lyrics. It kind of depends on what mood I am in but I am kind of always processing the songs on different levels depending on where I am and what I am doing.
Dave: I don’t know to be honest; I don’t know the answer to that question. I just think when you hear a good song it´s so suggestive it´s yeah I don’t actually know (laughs).

RoD: If you were hit by a car and lie dying on the ground - but you got to sing one song that people would remember you for, a song that would sum up you which song would that be?
Ben: “My Way” by Frank Sinatra
Dave: “Wonderful life” by Black

Thank word to: Ben King and Dave Molland for taken the time to answer my questions and to Elin Hedman on Border for making the interview happen. For more information about Expatriate please go to http://expatriateband.com/ and www.myspace.com/expatriateband

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