Discover up & coming artists in 10 questions…

10 April 2018

From Belgium here’s VVYNN (read = win). A most promising sonic trio from the carnival
city of Aalst. “Three born-too-late Generation X’ers combining hope, fear and passion on their musical journey” claims the band. A threesome of gifted youngsters to Turn Up The Volume‘s ears, producing amplified guitar pop with a healthy dose of rousing adrenalin, balancing between Kristin Hersch‘s ardent Throwing Muses and Tanya Donelly’s starry-eyed Belly, but less polished. VVYNN’s youthful swagger is injected with passionate vocals, glimmering guitars and a vivacious, pushing rhythm engine. Before talking with Angie (vocals, guitar), Jonathan (drums) and bassist Koen let’s get in the right mood with ‘Sirens‘, an excellent cut from their newest EP…

Hello VVYNN, welcome at Turn Up The Volume!…

1/ What’s the story behind the band’s name and who came up with it?
Angie: “After a long time searching for a band name we liked, I ended up googling ‘celtic names’ (don’t ask me why, I don’t know) and I was sold by the boy-name Wynn. Written in capitals it looks really good and it’s short and powerful. We ended up writing the band name with 2 V’s instead of a W because there is a hotel/resort that’s called Wynn and
they own the rights to distribute music under the name ‘Wynn‘…”

2/ When did you know: “this is how we want to sound, this is what we want to tell”?
Jonathan: “I would say that the sound comes from my experience as a guitar player, especially listening to a lot of grunge when I learned playing the guitar 14 years ago.”
Angie: “At the beginning the overall thought was ‘we want to play rock, hard but still melodic’. We’re still searching for our own signature sound.”
Jonathan: “When It comes to the lyrics, it starts with simple conversations about life.
From these conversations, we always find a good subject to write about.”
Angie: “The lyrics are all a bit dark, a lot of them are about breakups, the fear
of growing older and trying to make sense of our own little world.”

3/ The sleeve of 2016 debut EP CRUMBLE looks poppy and tasty while the tracks are quite raw and vigorous. Any secret connection between cover and music?
Angie: “No, we wanted artwork that was a bit bizarre. At that time we were thinking about shooting a video clip with a lot of food and we bought these old cookbooks with ridiculous menus and pictures of food. Claire who did the artwork just started making collages with the pictures. And that’s why the sleeve of Crumble looks like that.. but, except for the word ‘crumble’, there is no connection with the music.”
Jonathan: “I just really wanted a lobster somewhere in the design.”

4/ Second EP ‘Lux’ sounds more melodic than the first one.
A conscious decision or a natural evolution?
Jonathan: “I think this was a really natural evolution. Since Koen joined the band, it was possible to write songs with an extra layer. Before, the guitar had to play the lower and higher regions which made it almost impossible to do a guitar riff like on Sirens or the break on Shewolf. Now with a really flowing and sturdy bass it is possible to have a different approach to musical creativity.”

5/ I’m always intrigued by records’ artwork.
What is the image of LUX about?
Angie: “Fear and being trapped.”

6/ Which movie would you pick to visualize your music
on a big screen when playing a show?
Koen: “Wow, weird question. I’d go for a David Lynch film, just for the eeriness.”
Jonathan: “Batlle Royal by director Kinji Fukasaku and writer Koushun Takami,
I just love the story. The government forcing youth to kill each other until only
one survives. It’s one against all: life sometimes feels like you’re in a free-for-all.”

Big in Japan…

7/ What’s on the stereo when driving to a gig?
Angie: “I’m not driving so I can’t choose 😉 but I guess most of the time it’s anything but rock music. I actually like to listen to pop music and do some dance moves in the car to get rid of the nerves.”
Koen: “I think we quite match in music taste so everything between jazz and rock, pop, indie. In my car you can also hear the heavier genres like hardcore. Music in my car goes from Django Reinhardt to Nasty.”
Jonathan: Mostly music we don’t play ourselves: GoGo Penguin’s new album is on repeat, Phronesis, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Snarky Puppy’s ‘We Like It Here’ is one of my favorites, Special Others, Lite. So in my case a lot of instrumental music.”

8/ Your number one artist/band to do a world tour with?
Angie:“Patti Smith. Not only for playing shows together but also
because I think she’s a really interesting person to hang out with.”
Koen: “Nothing But Thieves.”

Great company…

9/ If you could go back in time on which artist’s front
door would you knock and ask to have a selfie together?
Angie: “Janis Joplin, the first queen of rock”
Koen: “Django Reinhardt or Jaques Brel.”
Jonathan: “Probably Layne Staley of Alice In Chains.
Not only for a selfie, but to have a jam maybe.”

Vive La Belgique…

10/ What’s the next step for VVYNN?
“The next big step will be a full album but you’ll have to wait for that a little while!
In the mean time, we’ll be playing shows as much as we can.”

Thank you all for this interview!
May the road rise with VVYNN…

Music, maestro, please!
Here’s the LUX EP…

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And… the CRUMMBLE EP

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VVYNN: Facebook