With six million views for their spectacular viral video Witch Doctor and support slots for Muse and the Rolling Stones, Dutch band De Staat remain joyfully uncategorisable. Under the wing of frontman Torre Florim, whose big voice works like a call-to-arms, they flirt with funk and tribal rhythms, introspection and wild humour, owing more to David Byrne or Prince in their musical attitude than any ordinary rock band. And fourteen years into their career, they’re about to launch their new project: (red), (yellow), (blue).
This year there will be no studio album – instead, a mammoth collection of new songs will roll out on digital platforms starting November 4th and throughout 2022. Florim has embraced his band's famous eclecticism to produce rock and roll’s first auditory art project, writing dozens of tracks reflecting the colours of red, yellow and blue.
“We split ourselves up into three primary colours, which is the full spectrum of what we are,” he says. “For us it’s a new chapter. Like any relationship, when you’re together for such a long time you automatically start to look around and think, do we need to spice things up a bit? Dividing our songs up into three colours is a great way to challenge ourselves creatively, and everyone around us. It’s a work in progress – we’re still writing it!”
So how does it work? And what on earth does it look like?
(red), (yellow), (blue) is an experiment in songwriting that sticks two fingers up to the concept of genre. There are so many ways in which people try to describe De Staat’s music and none of them fit… but (red), (yellow) and (blue) are their alternative categories for the various moods of songs they’ve been writing all this time.
“(red) represents a darker, more aggressive part of us, the part of me that writes about ego,” explains Florim. “(yellow) is the music we make that is more upbeat, fun, danceable. (blue) feels more introspective and personal and spacious, songs where I dig into myself a bit more. For (blue), I really sing. (red) is me mostly shouting!”
While other bands are forced to slim down dozens of diverse tracks for a ten-song album De Staat are now able to embrace the breadth of what they do naturally and let the world hear it – but it’s not all coming at once.
On November 4th, the first three tracks – one for each colour – will drop; then after a couple of months, another three. “It’s like a reset,” Florim says. “You get a three-course dinner every few months. And series of big three-course dinners for the next year…” In the long run, as three epic playlists are built up of (red), (yellow) and (blue) songs, it becomes a feast for the senses from the funkiest, earthiest rock band in Europe, in which sight and sound collide.
For your starter this week: Look At Me, the first of the ‘(red)’ tracks, a rollicking satire of rock and roll egotism bellowed out over a crazy, deep-techno riff. “Look at me! I’ve got the same old face! Look at me! I’m still standing on this stage! Look at me! While my hair is falling out! Look at me! While I’m foaming at the mouth!” This is a song about Florim’s place as an artist, inspired by watching the Rolling Stones close-up in Amsterdam ArenA. “They’d been playing the same songs happily for 50 years and I wondered for how long I was going to do this, why do I do this,” he says. “Are people going to watch me age on stage? You could put the lyrics over any performance by any band and it would work: ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ It’s an ego thing…”
The bone-shaking Numbers Up is the first “(yellow)” song. Quoting squelchy eighties funk in playful basslines, and toying with Talking Heads influences, it was written with bandmate Rocco Hueting and his brother Jimmi, also known as the solo artist Jo Goes Hunting. It is another of De Staat’s wry observations on modern psychology – our obsession with statistics, the rise in our heart rate when we see how many ‘likes’ we’ve got, the addictive power of numbers. “Yes, the key to success is more success” Florim cries, sounding amusingly tortured…
The primary-colours idea allowed Florim to focus in on different parts of himself that weren’t necessarily given space to breath in the format of a conventional album. The result of that was the ‘(blue)’ songs – tracks of introspection, tenderness and rich melody, moving in a direction you may not have previously associated with De Staat.
What goes let go is beautifully ‘(blue)’. In a soul voice reminiscent of Peter Gabriel or Seal, over a rich sequence of surprising chords, Florim sings tentatively about the personal and the scientific, the micro and the macro. What does it mean to say I love you, he asks? “Do we choose or does it happen? Is it something else that moves the needle?”
“We are known for our more in-your-face songs, and I love that, but it is also cool to investigate this other area and give it its own stage with the (blue),” he says. You suspect there’ll be a lot more to come.
(red), (yellow), (blue), for all its innovation, is not a statement – it is simply a way of the band embracing their musical diversity. This is a project built for streaming but bringing back some of the visual aesthetics of gatefold vinyl - when we used to pore over album artwork and its sense-impressions were absorbed into the listening experience.
De Staat are – unusually – the very same line-up that met and started playing together as friends in high school: Torre Florim on lead vocal and guitar; Rocco Hueting on synth, guitar and vocal; Jop van Summeren on bass; Tim van Delft on drums and Vedran Mirčetić, also on guitar. (red), (yellow), (blue) was produced by Florim and engineered with Jop Van Summeren at De Staat studios, Jacobiberg. The record was mixed by Andrew Scheps, who received a Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album for his work on Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium, Album of the Year for Adele's 21, and Best Reggae Album for Ziggy Marley's Fly Rasta.
