Intergalactic Lovers
Flashback to 2008. Barack Obama is in charge of the US, China is hosting the Summer Olympics and Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ is ruling the charts. In Belgium – more specifically in Aalst – four friends of friends decide to make music together. A year or so later, Intergalactic Lovers achieves its first successes and in 2011, with ‘Greetings and Salutations’, the band records its first album. The press is wildly enthusiastic, the gigs are piling up, the train is rolling…
13 years and two more successful albums (‘Little Heavy Burdens’ (2014) and ‘Exhale’ (2017)) later, singer Lara Chedraoui, guitarist Maarten Huygens, bassist Raf De Mey and drummer Brendan Corbey know each other like the back of their hands as they have navigated many waters together, both professionally and privately. The unbreakable foursome is ready to start the next chapter in the career of Intergalactic Lovers. “We kept a low profile the last two years” Brendan admits, “but we always have to disappear for a while after a tour. From the stage and from each other. Otherwise, you couldn’t keep doing this for 13 years alongside a job, a family…”
The main question at the first band meeting after that break: where do we want to go with the next record? “The strength of our group is that we all want to move forward. We share a healthy ambition and curiosity to keep on evolving,” Lara clarifies. “This time ‘making people move’ came up as a shared prospect.” With that goal in mind, the writing could begin. Normally, this is done together in the rehearsal space. But, as it goes in life, unexpected things happened. Maarten moved to Ireland for personal reasons and Lara was not in a place to work on music for much of 2019. “A new way of communicating had to be found to overcome those different kinds of distance. Eventually, we decided to set up a shared folder where all of us could share basic ideas,” Maarten explains.
That folder filled up rather quickly with more than forty musical ideas. An abundance, knowing that the 11 songs on their previous record originated from some 14 ideas. Great, no? For a band without a clear leader – “dialogue makes our music stronger because we are always looking for the best sum of different parts instead of giving in to the will of one person,” Maarten explains – such an abundance tends to feed indecisiveness. Although the Lovers have no problem being honest with each other – “sometimes you just have to say that you want someone to do something different” – this time it turned out to be a challenge to reach unanimity. Enter the producer.
Lara: “For us, a producer has to play an active role and actually be the bandleader ad-interim. Of course, we have a vision as a band but the blueprints we bring to a producer are always rough cuts. We rely on the producer to guide us, make us see the bigger picture and reinforce our vision with his own. Our search ended with Luuk Cox.” A deliberate choice, the band knew they wanted to get people moving but without getting rid of their distinctive sound. Cox – aka Shameboy – moves in different worlds (electronica, pop, indie…) and always knows how to bring them together seamlessly. It’s a giveaway to say that the new record sounds more electronic than what most people would expect from the group but it ultimately feels like a logical evolution, a hybrid transition into new territory.
With the producer set and ideas forged, the decision was made to record in Malta – since the band likes to create a vacuum away from home. That would’ve been the plan, apart from the last unforeseen circumstance: COVID-19. Exit travel plans. The group decided to go to Wallonia with Luuk instead. A little less exotic but certainly just as inspiring. COVID had another side effect, however, because Lara was hit hard by it. “It was intense, the rehabilitation is still going on. In the studio I immediately noticed that my voice could no longer cope with what used to be possible. I could sing less long, less steady… Singing is what I do… If it suddenly stops, it is extremely frustrating. I would get worked up about it, but that only made it worse. My band members and Luuk had to exercise a lot of patience. I had to go through a learning process again and especially had to persevere and not give up.”
The result of working with Luuk, practising patience, persevering and keeping ‘the movement vision’ in mind is called ‘Liquid Love’. It is a record that turns previous comparisons like Interpol or Feist upside down and brings other, new sounds to the foreground. A record that sounds familiar and fresh at the same time. A record about change and how to embrace it. A record about love, in all its forms. A record about time and its relativity. A record about the nonsense of perfection too, because perfection is stillness in a world where everything is always in motion. ‘Liquid Love’ is the next step towards the healthy ambition that Intergalactic Lovers have been pushing for four albums (“world domination”) and the key to their return to the stage and the audience. Not a day too soon!
