Cover Photo Credit: Mitch Stoehring
Conic Rose is young band from Berlin who make music in a wide palette involving experimental jazz and art rock. They have been on our radar with their solid debut album, Heller Tag. We reached out to know them better, and they responded in sincerity.
For those who don’t know you yet: Who and what is Conic Rose and how did you guys get together?
We are Bertram, Franzi, Konsti, and Jonny. We are a band from Berlin, collectively writing and producing music that is not easily categorized into genres. Our songs sound like something out of a film with different scenes. Sometimes a techno club in Berlin on a Sunday morning in the sun, sometimes a meditation in Gleisdreieck park, a trip to the lake or in the bustling city.
Your first album, Heller Tag, has been out for a while. Let’s talk about its creation process.
First we collected sketches, loops, wrote melodies or harmonies alone or in a group.
With many different ideas, we then met for longer periods of time in our recording studio in Berlin, at Bertram’s in his WG or at Jonny’s in the studio in the attic to capture the frameworks and moods for each song. In 2021, we got the chance to focus even closer on the songs, since the pandemic had us locked down. That actually helped us in a way.
In the end we found ourselves surrounded by far too much material, so we listened together, cutted, edited and experimented until it slowly became concrete and tangible. It’s a very playful, creative process and sometimes we don’t know how the song should sound until just before it’s finished.
Can you add to the previous question with three key moments in the studio?
In one of our songs Johannes produced drums just with guitar sounds. It became a goal to find new sounds on our instruments we don’t usually use. That was kind of a key moment to me, realizing that anything is possible as long as it is convincing.
For “Uli” we originally recorded a brass section to accompany the entire first part of the song. Later this developed into Bertram recording a lot of guitars through pitch effects and tape delays. We then took away almost all the brass to give the moment an even more open and breathing feel. But a lot of artifacts created by the brass found their way into “Miranda”, another song on our record.
What other instruments and tools did you experiment on for this record?
We love to experiment with sounds and effects.
For example we sampled different trumpet sounds combined with other instruments to make our very own unique fields, drones or pads. That was very exciting.
If you were to handpick the easiest and hardest songs to write and record for this album, which two would you pick?
Every song on this record was a journey for us. Even though the songs “Goodbye“ or “Uli” were happening a lot quicker than “Honeylake“ or “Learn to be cool”. Every song had an easy and a hard phase to it. The intro sample on “Goodbye“ took us longer than creating the bridge on “Honeylake“.
A quick game, no cheating: Reply with the three most recently streamed songs from your library.
“Impurities” – Arlo Parks
“Petals” – Bibio
“Girl Loves me” – David Bowie
Where do you want to be as a band, five years from now?
We want to be on stage with our third album. We want to get out of the jazz box. We want to play at festivals between bands like Bonobo, Portico Quartet, The Notwist, Radiohead, and Cinematic Orchestra. We dream of a loyal audience, so that we as a band can write and play as much new music as possible -and that’s where the money comes in as an annoying but very crucial and door-opening topic.
Hope we can personally meet at a concert here someday. Do you have additional words for our readers?
Love the people, listen to music, order our records on Bandcamp and tell others about it. We would love to play in Turkey because we think there is a very exciting and creative scene for music and art there.
You can check out Conic Rose’s Bandcamp profile here.
