Homogenising the bands past, present and future to mould a new era of Textures, Phenotype the bands new release, will see them breaking more new ground in the arena of Progressive Metal. Focusing the album’s thematics to mirror the conceptual idea of both genotypes and phenotypes, each one respectively reliant on the other in order to survive. One about origin another in a sense about destination. Explaining in more depth to us shortly before flooring London I was able to speak to time keeper extraordinaire Stef Broks about Textures’ past, present and very bright future.

Listen to the full recording below on our Soundcloud page or read through the transcript below!

Today we have with us Stef Broks with us of Textures, so the classic question. How has the tour been going?

Tour is going well! Thats the boring question and the boring answer haha! I’m still surprised that after so many years for us, its like fifteen years already, five albums… There’s still fans and people coming to our shows, we’re not the biggest band of course, we’re also not the smallest band. There are still a lot of dedicated fans throughout Europe, USA, India and Australia coming to our shows. I’m still feeling flattered if dedicated people come to our shows and know what we are about, you know lyrics musically, that sort of stuff. That means that the tour is going well!

Good! What is it like to actually play new material after five years?

Its new haha! Its refreshing! We have a lot of new band members, well a lot, one very new band member and two kind of new members, who for the first time wrote with us on the album. Playing it live with them feels like a refreshing moment. Playing with young people that have new energy, that feels great! For me myself I always put the level a bit higher every album. This album is a bit more daring, due to the double bass parts. For this album I kind of had to train to play the parts and its not the hands that are too difficult for me, those are ok, everyday! The legs for me are really tough, I’m quite ok with playing weird patterns and stuff but the long (double bass noise) parts, I’m just not good at it! So I had to train, especially for Metal drummers its a piece of cake but for me because I used to play with different kinds of techniques. Every single performance, single gig, feels hard and that I really have to work for it but thats why I am on tour. I want to have this challenge every night. If there is no challenge for me there is not much to gain!

What about fans, what have fans reactions been like to Phenotype?

From the fans the reaction is really great! Thats also a kind of cliche answer but most fans react really positively to the fact that we again wrote more extreme music in the past. Like on the first album Polars and the second album Dark Circles. Especially with the fourth album, previous album Dualism we wrote a bit more mid tempo kind of songs. Now its all over! Mid tempo kind of songs but also thrashy blast beat kind of stuff and also atmospheric kind of stuff so every Textures fan can feel related to this album. It all comes together and thats how it feels and maybe thats how it feels for band and the fans together.

Like you said, I’ve noticed that especially “Oceans Collide” is really fast and in your face, then you’ve got songs like “Illuminate the Trail” which is a bit more relaxed a bit more Proggy? Was that something that you wanted to do to appeal to fans from the heaviest spectrum…

We never write for fans. Its kind of cool that they dig our music but we write music for ourselves and we just put out the stuff that we have to create. Its sort of urge but not intentionally a sort of direction or something. Metal is the music that we like to put out but it can be in a Death Metal style, it can be more Deftones like, it can go anywhere actually. We feel related to loads of things that diverge from every part, ever corner in the Metal genre to Soul music to Pop music to Classical music and Soundtrack music! Whatever music!

What was it like incorporating the new guitarist Joe Tal?

He’s a great guy, he’s very relaxed, funny and very friendly guy. Almost a bit shy but he’s not! He can play, he has the skills! He is a monster in Jazz and the funny fact is he has a Pop encyclopedia in his head, he can name a song from the eighties and nineties and he will play chords. He will play the solo on top of it even sometimes he puts some vocals on it. You can do a big quiz on it! “Joe Tal! Another Bites The Dust!”, oh no wait thats a bass track haha! Thats just a funny fact but for Textures he is a perfect match. Besides Jazz and Pop and that kind of thing he’s very much into our kind of Metal. The thrashy downstroke, technical, mathy part the polyrhythmic kind of stuff and on top of that he can do solos! Our former guitar player Jochem, he was not so much into playing leads and solos anymore but Joe is! All over, so thats great to have new melodies and solos and to be back on track with that part of Textures. A bit of Polars and a bit of Dark Circles!

So what was it like actually writing the album then?

It took a fucking long time! I’m sorry people, it took a long time so we were kind of worried, we’re so democratic that every decision goes through like six people (snores). In the end, Phenotype and Textures is the band 100% a mix of six people writing music. Everyone in the band writes music, Remko the bass player sometimes writes classical kind of guitar parts that we use as a riff. Sometimes I write vocal parts, Bart and Uli write drum parts besides their own instruments of keyboards and drum parts. Everybody writes for everybody and everybody writes parts of songs, theres definitely six people writing on the material. There is hardly any band that I know that really do that and it takes a long time and really sucks for fans and for us sometimes as well. In the end the outcome is so great for yourself, for us as a band its just one hundred percent.

So you’ve got a common understanding all the time?

No! We have not and thats the thing! We have to search for that understanding but we respect each other so much, it sounds a bit gay but we respect each other so much that we really listen to each others ideas. When somebody has an idea, we have to understand it before. Right at the spot, there is a kind of “What do you mean with that part?” you have to search for it! You have to search what the intention is for that very part and then put it in the song or twist it to work it out but thats the puzzle, thats Textures! Its quite interesting because the outcome is always like a perfect puzzle that we solved with a zillion pieces and like “Woah!”

Finally you can look at it…

Yeah that feels great! In Holland a lot of people used to have a puzzle of this big painting The Nightwatch from Rembrandt, its like a national icon in Holland. You know the painting right? 

Yeah, yeah! 

And theres a lot of people put together having this famous puzzle that exists of one or two thousand pieces and thats how it feels.

But for one album! 

Yeah! You’re busy like a lot of time putting those pieces together and finally you can overlook it and then you have The Nightwatch and you can hang it on the wall, wow! Although we are not Rembrandt! 

Not quite yet! What about themes on the album, it feels like there is quite a scientific theme going on? 

Yeah, biological theme but its a metaphor for the two albums that we wrote. The theme actually does not relate to the music itself, it doesn’t relate to the lyrics but more to the concept of having a first album and then having a second album that are related to each other. 

Thats why you’ve got Phenotype and Genotype…

Yeah, its a biological term for, its hard to explain in English. 

The physical attributes of someone isn’t it?

We have two albums together, one of them is Phenotype and the other one is Genotype that comes out later. Phenotype is the one just released. The genotype of an organism is the root kind of material of genes that an organism exists of. The phenotype of that very organism is how the genotype is shown after a while with all the input from its surroundings. So on Genotype there is the root material of what we started with, five years ago, the root material. Musically the first pieces that we wrote are on that album but with the same very material we also started to write some different material. The funny thing is that the Genotype material, we put that together, its become a very long track but that same material ended up on Phenotype then ended up in songs just like a regular album that we put out. An album with eight or nine tracks, I hope you can still follow me man! 

Of course, of course! 

I’m actually explaining this for the first time in English, its kind of tricky! 

Is Genotype already written then? 

Most of it! Again we’re always so critical its not yet finished but we will record it probably the beginning of 2017 so next year and it will be released probably by the end of that year. So between Phenotype and Genotype one and a half years.

Digest the music.

Yeah, Genotype will be hard to listen to I guess because it is more Proggy than this album and it has a very long attention span. Its going to be a track of forty, forty five minutes for the conoisseur! How do you translate that into English?

Its the same word haha! 

Some people will not understand it and thats fine. Its more like a kind of soundtrack album, very long attention span as I said and its not a Pop or Rock kind of trick. 

On “Zman” and “Timeless” it comes into this sort of cinematic feel. Is that slowly moving into what Genotype is going to sound like?

Yeah but the set up of “Zman”, its a hebrew word by the way! 

Zman (pronounced zehmann) not Zee man oh ok! 

Zeemen haha! “Zman” is a hebrew word because we have two guys from Israel in the band. They speak hebrew fluently, they still have kind of poppy structure but Genotype will be stretched out even more than these tracks from Phenotype. 

Ok, so what is this year going to hold for Textures?

A lot! Its kind of weird man, we have new management from Holland and the guy is actually a good friend of ours and it all worked and we’re kind of surprised. We exist for fifteen years already, we know what there is to expect. We know what there is to gain, we know how it works business wise. We know all about tours, putting out an album and now this guy comes in and he is actually able to put us on a higher level touring wise I mean and promo wise. Its kind of weird because we have already set the standard for what would be our maximum. “Ok next album is coming out, we’re going to do that, that and that and thats it!” then I come and “Oh but we can also do this and that and that” Woooah.

I just got kids, Remko just got kids and Joe also and everybody lives in a good house and has everything solved and this guy comes in and says now we can put everything to a new level guys! We can go to America, we can go to South America, we can go to Australia we can go to India and we’re going to do a European tour twice. OK! So we have to get everything together so for this year tour wise we can do everything we want on a proper level and that feels great but its kind of tricky because we have to match home and the band! USA will be there, Europe will be there. We’re going to tour across Europe, like ALL across Europe even to…

Greenland! 

Haha that’s Europe still, not Iceland not Greenland and not Spain but for the rest we are going everywhere for a month long with Amorphis so Europe is going to be there but probably India, Israel, South America too and Australia is waiting for us too I hope! When we set out this whole Textures plan, we were like when we finally reach Australia then we’ve made it! On the other hand its like the end of an era. If we make Australia, woah! man then maybe its over?! Whats the next level? Greenland haha?! I hope that we can finally go there because a lot of befriended bands went there already. How do you call that?

Put it on the back burner?

Yeah because its not our primary market but with this album I guess its going to work out! 

Going back to the actual material on the album “Meander” is it? 

The drum part!

I was going to ask what inspired that? 

Its an idea that I have had already since the era of Silhouettes, thats 2008. Of course I am familiar with the Brazilian drums or Swiss drum ensembles that sound actually very hyped up and I thought ok I can put this in a more Metal kind of context and the idea grew and grew and grew but I never picked it up to actually put it on an album! Now the time was right that I thought now is the time to do this and the funny thing is that the idea was so far in my head that it was a really big thing to put the music together. The thing grows in my head like “Lament Of Icarus” or like “Singularity”. It already exists in my head and the work is almost done so to write it down or play it is a piece of cake.

“Meander” was kind of easily written, I had some company from Juma my good friend who plays drums in Exivious and some other projects and we got those seven drummers together and worked it out with a lot of percussion. Percussion is not the right word maybe because its just trash that I got from the landfill sort of. It was a big container of Metal and there was a lot of shit in there actually! It was really filthy! I picked out the Metal kind of things, I was there with a drumstick. So I was there ping! OK sounds great! We brought those into the studio, put those drums together and played the track. The actual idea was to have Mario from Gojira, Matt Halpern from Periphery and Drew from Karnivool, playing along with the track but we were too late to have those guys. Matt and Mario already said yes to the plan but maybe put it on video. The seven guys together, play the track and Mario can contribute from New York where he lives now.

With a dustbin lid or something!

Hahaa I dunno, with a dildo haha! I dunno something like that! It would be great to have those guys together maybe even more but the idea is still growing just like the basic thing of “Meander” is. 

What about the Progressive movement. This is a pretty charged question but how far do you think you can push the envelope? 

Textures you mean?

Yeah Textures! 

It depends on how people see the term Progressive for us the term means that we set new standards for ourselves but maybe other times for other people it doesn’t mean the same. Dream Theater is still called progressive music and thats ok because they still write albums with a sort of different angle but this whole Progressive Rock or Progressive Metal term sometimes means nothing because the band sounds the same with each album. So I think that Progressive means that for yourself you set new standards and you choose another angle.

How far we can go? I don’t know! It depends on the human body, I’m totally good with that! Some people see it like that in terms of speed and skills, arpeggio kind of things but I don’t think its very progressive. Maybe the whole idea in Metal with distorted guitar and double bass in itself is not very Progressive but very conservative already, I dunno! Its an old idea and we are still inventing a new string. An eight string guitar and now a nine string guitar, is that very new? Yeah its new but the whole concept itself is old. Theres just tiny, tiny new shifts in the scene and I still like it but I don’t know if you can call it progressive actually and thats not a big deal thats ok! 

So Regressive Metal…

Hahaha Yeah! 

So finally what has been album that you have been listening to for the last six months, maybe a year? 

Let me check on my iPod. When Joe our guitar player brought his banjo with him I showed him a track that was on iPod a live record from John Denver. “What the fuck? John Denver you mean that guy from Country road take me home. Yeah, that guy!” I think an evening with John Denver is one of the greatest live albums ever made. 

Why is that?

Because the ambience is so great. Its just a country singer with a guitar singing and a band behind him, a huge audience and its a record from the seventies I guess but the ambience, the vibe is so great and the guy just nails that. Besides that, lets check! Oh yeah, yeah! The best album of 2015 for me is The Dear Hunter with Act Number IV. It such an eclectic album and what strikes me is that no one knows that album and the band!

This guy is just like genius. Queen, Yes, Ben Howard kind of guy all together. The music, its a bit musical-esque but it goes in all directions even film score music and this guy just nails it! Its a fantastic album, I mean literally its a great album but its also fantastic in the way that it has a lot of fantasy. I have never heard just one band getting into so many directions in Pop music the last fifteen years. Its a poppy album, I know! Sometimes its even a bit Maroon 5,very catchy but thats ok! 

What about David Bowie’s new album do you like that? 

Oh man thats depressive! I’m so not into David Bowie, that was one of the guys that I always had a feeling like he’s overrated, yeah! 

Hahaha

But I respect the guy and thats maybe one of the few gaps in my musical vocabulary. Because I have a shitload of music since I was young! I listened to everything but David Bowie, no. Then I saw this video of ten minutes…

The “Blackstar” one! 

Then the music and was like OK this is more than music, this is art. This has to go into a museum or something but I’m not a connoisseur of David Bowie. I would do a bit of harm if I speak about it because I’m not the right guy actually but the last video I thought it was a piece of art. 

Perfect! Well thank you ever so much for speaking with us! 

That was fun!