Name: De Staat
Members: Torre Florim, Jop van Summeren, Vedran Mircetic, Tim van Delft, Rocco Hueting
Interviewee: Torre Florim

Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer, guitarist
Current release: De Staat have just released a trilogy of colour-coded releases: Red, Blue, and Yellow. 

If you enjoyed this interview with De Staat and would like to find out more about the band, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.

To keep reading, we recommend our earlier De Staat interview.



The way I understood it, hip hop as a way of approaching production played a vital role in your early development. What did it bring to the table?

I was putting kick and snare samples in patterns, and adding samples of guitar’ish sounds, to create something that would kind of sound like a rockband. I could then put those patterns in a certain order, to create a song-like structure. It sounded very repetitive, and a bit unusual for rock songs, as you would expect. But that made most songs feel hip hoppy from the beginning.

I got pretty deep into producing music on the computer from an early age, which is why I think I was able to produce and mix at a fairly early age as well.

The drum sounds on all De Staat records still seems extremely important. It's a really creative element, in fact. On “Sweatshop”, the percussion actually literally sounds like a machine …



Yeah, that’s my thing I guess. I’ve always been very rhythm based in my songwriting. I probably start with a beat  90% of the time. And most of those times that beat should be at least a little bit unusual.

If the beat is a bit weird from the start, you’re in a good place, I think.

What was your very first studio like?

I got lucky that as a thirteen year old kid I got my hands on a computer program to write music, while being in my first rockband. So I was producing demos in a list based tracker program called ‘Scream Tracker 3’, which was way more suitable for dance and hip hop.

I made the beats with all samples I could find, or made samples myself. I used the mic of the webcam to sing and record guitars.

When I made De Staat’s first album Wait For Evolution, it was all recorded on the thickest and noisiest laptop, with a cheap Edirol interface with 2 preamps. The drums on that album are all samples (‘drumkit from hell’), but I masked that by adding real percussion and claps and stuff.



How and for what reasons has your set-up evolved over the years?

In the years after that I wanted to get to the point where we had enough inputs, preamps and mics to record everything we do at the same time. So most of the stuff you hear on the latest 3 albums is recorded live, simultaneously.

Now we’re at the point that we have our own studio, which consists of a 10x8m room, where we stand in a circle, as we rehearse and / or record. My computer and speakers are in the same room, so we can switch easily between recording and listening / mixing.
 
I’m not a big gear head to be honest, I don’t like using outboard gear, because I am lazy and I like to work fast. So when I have an idea, I don’t have to connect cables, re-amp or do time consuming things to get where I want to be.

Usually all the mics in the room stay in the same place. Some of ‘em have fair amount of dust on them, because I never touch them. (laughs) Depending on what I’m recording I decide which mics I ‘turn on’.

What are currently some of the most important pieces of gear for you?

I guess a fast computer is most important to me right now, so I can run plenty of plug-ins if needed. Good distortion plug-ins are really important to me, because I use a lot of it. The good ones can give a immense amount of character to something. I love the UAD studer and RAW plug-in. Decapitator.

What else, in terms of hardware?

I do love my two Coles ribbon mics (4038), I use those for everything that needs some room sound: drums, percussion, backing vocals.

I do have good preamps, a lot of Neve style, some APIs, UA: basically all kinds. Mostly because I didn’t have an idea which ones I should get - or what the difference was - so I decided to get different styles of preamps. That gave me time to figure out which I liked better. And to be honest: I still don’t give a fuck.

I don’t care about old, new, cheap, expensive guitars either. It totally depends. I like to mess up sounds anyway, and some ‘shitty’ guitars can sound fantastic for something.

Have there been technologies which have profoundly changed or even questioned the way you make music?

Splice can be that. I have used that a couple of times for R/Y/B. Sifting through loops until something captures your imagination can be fun. Or especially when you have made something, and you don’t where to go. It can be fun to throw a couple of random loops on there to see what happens. I rarely end up using any of the loops, but it always gives me an idea of where to go with the song.

In the pandemic I was in the studio for months, and it was easy to get bored. These kinds of things are great to push through the boredom.

What, would you say, are  things that work better in a smaller set-up and what things work better in a environment with more options and less limitations?

Small setups usually mean that you have to record in layers, because there’s no room for a full band setup. Recording in layers is cool, because you have a lot of control over the sound: you can add anything that’s needed for the moment.

I do find it sometimes creates a dull energy, because you are missing that little bit of chaos of a group playing together. Different people have different timing, and together that creates an interesting sounding dynamic: which is hard to recreate when you’re layering sounds. So I do find that for us, recording live is important, it does create a certain energy that’s unique for bands.

And since there are less and less bands, I want to emphasise the fact that we are a live band, and so record it live as well. That’s what makes us unique. When mixing or making demos, or adding sounds or whatever, small spaces can be fun and convenient. I love going into a holiday home and make something there.

Usually when that happens the space can be acoustically less good though: I then tend to use different (or no) speakers and different headphones to get a sense of what it actually sounds like. Or check it out in the car etc.

So what's your verdict on the balance between limitations and infinite possibilities?

I do believe you can make a cool record with anything. Limitation breeds creativity. Sometimes a big studio with a lot of stuff can be numbing as well. And feeling good is more important than having a lot of stuff when you’re making something.