Tell us about your new album ‘Ooh Aah Aah’?
Our album OOH AAH AAH was recorded over the course of last year. We really had the time to make everything sound exactly the way we wanted it to. I’m very glad I met Michael Badger last summer because he gave our album the finishing touch it needed. And he’s from Melbourne!
The idea for the title came from the opening track ‘Borderline’ which starts with ‘ooh aah aah’. We actually had a different title in mind but it was my dad who came up with the new concept and artwork and we loved it.
What’s your favourite work at this point in time?
Definitely this last record! We try to make everything we release the ‘best thing we have done so far’. My favorite songs are the poppy ones. I wrote all of the songs but the other band members have added such amazing stuff I’m actually planning to start writing with them for the next album.
Tell us a quick, on the road or studio, anecdote.
We love to make stuff up. Like Ruben actually made up a city called ‘Erwijten’ which sounds like an actual Belgian village. So in the studio we would be talking about this town all day in a very serious manner. I actually sent him a postcard from Erwijten to take the joke to the next level. It sounds really stupid but you had to be there.
We also had a lot of fun recently in London, speaking fake Swedish on the tube and in the streets. If you speak Flemish with a Scandinavian accent it actually sounds like that for people who are not from Sweden. We were given the look of death in the London Underground by multiple people, as you’re supposed to shut up there. But that didn’t stop us!
What, or who, inspires you?
I love The Beatles, The Beach Boys, David Bowie and all the other classics. Too many to sum up…
But two women I really look up to are Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga.
Amy is one of the most talented artists from the past decades, I’m still devastated I never got to see her live. She’s my favorite musician ever!
Lady Gaga might be a weird choice for someone like me, but I absolutely love her. She is one of the best pop performers out there today. She writes her own music, which is amazing. I saw her live for the second time a couple of weeks ago and it has totally cured my writer’s block I’d been having these past few months.
Which song do you wish you wrote?
I’m proud of my own songs, but there’s definitely a lot of songs I’m jealous of:
Back to Black – Amy Winehouse
God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
Crimson and Clover – Tommy James & the Shondells
And many more…
What’s next for you?
We love playing music and we have so much fun together. We just want to become very big, we want to sell loads of albums and we want the world to hear our music.
What’s your scene?
I don’t really feel like we belong to any scene. We are our own scene :-)
The Spectors release their second album ‘OOH AAH AAH’ on Friday 30th March. It will be available in various formats, including digital, limited white vinyl and cd. It features ten songs plus one bonus track, Clyde & Bonnie, a 2016 Record Store Day 7” release. It was recorded at Hightime Studio (Thomas Valkiers) and Deaftone Studio (Jannes Van Rossom) in Belgium and mixed at Jaya Jaya Music in Melbourne by Australian Michael Badger of The Demon Parade, best known for his work with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
First single ‘Borderline’ inspired the album’s title with its ooh’ing and aah’ing, the London-set song tells a tale of sushi and love gone wrong. Borderline will feature a video by Frederic Vanhalst and Didier Lenglaert.
Founded in 2012 by Marieke Hutsebaut, The Spectors’ demos soon caught the ear of Chris Urbanowicz, formerly of Editors. Chris produced the Belgians’ self-titled debut EP (2014) and full album Light Stays Close (2015). The band went on to perform at various indie festivals, including Dour, Pukkelpop and Leffingeleuren, and were hand-picked by Kevin Shields to support My Bloody Valentine in the hallowed grounds of the capital’s Ancienne Belgique.
After a particularly busy Summer, with the other band members eager to strike out on their own, Marieke decided to put The Spectors on hold. Looking to the future, she started writing material for a new album and experimenting with different line-ups, in the end settling on a return to dreampop basics and a quartet.
If anything, The Spectors sound even poppier – yet edgier – than before. Indeed, the sparkling music sometimes belies the lyrics, as Marieke chronicles her life with Asperger’s in poignant, melancholy three-minute songs.
GRAB OOH AAH AAH here:
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