DIN Martin recently got in contact with us after seeing the interview with their good friends The Fauns. DIN Martin are a German postrock/shoegaze group we managed to speak to Martin from the band about their friendship with The Fauns and touring.
Hi DIN Martin your pretty new to us can you just introduce the band and what instruments you play?
How did the band form? Have you known each other a long time?
We formed in early 2010 so pretty much two and a half years ago. We didn’t really know each other at all. Basically I used to live in Bristol, England for a while and moved back to Germany in January 2010. I met Ole in, I think, 2008 when he was playing in another band and me and a friend organised a few shows for them in Bristol. So they came over and spent a weekend with us. We didn’t really stay in touch but we then met randomly, really, at a gig by a band called Blueneck (who is, funny enough, from Bristol too.) in Leipzig and agreed to start doing something.
Me and other Martin are part of a group of people that organises a festival in Leipzig every year. So that connection came in handy.
We first started off as a three piece. Carsten who is has been a friend of Ole, joined a little later as the perfect match for the band.
Before we ever went to the rehearsal room we wrote a little manifesto with things we want to do and achieve. That was really helpful for the whole process bearing in mind that not only the “project” band was about to grow but also our friendship. It made everything so much easier as we all knew where we want to go and (probably even more important) where we didn’t want to go.
We actually had a look at the manifesto for the first time after a good year, after we had finished the album. Shockingly we achieved every little bit we had written down and wanted to achieve in the first couple of years…
So here we are, an EP, two European tours and an album later.
If someone had never heard your music before how would you describe it? What is it about?
That’s a tricky one. We get that question a lot and I’m never really sure what to say. I, personally, don’t really go after genres. It’s become so difficult with all the different names and labels you can call your music. I think no one really knows anymore. Music really is such a personal thing. People are listing to the same music in so many different ways and that is what it is about. That’s the beauty of it. Everybody hears something different they like out of the same song.
I think our songs are quite diverse. I can hear postrock and shoegaze arrangements as well as catchy indie pop melodies. It’s difficult but I would describe us as a shoegaze / postrock/ experimental band.
I understand you have just finished your second European tour, how did it go and what's your favourite country to play in? Is touring as mad as it looks in all the movies? Any crazy stories you can share with us?
The tour was amazing. Touring is always great. I feel like it is the best part of it. As much as I love being in the studio and working on new material, taking of three weeks of normal ordinary life and spending your time in a van driving through half of Europe, playing your music, and meeting new people is just brilliant.
This time around we played Denmark, Germany, France, England and Scotland. Mostly everything worked out really well. There’s always something, but nothing major happened (well saying this, after 2000 kilometres we found out that the van we had borrowed of a friend didn’t have a valid MOT. That kept us awake for a few nights, but we made it anyway…not sure whether I should really say that though ).
Not sure which country we like playing the most. I think you do get good concerts and bad concerts everywhere. England was really great this time. In Bristol we played with the amazing White Hills and Thought Forms. I saw Thought Forms in 2009 when I was still in Bristol as support act for Geoff Barrows band Beak> and totally fell in love them. So that was great actually sharing a stage with them. In London we played the Proud Galleries in Camden, which is a really prestigious venue. It was amazing, funnily there was a burlesque night at the venue that night as well, so straight after we finished our set a group of half naked women stormed the stage and started breathing fire and stuff. Little irritating but you know…
You also have a new album out, how has that gone down with your fans? Did it take long to put together?
Yeah we do have an album out. It’s called “The Second Before You Faint” and it is basically the work of the last two years. We turned our rehearsal room into a little studio and got lots of recording equipment. So that put us into the great place of doing everything in our own cosy rooms and at our own pace, which was great and saved us a lot of money. I think people like it. We sold a good amount and got some good reviews for it. But still we have only just started so, we are still working on getting the name out and reaching new people. We also don’t have a label yet, so we kinda self released the album. But we are on the lookout for a label to work together with for the next big things…
How did you and Alison Garner (The lead singer of English Shoegaze band The Fauns) meet? When did you decide to do a video with her?
I met Ali in Bristol. When the Fauns first started I played bass with them. So I know all the rest of them as well. When I knew I was going to move back to Leipzig me and Michael (who’s the head of the Fauns) decided to go different paths musically. But we stayed friends and we meet up everytime I’m over. We also played together with them once in Copenhagen.
Why did we choose Ali for the video? Well basically, for me the song “Before You Faint”, for which we shot the video, is, just like most of the other songs on the album, connected with my live in Bristol. Everything I brought into the songs and feeling of the album is somehow related to that. A little bit it became a concept album…well for me anyway. Making the album really helped me to reflect on these past years, so it was obvious for us to shoot a video abroad within these surroundings. It kinda felt right. We worked together with Richard Edkins who is a professional filmmaker from Bristol and a good friend of mine and once we had finished writing the storyboard we thought about who to cast. Ali pop our heads and we thought she’d be perfect. And as it turned out she really impressed us with her acting. I knew she had done a little bit of acting before but that now really was amazing. So yeah we were really lucky she was up for it.
When are you guys back in England? When can people see you?
Hopefully we’ll be back in England next year. I can’t say for sure now but we are aiming for February/ March. So best to check our facebook and homepage.
And finally always ask DIN Martin where did the name come from? I am assuming the actor spelt different?
Hehe well it’s actually not so much about Dean Martin, who we aware of, was a brilliant actor, singer and entertainer.
It was Ole's idea to call us DIN Martin and as soon as he said it, we were pretty much like, yeah let's do it, that’s great. DIN is a German organization for standardizing mostly within the technical field. For example for an A4 sheet of paper you would in German say, this paper is in format DIN A4 (or DIN A3 or whatever).
The DIN in DIN Martin is based on the manifesto we wrote. It gives us, or better, it gives the band the norm. It tells us where we are going and what we are doing. After we had finished writing the manifesto, we were all at the same level; from then on we all knew what to do. And then there are two Martins in the band…so there we had DIN Martin. Does that make sense? I always struggle to explain it. Doesn’t to din in English mean to make noise and stuff? Well that would work with us as well…
It's great though what people think it means. There was a guy at a show in the UK who said "I thought you gonna do cover versions of Dean Martin songs but in a shoegazy style". I thought that is brilliant.
Thanks for the time guys and hope to see you out and about soon.
Thank you Sam for doing this!
Thank you Sam for doing this!
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