VNV Nation Interview

Hey guys,

Here's an interview I conducted with Ronan Harris, frontman of VNV Nation at the TLA July 19th, 2009. I'll add some shots I took at the show too :)ENJOY!
















Laurel: So how has the tour been so far?

Ronan: Compared to previous tours it was hard to get the perspective on it, since every tour feels that great to us. I guess it always feels great to us based on the previous tour, and the expectations. The audience has been insane.

Laurel: Really?


Ronan: Yeah I think New York was…weirdly enough the quietest audience. They were loud, but I think…. There were people coming out of the show that were going, “That was insane!”, but I’m going, “Yeah, but that was the quietest show that we’ve had so far….if we’d have half of what Boston and Montreal were…”

Laurel: So you’ll expect a lot tonight then?

Ronan: I hope so. I know Philly’s always a really good place for us to play so I don’t think we’ve got any worries. It’s been really, really good. We’ve been having a ton of fun so far. Everyone’s really happy. The set-lists have been going down well. All the new stuff’s going down well. And it’s the smoothest tour. We’re all really chill and everyone’s really relaxed.

Laurel: Yeah I’m not too familiar with “War Tapes” or “Ayria” (the two bands VNV has had as openers for this tour*)

Ronan: Ayria’s a band from Toronto. It’s a band with Jen Martin. She does kind of like, a combo of EBM and sort of a funkier EBM and some electro-clash and a whole bunch of stuff. It’s really good. Girls love it. She’s very empowering as a person.

Laurel: Is she like I:Scintilla a bit?

Ronan: I wouldn’t know…

Laurel: I saw that group with Cruxshadows recently and they’re pretty much like that with a female vocalist as well.

Ronan: Oh Right! Well, Jen’s a very dynamic ray of sunshine and women love her because she’s having fun on stage and she’s all dolled up and everything. She just loves what she does. She has a blast and she’s a very cool, remarkable person. So “War Tapes” is an indie-rock band from LA. We’ve recently had them on the tour and the thing is, our audience has diversified a hell of a lot over the years, plus peoples taste. And we wanted to have something that represented that rather than have a strictly industrial tour.

I listen to a lot of indie rock and a lot of new music anyway so I think it’s justified that we have a band that reflect the ever-changing way of things. We played with them in Anaheim a year ago. Loved them! Lovely people, great band. It’s a bit New Order, a bit Joy Division…all that kind of era.

It’s going down really well. Obviously there are the strict industrial people who only want to have industrial bands, and I think that’s really boring. (The type that say) “Don’t want a band like that on the road!” And I just think…well…open your mind.
















Laurel: So I saw you guys a couple of years ago at the Trocadero headlining with “And One”

Ronan: Mmhmm that was fun.

Laurel: Yeah and I was completely not used to like, the whole atmosphere where a show is such a dance party, everybody’s raving. Do you think you draw more energy when the crowd is riled up in that way versus at a rock show where people are just moshing and slamming around?

Ronan: If that crowd gets into the show, even if they’re not jumping around and raving and stuff like that but everybody dances, then that’s pretty important to us. If everyone is like, giving off energy, we get energy back from them and that’s what we give back to them again and it just keeps going like a cycle and it just gets insane. Plus, it affects my mood and I get really hyper and I just love running around stage having tons of fun with everybody. It’s a very good thing that everybody gets riled up at the show.

Laurel: Have you been okay with things with your leg? (Harris previously blogged about an injury at a date in previous weeks on stage in Oregon*)

Ronan: Oh yeah, right. I tore a tendon. I didn’t tear it fully. Had I done that, I would not be on the tour. So it was a really painful injury and when I was on stage in Portland, I felt like I had been shot through my leg but I wasn’t… obviously. I was able to do the show because I hate the idea of having to stop a show. And in Portland the people there really needed the show. They needed it I think more than anybody because they were…the town was hurting, the economy. The economic situation has really hurt some towns more than others. Cities like Denver, Detroit obviously, even San Francisco. You can see this in the faces of the people and Portland was one of those places where…to walk away just because of a leg injury…I said, “If I have to hobble, if I have to hold a microphone and lay down. I don’t care if I’m sitting on a stool with just a microphone, I don’t care, I will still do this.” It hurts me a lot obviously to have to tone something down. That’s why I was making all those jokes about the situation in my blogs; ya know like, “We’ll have to drop the ring of fire and the river dance section from the sets.”

But I’ve carried through. I mean, I’ve had a couple of Physiotherapy sessions on the tour. The one comment that has been resounding has been…I have always moved like crazy on stage. I will continue to do so. I get an amazing amount of energy and I run, and run, and run. A lot of people don’t know how the hell I do it and I still do it.

Laurel: It’s a very long set from what I remember with And One. Over two hours!

Well we do that from time to time. It depends on the crowd. It also depends on the circumstance of the show like some venues if it’s all ages, they will have a curfew so you can’t play as long as you want to. You get cut down to like, 1 hour and 45 minutes. And I like to talk to the crowd. It’s kind of a personal thing because I like it to feel like we’re all part of a party. But it’s worked out really well, to be honest. I haven’t stopped moving. I’m still leggin’ it from one side of the stage to the other and I’m singin’ my little heart out. It’s great.














Laurel: I’m an English Major and I was just reading some of your lyrics by themselves without the music and some of them are very poetic and intensely emotional. I just wonder what the process is like, for you to write. Do you keep a journal at all? Has it changed since touring early on at all?

Ronan: No, I don’t keep a journal. I write notes every now and then when I get a line that strikes me…or a philosophy or a thought; something I can put into a maxim. I write into my phone or I record like it’s an audio. In general, when I sit down to write a song I get myself into a mode which…almost feels like someone else. And…it’s like opening a door…something that just…

Laurel: Like it’s coming through you?

Ronan: Right, it flows out.

Laurel: I mean, I write a lot and that’s what I feel like when I do.

Ronan: So you understand the creative process. It’s almost like touching your soul and allowing your soul to speak through you. I love that process. It’s kind of a strange thing because afterwards I’ll go back to being my usual sort of shallower self, not being so morose or whatever else. I love playing with words. I wouldn’t ever consider myself a linguistic expert or grammatically I wouldn’t consider myself an expert. I just write what I feel expresses even in dull meaning words…like in different interpretations. Words I’m trying to say, allusions and references in there, and quotes...

Laurel:I’ve noticed a lot of metaphor…

Ronan: Right. Allusions or misquoted things I’m referencing where I’m almost sort of playing with them and enjoying it myself. I’m not sure if people always get those, but those who do, they’ll get more fun out of it.

Laurel: So you’ve been able to release this album through your own self-started North American Label, “Anachron America”. How has that been going?

Ronan: Well it’s early days yet we’ve just been…this album is the second release. Everything so far has gone really, really well. Obviously there’s some start-up time and you won’t know how to do that. Obviously you’ve got to get a release out to know how to do that. We’ve got the Reformation box set out and that went really well, which was this limited edition box. To be honest, no matter where you release a record there are still a lot of people who won’t even know you’ve got a record out. It’s just impossible to tell people. Leaving Metropolis was very emotional. They’re very good friends of ours still. We love the people we worked with. But there were a lot of advantages to working with a whole other group of people; being this sort of independent self where we could decide who we wanted to work with. We weren’t constrained.

We also have a label services company working with us. That’s the key to all of this. They do all of the general label things. They know what they’re doing and they love the band. They’re really inspired working with us too because they’ve normally worked with fringe or niche rock-metal or alternative niche as in alternative mainstream. Like, the kind of bands that would have ended up on Warped tour years ago before it became this awful commercial thing. They love working with us and they’re able to do the job. They’re able to get the CD’s out to the right people and we’re working with a lot of the same people we have done for years who helped me promote our music.

Laurel: So was some of it just a big difference in PR that you wanted?

Ronan: Not necessarily. There are a lot of networks of people who all know one another who all help one another out with various things. How you’re handled by this industry depends on how people feel about your music or the image of band or about the people that you’re working with. One of the weird things (myself and the boss at Metropolis agreed on this) is that he’s been trying to break them through into a bigger audience for a long time because Industrial music has the reach that can actually reach a vast amount of people. I mean our music reaches people who don’t listen to any of the music that other fans of ours will listen to. We don’t either. We listen to a wide variety of music and we like it that way. Because our audience is diversified we wanted to know “How do we reach those people better?”

And one of the problems is that if you are labeled in this country as a “Goth” band, and I am not a Goth. No offense to Goths, but there are Goths who like our music and get something deeply emotional out of it but I as a person am just a…Ronan. I don’t have the aesthetic at all when I show up to in-stores wearing a Ben Sherman shirt and like, ya know, casual jeans and stuff like that people look at me and go, “Huh?!”.

I grew up listening to Electronic music purely and listening to all different styles of Electronic music so I don’t belong to any one genre. I think our music is more based on…

Laurel: It’s an Alternative/Industrial genre.

Ronan: Right. It is. There’s definitely a lot more Alternative in there than anything it’s just that we are a band that sounds like we do. Our roots maybe lay in the 80’s Industrial scene; bands like Nitzer Ebb and Front 242 and we’ve built upon that and incorporated a lot of different dance styles and indie music and…so many different elements have been brought into it. It’s a shame not within the scene; it’s that outside of the scene, people have a very negative image. When they label you with the “G” word, or Industrial.

Laurel: It puts you in a box.

Ronan: Yeah in a pigeon hole. They need to imagine you wearing shitloads of mascara and eye shadow and you’re this depressed, morose person that walks around with a cloud over your head and they won’t want to deal with you. And they seem to think it’s dated and no one wants to listen to it. People hear our music and seem to go, “Really?! They sound like this?! They look like this?! This is their show?! Are you kidding!!!??”

So what we’re trying to do is break that stupid taboo that people have and get it out there because I mean, obviously we are firmly in the Goth/Industrial scene in North America. In many ways it our roots and in like, the 80’s.

Laurel: Is it just like that in Germany?

Ronan: Oh yeah, it’s actually worse in Germany than here. If you’re in the Goth/Industrial scene in Germany…Actually, they don’t use the words “Goth” or “Industrial”. They call it the EBM scene. For us, we’d never be considered a Goth band in Europe, by any stretch of the imagination. But if you’re labeled that and that’s what you come from, and those are the people who go to your shows, it doesn’t make any difference what your image is. If those people go to your shows, the press, the mainstream, the TV, the radio, will not touch you. They will not as much play one of your records.

Laurel: That’s just terrible.

Ronan: It’s just the way…people have this very negative image and they see it as something very old-style. I think it’s because their image is distorted by the most extreme images. Like, they seem to think that when they hear the word “Goth” they think Marilyn Manson so everyone must sound like that.

Laurel: Like someone says “Pop” and people think Britney

Ronan: Right. And immediately…it’s the same thing for the Goth/Industrial crowd someone will say to them “Techno” or “House” and they immediately imagine very, very superficial punks running around in clubs on tons of drugs looking like morons who’ve got nothing to say about anything and they’d be very, very wrong.












Laurel: With “Of Faith Power and Glory” a new studio was built in Germany recently that’s yours alone. How’s the energy been with recording with recording in sort of, your very own atmosphere?

Ronan: It’s been great. It’s very liberating because it’s mine and I don’t have to share it with anybody and my assistant producer works in the studio next to me. He’s like, a technical assistant and he helps with mixing and adding details and doing tricks and stuff like that. I’m able to do as much as I want. My office is there. My office has my studio and I’m very, very happy. I just get up and get out of bed and get ready and go down to work. It’s about 10 minutes away from my apartment. We just hang out all day just doing stuff and working on bits and pieces and trying ideas and in the end, it’s like, it’s very liberating.

We get a lot of energy out of it and really just have a great time hearing each other’s music because everyone else in the house is doing their own thing. Everyone plays their own records they’ve been listening to and in the end we put it all together and it’s…awesome.

Laurel: How about the software you’ve been using? Has that dramatically changed since new things are constantly being released?

Ronan: Mainly Logic Pro. I find that a lot of the new stuff is just another version of the old stuff and I don’t really go for it. I have certain instruments that really do something for me personally. I’ve been playing an awful lot with a new soft-Synth called “Circle”, which does some really cool things that other Synths don’t do, which is very important because…I’m an old analog hack. I’ve been using synthesizers since…1981. I’m very used to what they sound like, what their filters sound like and all these characteristics in them. But my set-up is mainly made of tried and trusted Synths which will do everything I need them to do which are parts of VNV’s sound and they can all be different things that have different characteristics.

A lot of it is production techniques and effects cuz’ in the end…I’ve heard remixes done by the guys in the studio next to me for very large artists. And when you actually hear the instruments in the tracks, they’re incredibly boring, or they’re incredibly uninspiring. There’s no character to them. How it’s all mixed together, that’s the key. A lot of guys who are making music Industrial, they have 20,000 tracks and they just mix them together and get a general overall level. That’s great but it’s 1,000 times more than that. So it’s very important that some people get some knowledge of production tricks and techniques in the studio and just doing all kinds of mad stuff with effects. And we do tons of automation and tons of weird stuff with effect; but it all comes down to everyone in the house uses Logic Pro. It’s I think probably one of the main platforms in Europe. Nobody uses Pro Tools.

Laurel: A lot of bands I know use that. Blaqk Audio for one.

Ronan: Yeah. If you’re doin’ Electronic music, you don’t need Pro Tools. It isn’t quite a system. It was designed to record audio with midi capabilities and I think they suck! I know one of the developers from Digi Design and he would tell me different but I say “Look, if you can do what I can do, I’ll be interested in your product.” But so far, I don’t need it because what I’ve got, does everything I need so what’s the point?


Laurel: So with “Of Faith, Power, and Glory” you guys said as a title it’s the three things “that will either make you or destroy you”. Can you elaborate a bit more with that?

Ronan: Sure. I mean, these are things that humans are either attracted to or that they encounter. Or they’re things that humans become involved in that they either become fanatical about or in the right way or the wrong way. Faith…doesn’t necessarily mean something religious; it can mean anything ideological to the belief in something. I think it comes down to their tests of character or the examples of what your character is because if you get involved in something (an organization or a group)…

Well the three things are sort of semi-self-explanatory. Faith can lead people to ideological highs in that belief in something, the belief in an idea can bring a person to the realization of that, changing the world, almost. It is their adhering to that absolute faith no matter how hard it may be to an idea, an ideal. But then it can also lead people to fanaticism and demonstrate itself out into the greatest extremes of human evil. Fanaticism obviously has been…

Laurel: So it’s the dichotomy of each word…

Ronan: Sure. It could be, in one sense, yes. I think they define the schizophrenic nature of humanity in that humanity can either be always wanting or always willing to be obsessed; to see what its capabilities are. And there will always be a certain amount of the population who feel let down by the other part of the population because it seems that some of us are at war constantly and looking for it. And some of are always trying to improve ourselves and we’re always at war with one another. But that also applies to the human characteristics of the human psyche and that we are constantly at war with ourselves and our instincts and I suppose our value on things from what’s right and wrong. So our morality is eschewed depending on self-justification.

Power obviously again…the ability to control a situation and make something happen out of it; this doesn’t necessarily mean something evil. They are not good or evil words. They are just…three aspects, three conditions, or situations; one can be in glory as a situation. Power is an achievement, something one can hold, one can have. It can slip easily but corrupts people. It distorts their personality. I think it comes down to the experience but again a test with the character. But it’s been responsible for the ability to make great things happen but also means being able to make the worst sides of ourselves come out in the worst ways. You have to look at the last few years. The last year, see, there’s been a very small number of greedy assholes who are all worried about their bonus.

“Hey, I’ve amassed this amount of wealth and I’ve impressed my peers all in this little office. “ And they’re accountable for millions on people on this planet going into abject poverty. Purely there is no reprehension for this; there is no answer for this because the system allows it. And the system encourages it. The system does not hold anyone accountable for it.

I was reading the other day that one major bank made 4.3 billion dollars in profit out of this. Makes me sick. I seriously think that this world cannot continue and cannot persist in this present mode. We are suicidal to the max. I think that anyone who believed in the 70’s or 80’s…I heard the perspectives back then, ya know. “Population’s going to grow” and “Food production’s going to decrease” …and well…
Natural resources are drying up left, right and center. We’re kind of in the sci-fi scenario right now. You watched movies in the 80’s and they’d say, “By the year 2010, blah blah blah blah blah”, and it happened. We’re in that. We’re not laughing about it. Nobody’s going, “Oh my god, it’s so weird.” It’s just like, ya know, a red planet or something like a movie, whatever.

It’s incorrigible that we allow without any kind of sense and regulation; we allow the system to exist which is…flawed. Without any sense of regulation and we will then take those regulations apart and think of doing something smart and all they’re doing is thinking about their pockets. We don’t think as a race, we don’t think as a species, we think as a series individuals all out to get their own.
I suppose that might work because they all come together to make up one big system but they all work for one goal, we don’t. We don’t have a high mentality. We have a “I just want whatever the fruit on that tree is, I want it for me. And if I have to manipulate a whole bunch of people to think that they’re not worth the same thing, I’m gonna do that.”

And unfortunately that’s the world we live in. That’s power. That’s unfortunately people who should not have power holding power over the lives of billions of people. There are 6.8 billion people on this planet right now. That is a phenomenal number. That’s one estimate. There are other people that would say there are 6 billion people on the planet. There are other people that would say that there are 6.9 billion…Everyone’s got a different number.

That’s a lot of people to take care of. So to me, it’s a conscious thing in mind. I’m not gonna stand up on a box on an album and say “Oh it’s terrible what we’re doing to the world!” Everyone knows what we’re doing.

Laurel: Well in that sense do you think it’s important then…to keep reminding people that we are in a sense of Dystopia?


Ronan: I want them to know that we do care and that this is on our minds and it’s part of psyche and part of our…message. I abhor extremes. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few decades of political systems and which ones worked and which ones didn’t. And they were all purely circumstantial. When it was the right situation, everything worked. How do you get that to point?
It’s like what you were saying about dystopia. It’s a bit like entropy. You get to a point where you’ve created the environment in people’s minds where they expect things and everything’s normal and they say, “Ok this is good, we’re happy with this. There are no extremes.” But as soon as you set about creating that environment, people start rebelling against it…

Laurel: Decline will always happen.

Ronan: But also ascension always happens. If you understand that the incline is always there, you could, theoretically come up with a system which creates this concept. And systems are basically ways for us to manage ourselves, not means for someone to control us. They are ways for us to manage ourselves. A sense of community is something that’s severely lacking, a sense of responsibility and a fact that we are part of one population and we all have an effect on each other is something we are not taught.











VNV Nation will continue to tour with War Tapes & Ayria for the remainder of July and will then begin their European Tour with Rotersand.

Their 7th album, "Of Faith, Power, and Glory" dropped June 23rd and is available on Itunes to purchase.

You can find them at: VNV Website

or here: VNV Myspace