Based between Brussels and Berlin, Golden Hours is comprised of past and present members of Gang Of Four, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Tricky, The Fuzztones and The Third Sound, to name just a few.

A band with mileage and stories, they trade in rock ’n’ roll missives that are at times dark, tense and hypnotic, at others sweaty, relentless and danceable. Made up of Hákon Adalsteinsson (guitar/vocals), Rodrigo Fuentealba Palavacino (guitar), Tobias Humble (drums/vocals) and Wim Janssens (bass/keys/vocals). Wim says of the project and its incoming debut: “The musical backgrounds of each member are pretty broad but somehow when we come together there’s a pretty clear definition of what our music should sound like. There’s a beautiful friction between the noise we produce and the love for melody that seems to overtake at just the right moment. There never seems to be a lack of ideas when we come together. In silent agreement, every idea gets tried and will be further developed into a song or skipped in a heartbeat. No time is wasted. It all happens pretty automatically.”

“It is very rare to have four people coming together with a blank sheet”

You recently released your debut self-titled album. How long did you work on it?

Rodrigo Fuentealba Palavacino: All told around a year, but in a fairly fractured way; obviously due to the nature of where we all are and the other things we do it had to come together in bits and bobs. So when we are together we work relatively fast and focused, cause we have to. Let’s say it took a year to have it ready to send it to the press plant. But the total working days, something like two weeks?

Would you like to talk a bit about background? You’re pretty much an international band consisting of very experienced musicians based between Brussels and Berlin. What initiated the project?

Tobias Humble: I’d say Rodrigo can really take the credit for this, he’s an international head-hunter who’s got a good sense for great musicians and collaborators.

Rodrigo: I just look for cool creative people around me with good taste and an open mind, playing cool music in cool bands, and most of the time they’re also nice to be around with. I don’t like to work alone, I instigate and feed on the creative group dynamics. Wim I’ve known from before and he was living in Berlin, as I was going to live there for a while I contacted him way before to get together to make music. Tobias I met in a festival shuttle to the hotel and we immediately started talking about music and bands we love, and he was also living in Berlin. Hàkon I had talked to online when he was looking for a last minute gig on a Third Sound tour. He seemed nice and had posted a Link Wray song on his Facebook wall – you can’t go wrong then. And he also lives in Berlin. And anyone who plays with Gang of Four or The Brian Jonestown Massacre is more than ok in my book. But in general you can say me moving to Berlin was the start of the project. The rest was cosmic predestination!

Tell us about how Rodrigo Fuentealba Palavacino and Tobias Humble originally met in Athens and what did you discuss that formed Golden Hours?

Tobias: We met in a van going into town. Rodrigo was playing with The Fuzztones and Tobias with Gang Of Four. I think the only thing discussed was music, especially EBM. From there it was just a handshake agreement to meet again and do something musical together in Berlin.

Rodrigo: So some months later, on my first day in Berlin I was already meeting Tobias for a coffee and planning the band. A week later we were playing together with the rest in a room. We did that four times and then we booked a studio and recorded five or six tracks.

How did you approach music making when it comes to Golden Hours? Is it any different to other bands’ you were part of?

Tobias: We just got in a room together having spent relatively little time together at all, it was a band that was cobbled together with no pressure or need for it to be anything, I think that’s why we were able to write material so quickly.

Hákon Adalsteinsson: Usually I come up with song ideas or even form songs in my own projects, so the approach here is very different. I think it is very rare to have four people coming together with a blank sheet and writing a song where everyone is contributing and the result is actually being good. In this case somehow it works, like we get tuned to the same frequency when we start playing together. It’s pretty unique

Can you share some further details on how your latest album was recorded?

Tobias: In the old-school way. Everyone together, no clicks, a few punch-ins here and there. We did it at a couple of different studios and layered some stuff on later from basements and bedrooms here and there.

Hákon: The first session was done in a small Berlin studio of a friend as we were still figuring out where we were going with the project, but after we did a residency at Desertfest in Ghent where we wrote a handful of new songs we went to a more professional studio and recorded more material.

<a href="https://goldenhours1.bandcamp.com/album/golden-hours">Golden Hours by Golden Hours</a>

How pleased were you with the sound of the album?

Tobias: Very! I think moving forward it would be great to do the whole thing in one place over a sustained and longer period of time; we can dream… .

Rodrigo: Let me please mention Wim’s (bass, vocals, synth) magical production and mixing of the album, he’s the tits!

Hákon: Yeah Wim did a great job combining the different sessions and making an overall coherent sound for the album.

Do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?

Tobias: Yep! I have a couple of projects including Lawns and Zeit Raum Mensch. I also play with a whole bunch of other people including Mick Harvey, Sometimes With Others, JP Shilo, EERA, Tricky…Lots of people!

Rodrigo: I still do Fifty Foot Combo, Manngold and an experimental guitar trio called Hikes (recorded music for a dance piece). Also just recorded an album with an improv project. And working on music for a film festival in Portugal with To from Dead Combo.

Hákon: Apart from my band, The Third Sound, and playing guitar with The Brian Jonestown Massacre, I have two other projects going; Gunman & The Holy Ghost that has released three albums, the latest coming out last year. And Diagram, which is an electronic project that I am doing with former Third Sound drummer Fred Sunesen. We are finishing the mastering of the second Diagram album and it should see the light of day later this year.

Wim Janssens: I have two other projects; Ellroy and Joy Wellboy.

What are some future plans?

Tobias: There’ll be live sessions to do, new recordings, more shows, writing the opera etc, you know how it goes. I think at this point we just want to get in front of people as much as possible and take the music to the people!

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

Tobias: Check out Weite’s ‘Assemblage’. It will be out soon and is well worth checking out. Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys ‘Heaving,’ too. I really love Julian Lage’s work and I always come back to John Parish. Check out EERA and Last Living Cannibal too.

Rodrigo: My all time favourites … ‘Fun House,’ ‘Meet The Sonics,’ ‘A Love Supreme,’ ‘Suicide,’ Brian Eno’s ‘Another Green World,’ anything from the Velvets, Roland Kirk, Wire, Johnny Burnette, Rainer Fassbinder and Chabrol, Slim Harpo’s Excello singles, … new stuff I discovered and like to recommend: the series Alabama, Masacre (The band from Colombia), Oranssi Pazuzu and the last Gorillaz album!

Hákon: As I am just back from Brazil I am exploring some sounds from there, Gilberto Gil, Mutantes, Vox Populi… I also discovered by chance the music of Charlie Megira recently, which is truly amazing

Wim: Lately I’ve been listening to Algiers, Thelonius Monk, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s latest album, Low’s last three albums and everything from The Virgin Prunes that is now finally available on Spotify.

Klemen Breznikar

Headline photo: Lily Creightmore

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