Music: All Out by Stage Republic – Netherlands

SR_PokerfaceStage Republic produces Pop Music with a little bit of 80s and a lot of now.
Stage Republic has an instantly recognizable sound reminiscent of the 80s superacts like Duran Duran, Phil Collins and Sting combined with the best of Dutch beats and Raven’s trademark voice.
Stage Republic is the vehicle of expression of eclectic Dutch recording artist Raven.
Dutch singer and songwriter Raven kickstarted his musical career when he was the first artist ever to launch a single on a USB-Stick which was still a revolutionary idea in 2005. He showed his sense of innovation again when in 2010 he released his Mystery Pop album containing songs inspired by a number of popular mystery books, all fully endorsed and co-promoted by the A-list authors including NY-Times bestselling authors like Glenn Cooper and Kathleen McGowan. The idea delivered him a Eurosonic Interactive Artist Award nomination and rocketing sales. Hollywood icon Patrice Chaplin arranged for a music video with Ellen Barkin for the single “City of Secrets”, inspired by her book of the same name. A quote by Raven was included on the cover of ‘The Cynical Idealist’, the John Lennon biography presented by Yoko Ono at the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s death in December 2010. In the same year, the British horror movie the Stone, in which Raven made his acting debut won Best Foreign Film award on the mountain film festival of California.
In recent years Raven released 2 albums and 9 singles in 2 languages under his Dutch artist name “Corjan”. His music was used in several films. Early 2013, he participated in a documentary alongside British Top-of-the-Pops presenter and Heart FM DJ Jamie Theakston.
Now there’s Stage Republic. A new name for a new musical direction with more up-tempo and danceable songs.
Check out Stage Republic’s first single, “All Out” which is very refreshing to the ear. Listen to the song and make your own opinion no matter I think you will enjoy.
Why did you select this song as your current single?
Because it not only sounds, it speaks. It was the first track that my producer Itsbart and I wrote together. It propelled the chemistry we have as songwriters. Itsbart helped me write a number of tracks on the album. It made us find out how complimentary we were as artist and producer. Approaching the thing from two different angles. Me, who wants to tell a story. Him, who talked through his guitar. The lyrics is always my department. I love to weave stories out of words. We thought the sound of the song is very representative for the album and for what Stage Republic has become over a year of producing songs together. At the same time, it was the song that most immediately caught the ears of the people we played it for, professional musicians or our families and they all loved it.  This had to be the first single.
How does this single relate to the rest of the Album?
The songs sets the stage for the album. The energy, the drive, the will to succeed. But it’s not pushy I think. I don’t want to force points of view on people. Rather try to convince. By projecting the right level of emotion in the songs. The lyric of All Out says it quite well: ‘refuse to think it’s hard’. All the songs on the album are quite different but the sound signature is the element that ties them all together. Fat, guitar-driven, anthemic, synth-filled and sung from the the very depths of my soul to get a message across of the stuff that unites us all. Longing, admiring, fearing, loving. Living.
What was the writing process for the song?
At the time we wrote this we were still producing in Itsbart’s house in the south of the Netherlands. He was building a new studio up north in Haarlem but that wasn’t ready at the time. He had this fantastic desk made out of an old wooden door. It made the room look like a tilted student dorm with mattresses against the wall for the acoustics. We wrote the chords with an acoustic guitar and keyboard. I wrote the topline later that night at home and recorded a short demo of one verse and one chorus in my own home studio. Itsbart did the pre-production. Drums were recorded separately at the drummer’s place. Vocals in a studio we rented for a couple of hours. All in all I think the tracks came from 6 or 7 different places. We had them mixed by Robert Goudzwaard who is sort of famous in the Netherlands as producer of pop band Rigby. Mastering was done by Sander van der Heide at Wisseloord which has fantastic mastering rooms. The result is a song that sounds like a great band on a big stage which is exactly what we had in mind with Stage Republic.
What does this song’s lyric mean to you?
Quite a bit actually. It has many of my life motto’s in there.  The first sentence is ‘You can’t beat me down’. If anything defines me today. It is that. I have been active in music for forever. Started writing when I was 12 and never stopped. I have had some small and bigger successes but also a lot of criticism in my musical life. I am sure being criticised is something that unites all musicians 🙂 It doesn’t hurt me anymore. I try to learn from every comment and try to improve all the time. Raise the bar with every song. The lyric is basically a love story. To make it clear that I will do really anything to win her heart. I guess, processing all this while I am talking to you, it is perhaps a metaphor for what I want to achieve in music. To get the recognition of my peers, their love for my songs or something like that. I wrote this in 10 minutes, came straight from the heart. I could almost see the girl.
What would it be like to see you in person performing this song?
You would see the passion that inspired the song. I am quite intense as a performer. Trying to bring the message across to the audience. You can’t do that if you don’t believe in it yourself. I always give all. There;s only one gear on this body and it’s full throttle.
Could your fans summarize who you are as an artist by this song?
Definitely. ‘can’t beat me down, refuse to think it’s hard, I’ll stand here waiting every day, ignoring all the storm and rain’. Haha sounds quite obsessive if you read it like that 🙂 I am not an obsessive guy. But definitely passionate and determined. I love to make music and will give it everything I got every time.
Is there a video planned and or completed and if so, what was the idea behind the video?
The song being picked up took me by surprise a little bit. We were aiming for a release in the Netherlands in September and then all of a sudden it was IndieDisc on IndieXL.nl, the Dutch national indie station and played in high rotation. Definitely didn’t see that coming. It’s really the power of Twitter that did it. I made a quick video with extreme sports footage, courtesy of Brainfarm as a temporary video while I am preparing a permanent video in the background which will be released later this year if it’s still relevant then.
One last question, what is your motivation behind your music? 
I need to write. If I don’t write for a couple of weeks I get really grumpy. Music to some extent is therapy for me. Capturing observations and situations. You can’t run around the house screaming for joy or anger (unless you’re my kids of course ;)). In music you can. After a day of hard work, nothing beats picking up the microphone to record and capture the emotion of the moment in a box. Nothing beats singing your song to a crowd and then to notice that they get it. That they believe. Singing and writing helps me to digest what’s happening around me in my life and enables me to share it. It’s channeling in sound.

Stage-Republic-Firstage.jpg
Social Media:
http://stagerepublic.com 
http://reverbnation.com/stagerepublic 
http://facebook.com/stagerepublic 
http://twitter.com/stagerepub 
http://soundcloud.com/stagerepublic 
http://youtube.com/stagerepublic 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*