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On the Bus with Ronan Harris: Classical to Futurepop and Everything in Between

On the Bus with Ronan Harris: Classical to Futurepop and Everything in Between
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"You’ll hear it another time and it’s going to resonate with you in a way that you need it."
—Ronan Harris
The tour bus that ferries about and serves as home base for a band of internationally known musicians is surprisingly pristine and neat. The air conditioning is on full blast giving the space a delightful chill against the late spring humidity. Only a lone bottle of sriracha sauce sits on the kitchen counter, waiting for a meal to break out.

Ronan Harris, the vocalist and mastermind behind the electronics and lyrics of the powerhouse duo VNV Nation rushes to adjust the temperature controls, ever the lovely host. He and Mark Jackson, drummer extraordinaire, are currently winding down a tour of the United States and playing two sold out nights at the iconic lower east side of Manhattan haunt, The Bowery Ballroom along with a team of support musicians on keyboards. There's something familiar about Harris, his warm handshake, easy smile and quick wit. He's like a pal from school that you've just reconnected with, or your new neighbor, friendly and eager to share stories. His open face breaks into a grin when he receives a photo on his mobile phone.

"I'm a vintage hat wearing and clothing wearing chap," he explains, slightly giddy. "There's a guy in Milwaukee who has a store called The Brass Rooster. He's a master hat man." Harris explains the nuances of colors and fabrics that remain untouched from the 1930s. A hat the color of petrol, an unusual blue, has just been constructed for him, to perfectly match a suit that he possesses. The owner of the store has become a fan of the band. "He's been to our shows and my friend is a good friend, a supporter of his...so this guy is making this hat and the band is vintage fabric, silk and the thread he's using is from a vintage roll, everything is new old stock. Inside the hat band, in the sweat band, he's actually punched my name into it. I never asked for this, he's going above and beyond." He proudly brandishes his phone to show a photo of a stylish hat with a silver band.

Considering right before us is the man who coined the genre Futurepop , Harris is an enigma. His affinity and love for the past would seem to fight his love of new technology and the electronic-style music he creates. Instead, the sides of Harris seem to complement each other perfectly.

He and his girlfriend, who he affectionately gushes is "too glamorous for words," enjoy dressing up in retro duds together. His pride and joy is a 1938 Nash Ambassador. "The only two door sedan in the world. It is liquid silver. It's not glossed, there's no topcoat. It looks like the car is carved out of liquid aluminum, the way an aircraft looked in those days. It just sails past." The gearshift which is "three on the tree" sports an old Electro Voice microphone that fit perfectly on the stick. Harris designed the color teal scheme for the interior, selected the paint himself, wanting to keep things authentic with a few adjustments to make it custom. It's been a labor of love and very accurately showcases his dedication and amazing eye for detail.

"Uh, oh...police. They're not happy with us being here, " notices Harris through the curtains. An NYPD traffic officer takes note of the tour bus, though the band had been assured that it is fine to park there. Our talk continues.

VNV Nation now calls Hamburg, Germany home. Harris hails from Dublin and Jackson from Essex. Their music, is accurately dubbed "composed by humans; built with machines." Part alternative electronic rock with heavy doses of industrial, 80s, new wave and hints of orchestral waves, VNV nation is hard to pigeonhole, which is just fine with their legions of fans.

When asked how he created the term Futurepop, Harris answered, "Radio wouldn't play us. Anything that had the words EBM (Electronic Body Music) or goth associated with it in Germany, which was not intentional because I don't come from that background, was a death sentence. It still is. We were making a style of music where we were listening to a lot of underground electronic music which was rather euphoric and it was inspiring for us to adapt that. This was everything we'd listened to in the early 80s like Italo-disco and other forms of electronic music. It just wasn't commercial yet. We grew up in the New Romantic era, we listened to a lot of progressive electronic music in the 80s and we wanted to have this amazing anthemic quality about our music. We all seemed to like orchestral music. And we tricked radio into playing us by giving it this name and creating the idea that this is some crazy new genre."

The band's most recent release Transnational (Virtual Label, 2013) has received critical as well as popular acclaim and served as a personal journey for Harris. "With this one, I decided to step back a little bit . Musically, this album has many different interpretations. Transnational, I could twist it into an interpretation of an homage...it incorporates a style of music that inspired me and it contains sounds from old songs or references to old songs, like personal things that no one would notice except me, like little things I throw into every album, these little things that I'll only hear, I'll only see. I do that for my amusement. I write this music for myself and then share it with others so with the songs, there were moments in it that reflect my musical tastes, all of my pioneering electronic moments. Teleconnect Part 1 is when the New Romantic period kicked in and I was living in Ireland. Ireland and England were all sort of the same paradigm as music is concerned. There were all these bands like Depeche Mode kickin' it in that 1980-1982 kind of period, a revolution of music. Some saw it as artificial. I didn't care. That's what New Romanticism was in the art world at the beginning of the 20th Century. A lot of people didn't grasp this but it was supposed to be the artificial creation of the romantic look. I loved that era but I remember like three albums being heavily influential—one from Kraftwerk, one from Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and one from Yazoo. I remember these three, I wanted to combine them into that song so I went off and got the original (types) of instruments and used the original instruments for that song. I have a nice collection of old analog synths and stuff and I put that effort in."

As a light drizzle falls outside, the tour bus has received a ticket. Harris, unflapped, texts the tour manager. They always say you can gauge someone's character by how they react under stress. Harris remains upbeat.

This CD contains tracks that can be consumed like fine wine, over time. Harris explained,"There are songs...I don't want you to enjoy everything right now. You'll hear it another time and it's going to resonate with you in a way that you need it. You'll be driving home one night and you'll be concentrating on the road but you'll hear the music and that's probably the best way to hear it, because your mind will be clear, you will not be focusing on it. You can't look at a radio and hear music. It just doesn't work. It needs to filter into your subconscious so when you're actively doing something, the music will actually hit you and it will filter it's way inside you and do something great. I told a lot of people, go and listen to this song on headphones. I said, this is the first track (Teleconnect Part 2) I finished for the album and it's the one that floors me every single time cause as soon as I start singing, I can feel every ounce of emotion that was in me at the time."

Harris' eclectic taste pertains to the music he performs as well, speaking of a project he did in November of 2012. "I did a classical version of eight songs performed with a full orchestra in Germany, in a beautifully old music hall in Leipzig where they will only have classical concerts, even the avante garde, post classical concerts are being held there. And this was the sum total of every dream in my life. There I was, I worked with the arranger on all of the pieces. I have a love of classical music and opera, the romantic period more than anything. Then we were able to discuss phrases and how each piece should feel, what sort of tempo, what sort of tone it should have and how it should be played. We built this whole thing up and then did this incredible show and I was so overwhelmed. It was like someone drove a truck through me of emotion." There are plans to expand upon this concept and to record it as well, though in an old deco music hall, not a studio, for added authenticity and acoustics. The current tour, which began in Florida and is days from ending, is going extremely well, with the necessity for rush orders to the merchandise production company when they nearly ran out of merch at the shows. "People were buying up 6, 7 shirts at a go," Harris recounted. "We've had bigger audiences than we ever had and it really comes down to what people feel like they need in their lives at the time. We've seen bigger audiences, more people just clamoring to buy merch."

A knock on the door brings a visit from Mike Dierickx, a Belgian DJ, best known for his song "Universal Nation" and his wife Caroline. The two pals, who met when Dierickx, a fan of VNV Nation, emailed Harris and was surprised to receive a response immediately, as Harris was a fan of his work as well.

"We might not get to see each other often because we tour," Dierickx explains. "He's touring, I tour a lot. But that's the beauty of it all. I can sit home and I know Ronan and we text each other. I can listen to his album and know its him, it's my buddy and I love that feeling."

Harris doubled that emotion, noting, "We're going to have a man crush here in a second!"

Dierickx promised his young son, also a fan of VNV Nation, a selfie of he and Harris. They were home listening to VNV Nation's mega hit "Illusions" the night before and Dad Dierickx impressed his son by saying he was going to see them perform at the Bowery.

After lots of banter and comparing notes about Hell's Kitchen in the 80s, the pioneering modern rock station WLIR, stories of life on the road, and possible collaborations in the future, it was time for Harris to program the set for the night as the venue doors would be opening soon.

A shoulder to shoulder crowd eagerly anticipated the arrival of VNV Nation to the stage. Pacing the stage like a cat on the prowl, Harris rarely stood still as he engaged the crowd. The throng of fans clapped, sang and pogo-ed to hits like "Primary," " Nova (Shine A Light On Me)," "Standing," "Illusion," and "Joy." Flanked by two keyboardists poised like a sentries on either side of the stage, Jackson manned the drums in the center of the stage, behind Harris' path. Jackson's birthday was commemorated on stage and the fans chimed in enthusiastically. Harris frequently asked the crowd if they were doing alright and during "Space and Time" encouraged audience participation, even from "all you people updating your Facebook status right now!" Seen only in silhouette at times due to the magnificent and enormously powerful light show emanating from the light rigs at the back and sides of the stage, Harris made it clear that the fans were as much a part of the show as the band was. "Resolution" turned into a mash-up with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" to which he encouraged the audience to sing louder. The floor shook with the vibrations of elated fans jumping, swaying the light fixtures noticeably for patrons who escaped to the downstairs bar for a quick beverage. Harris had promised they were going to "go long" that night and they did, giving the fans who huddled by the stage door hours before VNV Nation hit the stage even more than they had hoped for.

Photo Credit
Christine Connallon (view more concert photos)
[Additional interview and article contributions by Mike Perciaccante ].

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