The Dutch trio DeWolff is known for psychedelic and blues rock with a lot of retro charm, often reminiscent of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Hammond sound and vintage equipment were a must for recordings and live shows. With the "Tascam Tapes" the band now reduces itself to an old four-track recorder, a battery-powered synthesizer, guitar, a vocal microphone and drum samples - and presents itself in this way from its soulful disco side.
eclipsed: How did you come up with the idea to record this way?
Pablo van de Poel: With "Thrust" we delivered the ultimate DeWolff album that we had been working towards since the band was founded. When we started to work on new material afterwards, we asked ourselves: "What now?" Should we tell everyone: "Yes, we will do something similar to 'Thrust' again, but this time it will be even better blah blah blah ..."? We didn't find that particularly tempting. Then I got the idea to write and record an album while we were on the road. I had owned this Tascam portable four-track cassette recorder for a few years and hadn't used it very often. I also came across this album by the English band Wolf People some time ago, their first, quite wacky mix of "Captain Beefheart meets British Folk", with a drum machine. I have always loved this album and wanted to do something similar. And now the opportunity presented itself.
eclipsed: What did your bandmates say?
van de Poel: Luka and Robin initially reacted sceptically. We jammed on anyway - and they were thrilled with the sound and thought that we should do it. Right at the beginning the recording device broke down and we repaired it - which happened a couple of times, by the way. When we were back from the tour after two months, we looked at what we had recorded, twelve tapes. Some songs we took over as they were. Others had to be polished up a bit. Sometimes the recording situation was that we were sitting in the back seat of a car, the speakers below us. That sounded a bit too Lo-Fiish for us.
