At the most basic level of explanation, De Staat are a Dutch 5 piece from the town of Nijmegen. They have released a couple of critically acclaimed albums, toured and played a host of shows and festivals (including Lowlands, Glastonbury and Pinkpop). They will be releasing their new studio album, their first ever in the UK, ‘I_Con’ on September 16th through Cool Green Recordings, and will set off on a European tour at the end of September. They will also be playing a UK/London live residency at The Black Heart in Camden in October, with full list of dates TBA very soon.
Delving even just a ‘little’ deeper though reveals De Staat as one of the most exciting, undiscovered gems in European music. Front man Torre Florim worked with the likes of Vance Powell (legendary, multi Grammy award winning mixer from Nashville, Jack White’s right hand man) and Ben Newman (London artist, created the beautiful, totem pole artwork for ‘I_Con’) but as with previous recordings, the sonic vision for the bands output was very much both laid down by Torre. This was both through a year and a half pre-production, writing, rehearsing and demoing and with having Torre behind the production desk (with Attie Baauw as engineer).
Recorded in just 12 days at Black Box studio in the west of France, ‘I_Con’ is a majestic, multi-layered, warm and varied album. Where previous album ‘Machinery’ was very much a guitar driven record, ‘I_Con’ thrives on a much more synth and sci-fi soundtrack infused beating heart, with African rhythms, happy hardcore, trap-influences and weird sounds also helping create its sound. Pooling influences from world music, 80’s rock/dance cross over like Talking Heads, science fiction sound tracks, House music, the dark story telling of the likes of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and so much more. ‘I_Con’ is an album to discover, be blown away by and repeatedly get lost in, marking De Staat out as one of 2013’s most exciting new discoveries.