Band of the Day: Chasing Sounds

International conglomerate Chasing Sounds took the time to answer our profile questions. Find out where they’re from, what they play and who they are below…

chasing-sounds-192Simple things first – where are you guys from?

Singer Monsieur Flo is a French guy, our guitarist MM Kovács is from Budapest and the rhythmic section with Attila on bass and Máté on drums is from Slovakia with ethnic  Hungarian background. We rehearse in Vienna where everyone of us live and work except Máté, who lives in the neighbouring capital Bratislava, where he has his rehearsal room for practicing during the week.

How did you meet?

Vienna is the city which connected us all, but Attila (songwriter on guitar, live on bass) and myself (Máté, drums) know each other since elementary school  so we were growing  up together as kids and as musicians. We started to play our instruments the same time and we also started a band which was called Sectorius. It can’t really be called a band cause we never had a singer nor played a concert but we had one song which was changed at every second rehearsal. We quit after two years and everybody went on his own way entering other bands. The two of us gained some experience with live playing etc and during that period we’ve been telling to each other that there will be a day when we’ll rock the same stage together. We said Time will tell when, so it did on the 8th of August, 2013 when we met in Bratislava in the rehearsal room of back-then Attila’s Punk-Rock/HC band Good Reason and we wrote the song Knock Out. Obviously the chemistry and the spirit was stronger between the two of us cause we pretty much wrote and put together most of the songs from our debut album Elektrobioscope on the very same place while Good Reason was falling apart.

How long have you been playing as a band?

Our rehearsal room was moved to Vienna and we had enough material  to record an album but we were missing a singer and a guitar player for playing live.  Flo and MM Kovács joined in early 2015 and Máté hit the studio in April to record the drums. Attila recorded the guitars and bass during summer in our rehearsal room thanks to Flo’s equipment and experience as a sound engineer. Recording the vocals was the next chapter. Flo did those in his own room in a shared flat during autumn when we started playing our first shows as well.  Finally, our first album was born on December 3, 2015 titled “Elektrobiscope”.

We started 2016 with full throttle. We shot a music video for Yesterday’s No Different right away in January and went on the road playing gigs in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia.

Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?

I (Máté) was hanging out with Attila and two other friends in my Grandma’s basement during high school times around 2010.  Imagine a smaller than 2x2m basement with four armchairs, some broken cymbals, old bass drum from the Czechoslovak Communist era, posters and tags on the wall, bottles and cigarette butts all around etc. Four silent dudes drinking some booze maybe under the influence of other substances, listening to electro music.  Máté was burbling something under his nose trying to recall the name of some artist when he suddenly asked out loud “…Chasing Sounds???”. We knew from that point that the artist was us. Like Máté gained access for a second into his future memory. We created the name for our band that day and the rest was about to come by Time. This happened during the period when both of us played in different bands.

What are your influences?

We grew up mostly on 90’s MTV, early 2000’s. Let’s say Rage Against The Machine, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Offspring, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I think it’s an important point to mark here that during that time for us it was either the TV or the radio which were the main source of medium for music. Your parents couldn’t afford to buy you tapes, records or later CDs. This means you were pretty much limited with choosing music or to get access to new music which you liked. Of course when the Internet came in you were able to search for anything which we do now still.

Describe your music. What makes you unique?

You can hear the fast pop-punk / nu-metal elements in our music, sometimes spiced with a bit of hardcore still keeping it melodic. However, our music is based on chasing sounds so we are constantly moving the flavours within our music making it more alive with various effects.

“What makes us unique?” – 99% of the bands with whom we can familiarize our music are categorizing themselves into one sub-genre category and they seem to be putting a huge effort to look and sound the same. We don’t. Does this make us unique? Answer yourself ;)

Do you have any particular lyrical themes?

We didn’t choose a category to limit ourselves with lyrical themes either. They can be about personal experience, everyday life problems, rage, love or even particular events.

What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?

We are energetic all the time on stage. Jumping, running, going crazy. Flo likes to go off stage and enter the crowd and the crowd likes Flo stage diving.  It happened twice that he was lifted into the air by fans just like that. You know it happens sometimes that there is almost nobody in the club due to poor promo or bad timing but you can have sometimes much more fun with those 10 people than the other time with 60 people standing stiff.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?

I saw Mike Patton eating a shoelace and regurgitating it on a Faith No More show at Sziget Festival in 2009.

I think the wildest shows are still waiting for us. We are wild enough in our core but the real crazy shit comes out of a band while being on the road for longer which we haven’t been and work hard to achieve. I’ll make sure you will see stuff on tape which will make you question our sanity.

What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?

Let me share with you the long description as a list ->

Guitars:

  • ’95 Gibson Les Paul Standard all stock in the Studio & Customized Fender Telecaster with Seymour Duncan SH-6 Pickups
  • Strings: Ernie Ball Beefy Slinky
  • Effects: Boss NS-2, EHX Small Clone, MXR Phase 90, Dunlop GCB 95 CryBaby, EHX Memory Boy Delay, TC Electronics Pedal Tuner
  • Amps: Peavey 6505+ & Marshall MF350 Mode Four
  • Cabinets: 2x Marshall 1960
  • Schaller Straplocks, Ernie Ball Straps & Dunlop 1mm Picks

Basses:

  • ’94 Musicman Stingray 3EQ (Teal Green) & ’95 Musicman Stingray 2EQ (Red) Backup – both all stock
  • Studio: ’77 Fender Precision Bass (Sunburst) & AV ’62 Fender Precision (White)
  • Amps: Ampeg SVT-CL & Ampeg PF350 Head with a matching 6×10 classic cabinet.  No effects, I just go straight into the amp
  • Stainless Steel Strings 0.45 – 0.105, whatever brand has a discount at the moment, but I prefer Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinkys normally
  • Schaller Straplocks, Ernie Ball Straps & Dunlop Blue Triangle Bass Picks

Drums:

  • Tama Rockstar 22″ bass
  • 12″, 13″, 16″ toms;
  • 14” snare
  • Tama SLP Maple 14×5,5 Snare
  • Tama Swingstar Snare
  • Heads: Evans
  • Sticks: Zildjian Taylor Hawkins signature
  • Cymbals: Paiste, Zildjian, Anatolian
  • Hardware: Mapex. Tama SpeedCobra double pedal with Iron Cobra wooden beaters

What are your plans for the rest of 2016 / 2017?

We open up for Ignite on December 8th in Bratislava which we are looking forward to pretty much. We have another gig scheduled in Hungary after Christmas and we start the new year with a concert in Vienna and one in Bratislava again.

However, the main focus now is on the next album which we are so excited about. What I can tell is that we have all the instrumentals of the songs written and we plan to hit the studio in spring.

Also a US tour is planned so stay tuned not to miss the details!

If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!

For now it’d be great enough to continue supporting Ignite on their tour and I believe there’d be rad local bands opening up for us at each place!

Chasing Sounds: facebook | twitterreverbnation

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