| Bands: | Amber |
| Release: | Room for Understanding |
| Genre: | Indie, Post-Punk, Emo |
| Country: | Germany (Bielefeld) |
| Release Date: | 21st of June, 2024 |
| Released via | Room 11 Records |
| Cover Artwork: | Die Zeit Heilt Alle Wunder |
If there is one band that reignited my interest in everything that takes place within the sonical scopes of Emo and Indie, it surely is Bielefeld Indie Punks Amber. Having convinced me already with their self-titled 4-track EP, I was very happy to find out that their full-length debut was going to follow in 2024. When I saw that there were tracks off the EP that found their way onto the album and sounded entirely different, there was already enough space to be nosy and ask a few questions. This is why we took some time to get a little deeper into the recording process of Room for Understanding, its track selection, the meaning of the title, the label that released the 12″ vinyl as well as musical inspiration.
Interview with Amber
Hello dear Amber, I’m glad to be able to welcome you here at Transcended Music Blog to exchange some words following the release of your full-length debut!
Thank you so much for having us!
Before starting off – feel free to introduce yourselves and maybe cast a light on the question if it is possible that we know some of your members from other projects they are or were involved in.
First of all, all of us played in Bands before and our Drummer Tillman also plays in another Band called The Glitch Youth (go check them out!), so you may have seen our faces around there in the past.
Besides being the Vocalist in Amber, i’ve also been pretty active as a graphic designer/visual artist as “Die Zeit Heilt Alle Wunder” over the last few years and luckily got to work with many amazing people in or around the music scene over the time.
Looking a while back – your first self-titled EP was released in 2021. In hindsight, how do you perceive this release when looking back at it now?
We started recording the EP in 2020 i think and it was basically our first step into writing and playing music that wasn’t hardcore, which can be a bit terrifying once you realize that you can’t hide behind heavily distorted guitars and manically screaming into a microphone anymore. It taught us a lot about songwriting and looking back it really helped us to see what works for us and what doesn’t.
For me especially it was pretty hard to learn how to sing and write melodies that fit the songs because that had been a muscle i never really had to use.
Also, while we worked on that EP the pandemic hit and it was a really weird time to put out new music to say the least, but i think everybody knows that story haha.
Your full-length debut “Room for Understanding” was released in June 2024. On this album, you decided to implement some of the songs that were also available on this aforementioned debut EP from 2021. However, not all of the songs found their way onto your full-length. What were your thoughts when deciding which songs to transport onto “Room for Understanding” ?
Well, the EP had four songs on it and we still like the idea behind every one of them. Three of them made it onto the debut album as a re-worked and re-recorded version, but the one that didn’t make it just didn’t match the vibe that we were going for with the record and we didn’t really feel like playing it anymore too, so we decided to not re-work that one and just went with the other three, leaving the fourth song on the top of the shelf to maybe dig it back out at some other point in the future.
When having decided what tracks to implement on your full-length debut, did you have a specific perspective in order to decide how to arrange the re-recording of those tracks?
We really liked the ideas we had with the songs we had already written for the EP but agreed that they still lacked some things that we wanted to pursue with the album and that we could use our skills a bit better after learning and improving what we do over the course of the two years since they first came out. So we basically treated those songs like you would do with a demo by taking them as a rough sketch of how the song sounds like and what the structures will be, but also tried to add and take away the elements we thought it would or wouldn’t need to blend in with what we wanted to do with the rest of the album. We’re really glad that we were able to give the songs the attention they deserved!
Speaking of recording – the variety of sounds that are present on “Room for Understanding” is pretty wide. What was the recording process of this album like and what were the ideas that you took to the studio when thinking about what soundscapes to construct?
We knew early on that we wanted a pretty broad spectrum sonically. As much as we wanted to have the glittery guitars and reverby vocals, we also wanted the drums to be pretty forward and hardcore-ish while the bass works between all of that. Basically the album was supposed to connect beautiful, shimmering sounds with that certain rawness and energy that we love about the heavier genres we all come from originally.
Recapitulating the variety of sounds, song structures and vocal styles that found its way onto this album I am also quite keen to ask – what is the creative writing process of your music like? Are there any musical or environmental factors that directly impact your songwriting?
We tried to prepare as much as we could and had a pretty strong idea of how stuff was supposed to be before we went into the studio, but we’re still a pretty feel-based band. Luckily our Producers Simon and Daniel gave us plenty of space to just fuck around and find out. Be it trying out new effect pedals to see if it works for that one song, thinking of vocal melodies that might be a better fit than what i came up with, and basically just checking every possibility of how we could go about certain things to make sure we don’t leave anything behind. That’s a big factor that allows us to really work creatively and I think without all that exploring, a lot of ideas wouldn’t have made it onto the album.
Especially when taking a look at “Room for Understanding” – were there any bands, distinct albums or specific sounds that might have influenced your perspective on what you wanted to sound like?
Since we are pretty fluid in terms of musical interests and genres, our musical influences shifted a lot over the time as well. But some Bands that got mentioned a lot in the process were the Bands Hundredth, House Of Harm, The Cure, Nothing, Basement, Van Holzen, Choir Boy or Love A, just to name a few.
I have to admit that I was slightly surprised when having seen that your full-length debut will be released on Dortmund-based label Room 11 Records. Can you explain how your release at this label came into existence?
That’s a pretty simple story actually. Niklas from Room 11 Records reached out to us around the time when we were releasing the first album singles. He asked if we’d be interested in releasing the album on vinyl and of course we were! We had a look at what they had put out before (Wonderful World for example), hopped on a call to speak about how they’d like to get on with releasing the record, and the rest is history. We’re super happy to have that opportunity!
Being a fan of Summer Darling Tapes and also knowing that your vocalist Levin is quite involved regarding the visuals of that label I wanted to ask – will John take charge of a possible tape release of “Room for Understanding”?
I sure hope so! I talked to John about releasing a tape version of the album before we knew that it would be released on vinyl, but of course i was waaaaay too late to allow any form of proper planning on both ends. Maybe there’s more room for that at a later point in time to make something cool for a cassette release and if anything, we’d love to do it with Summer Darling Tapes.
If there is one aspect that the cover of this album showcases, it is the availability of room. Not only is there quite some space between the wordings “Room,” “for” and “Understanding” but we can also see a chair that is set in the middle of an open field. What can we possibly derive from this depiction and the lonely chair on this cover?
The whole idea of the “Room For Understanding” is wishing for some space.
This (and with that the album title as well) stems from an old photograph i saw of some kind of seminar room and on the window of that room it said “Room For Understanding”.
That’s when i started thinking about the “Room For Understanding” as some sort of safe place to be able to process and cope with difficult topics, whatever that may be. That room could be a literal room or just the presence of space to create the possibility of attending issues in a productive and non-destructive way that they deserve to achieve a long lasting resolution.So the chair on that open field is just one possible interpretation of how that much needed room could look and i’m sure depending on who you’ll ask it could also look a lot different. And i think that’s the whole point and the beauty of it!
Pretty close to the release of “Room for Understanding” you also released a video clip for the track “Chadwick” – which is in my opinion an outstanding track on this album that especially shines from its new production that highlights its gazey vibe. What were your thoughts when having planned this video and how satisfied were you with the outcome?
There wasn’t that much planning involved for that actually. About a year ago we started taking an old VHS camera with us on trips and shows etc. and started gathering all kinds of material from live shows, photo shoots and some other random stuff. We wanted Chadwick to be the feature single for the album and our secret fifth team member Fiona (who does most of our video and photo stuff) just put it all together into a video to go along with it. Until the video was finished she was the only one that saw most of that material before and it was pretty cool for us to see all those little moments documented. No color grading, no intricate editing, just raw memories and good times.
Diving a little deeper into the lyrics of the tracks on “Room for Understanding,” it becomes evident that there is a strong focus on personal struggle and individual patterns of how to deal with these. However, when taking one step back and looking at the album as a whole, is it possible to denote an overarching theme for this album?
You’re definitely right! I think the biggest theme on the album is just different methods of coping with difficult topics, both relating to personal struggles and more universal themes like a certain feeling of Weltschmerz that many of us witness in this badly oiled machine that we live in.
The idea (and with that the album title as well) stems from an old photograph i saw of some kind of seminar room and on the window of that room it said “Room For Understanding”. That’s when i started thinking about the Room For Understanding as some sort of safe place to be able to process and cope with difficult topics, whatever that may be. That room could be a literal room or just the presence of space to create the possibility of attending issues in a productive and non-destructive way that they deserve to achieve a long lasting resolution.
Browsing the tracklist of “Room for Understanding” it is quite easy to spot that all of the titles are written in English except for the title of the final track. What does “Le Mal Nécessaire” mean and how come you decided to go for a French title on this last track?
“Le Mal Nécessaire” translates to “The necessary evil” and is the title of a documentary about the master of suspense, Stephen King. That song is by far one of the more heavier songs on the album and i wanted a bit more harsher title to go with it. Surely you could apply the ”necessary evil” to some kind of social critique as well, but if i’m perfectly honest i just liked the title and wanted to pay tribute to Stephen King and i’m glad that the guys let me get away with my nerdy stuff for this one.
When comparing tracks such as “Heavy View” and “Le Mal Nécessaire,” I feel that it is possible to spot a specific difference regarding the vocals. Whereas the vocal style on “Heavy View” can be located within the spheres of classy Emo, this changes on “Le Mal Nécessaire,” which slightly moves towards a style that rather reminds of later Emo or Pop Punk. Does this vocal progression convey a specific purpose on your album?
We definitely have many influences regarding the vocals and one major influence definitely comes from more or less Emo bands like Citizen or Movements. Just as i said earlier, we try to blend some different styles into what we are doing and for “Le Mal Nécessaire”, the vocals were definitely inspired by post punk era Ceremony. Like most of what we do this was also just pretty vibe-based and doesn’t serve any big purpose and just felt right for that song.
Over the course of the release of “Room for Understanding” you were able to play quite some live shows by now. Were there any shows you enjoyed specifically or is there a track that you are most enthusiastic about when playing live?
I think during the time of releasing the album or favourite shows definitely were at Leineweber Takeover in our hometown Bielefeld (even though it started raining cats and dogs mid-set and some of our equipment stopped working during soundcheck) and the Room 11 Records Label Fest at FZW Dortmund!
I think everyone of us has different favorite and least favorite songs during our set, but by now we are pretty happy with our current setlist so we’re all having fun during our time on stage either way!
There are already quite a few shows still on the board for Amber in 2024 and you just released new merch for the band, which shows that you’re still right in the middle of an ongoing process. What are the future plans for you guys for this year or the following time?
I think we really just want to play as many shows as possible to just get ourselves out there and to reach some people that have never seen us before. As much as we loved doing this record and the process around it, to us it’s still the most important thing to be able to present those songs live and to see the different reactions on people’s faces and we’re definitely in for that.
I hope you enjoyed having spent some time answering these questions. Thanks a damn lot for having talked about your fantastic album. As usual, the possibility for the final words will be handed to you in order to finish this interview.
Thank you so much for this opportunity to go a bit into detail about what we’ve been working on for such a long time. That being said, if anything of this sounds like it’s something you could like, make sure to check out our Spotify or Instagram or even pick up a copy of “Room For Understanding” on some beautifully marbled recycling vinyl if you feel like it!
Thanks for reading and be safe!
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