Zach Van Hoozer’s baby, Zulu Pearls, is already 7 year’s old. It was born in Arlington Virginia, US, in his basement with the help of a few friends. Over the years friends and fellow musicians have come and gone, but Zach remained a good and nurturing father to the project that would eventually take him to this side of the pond.

With new members on board, Zulu Pearls is playing the hell out of their debut album “No Heroes No Honeymoons”, having supported such bands as Cults and Destroyer. If you’re into modern, lo-fi, minimalist indie rock, their seamless blend of soul, rock and punk, is a great listen.

I had a chance to hang out with the band after their last show at Antje Öklesund, and gain some insight into the Berlin music scene. Read on.

When did the band start and how long have you had your current setup?

Zach: A few weeks, Brodie just got back, actually.

Brodie: After a few months I’m back in the fold.

Zach: In total I probably had over 50 people in this band. In the span of 5-6-7 years.  This is all I’ve been doing, my bands, and now I’m here, but this is my favourite line-up.

Why is that?

Zach: Look at these dudes.

They’re so sexy?

Zach: Glad you noticed. [laughter] They just play the songs well and these songs were there before they were part of the band. Not only do we get along well but they look amazing too.

You’ve been playing just for the last four or whatever weeks?

Zach: Brodie just came back today but he played before. He met Maarten for the first time this month after we played with this band called Tennis. We played these three shows with them in Munich, Berlin and Copenhagen.

Maarten: I knew Jasper for a long time and it was he who suggested I join the band.  I met Zach twice at rehearsals, only a few weeks before the tour. We had to play the shows, and it felt great actually.

Zach: I have tried out and hung out with a lot of dudes, but I just met him and then we had to play a show and it worked. Then Brodie just rolled in and they met at soundcheck.

Maarten: I think everybody has been in bands for a long time and we know how it is.

What other bands did you play in?

Maarten: I myself don’t play in another band. I think over here Brodie is the only one that plays in another band at the moment.

Maarten: Maybe we’ve been playing in bands for a long time.

Jasper: I’ve played with Maarten before…

Maarten: …in a band before this. I think we’re just musicians, we also play and we know how to do it.

Brodie: We’re just magicians. We’re Mugicians. [laughter]

Non of you are German. How did you get here?

Jasper: I just kind of got here cos I was through with living in Amsterdam. I liked Berlin and so I moved here.

Maarten: I still live in Rotterdam and I come over to play shows. I do as much as I can. Like next week I’m going back on Monday and on Friday I’m flying back here again for the show in White Trash on Saturday evening and then on Monday I go back again. That’s how it goes.

Brodie: I moved here from New Zealand with my other band. Just kind of chasing the dragon. We all moved here, it’s great and it’s going beautifully…no I’m just joking. [laughter].

And you Zach? You have been living here for three years?

Zach: Two years. I just did it cos I wanted to move somewhere. I was going to go to New York because I had no imagination. But I visited here again, which ended up being a lot of fun. I met up with everybody I knew, and I felt I should just do it. And I did. It was quite easy actually. I studied German, and it sort of worked out. It wasn’t the master plan, but it worked out of course.

Do you see any major differences between the music scene here in Berlin and Amsterdam or the States?

Jasper: I see a huge difference. There is no real music scene here.

There is no music scene?

Jasper: I mean in terms of local bands.

Brodie: All the bands are quite scattered.

Zach: For example a show like this tonight is really rare and this is a standard show everywhere else, where you just get a couple of local bands together, charge 4-5 EUR entry and at the end of the night split the pot. It so rarely happens in Berlin, it seems. I knew Brodie for a year and a half before we were, like, “Alright we both have bands and we all play music why don’t we start helping each other out?”. It’s sort of like, every band is an island.

Brodie: Just got to build some bridges, get some sweet rafts or boats or something like that.

Do you find it difficult to set up shows here?

Zach: This is like the only place (Antje Öklesund) where I can just contact them, contact some other bands and set up a show. It’s super straight forward here. For some reason there is no network in Berlin. Nobody really knows each other and there is no cohesive scene, like anywhere else we have lived.

Jasper: I also feel there is a problem with bigger venues. There is a lack of respect towards the local bands. They get shat on completely. In Holland you get asked to open for a band and you’ll get like 200-250 EUR, nothing too great but still, and here you get nothing.

Zach: We just started asking for money. We got 20 EUR to play with Destroyer, we got 50 EUR to play with Cults, the other day, and that’s because I asked. That’s after a year of playing everywhere. The promoters don’t seem to really care.

Jasper: It seems like the promoters and the clubs exist to have bands that are on tour from the UK, the US or wherever. They give them shows and they have no connection at all to what’s happening locally. They don’t know any local bands, they don’t care about any local bands. I think it’s kind of bizarre. Whereas in other cities, if you’re somebody that promotes  shows like that, you’re a “music guy”. You know people that play in bands.

Brodie: All that scattered nature of the bands has probably to do with the fact that nobody who plays in these bands is actually from Berlin or Germany. I’m from New Zealand. You guys are from all over the place. There’s Irish people, there’s Italian people and they all just kind form these little pockets and there is no sense of unity. I think it’s something that could happen. It feels like something is bubbling away, and that there could be something really good coming in a few years. There’s a lot of musicians moving here.

Zach: There’s a ton of people here, but I really think it’s based of the fact that nobody is actually from here. It takes a while to even meet the people who also play music. We know Brodie and all these other bands strictly from this one bar that we hang out in, and that’s in a certain part of town and not everybody goes there. We never hang out in Friedrichschain. I sort of feel like I’m on vacation.

Jasper: Maybe that’s also part of it. In Berlin there’s this neighbourhood thing, where you go out in your neighbourhood and you never go to another neighbourhood.

Zach: We’re not fully engaged in society here.

Jasper: No we’re not and that’s also our fault.

What would you consider your favourite venue here in Berlin?

Jasper: I think Festaal Kreuzberg is the most beautiful venue.

Zach: I think Lido is also nice looking.

Did you have a chance to play in those places?

Zach: Yeah. That’s what ‘s so really weird over here. We came over here, we had this other group of dudes, and the first show we played was in this shitty (in a good way) place called Lokal at Rosenthaler Platz, which is now the new CCCP. That was our first show, and our second show, that we got by only just asking a few people, we played at Postbahnhof. After that we were like “What? Ok this is going well”, but that totally didn’t amount to anything. By now people know us cos we’re trying a lot harder, I suppose and not that many people know us at all. That’s the thing really there is no actual logical progression, like, “First you play here, then you play here, then you play there”

Brodie: It’s the scene man.

Jasper: I probably have to say that we’ve only had this lineup that we’re really happy with for three months. When did we do the Holland shows?

Zach: That was June, and it was the first time we played together. We liked this and it felt solid.

Jasper: I think it makes a huge difference how it’s supposed to be.

Zach: True.

 

What are your biggest influences, especially in regard to the album?

Zach: Spending a lot of my time in my influences had to be, just going to the same bar all the time, being like a bored American twenty-something, wishing I could move somewhere like here, have some fun, listening to a lot of rap  .

You can hear that.

Zach: Can you hear that?

No.

Zach: No. Maybe you could.

Brodie: I think the lyrics they’ve got like an urban [swoosh sound], [laughter] but you know kind of street life.

Zach: I check out rap shit all the time, all day, everyday, because I need to stay in touch with the shit that I actually like. I mean I do listen to a lot of rap it’s not just in an ironic way and I think it sneaks in. I think there is no other swaggers, that I have, come specifically from rock and roll.
I like new slang. It doesn’t really help that I’ve learned over here and most people don’t speak English as their first language so it’s not obvious.
I like classic everything. It’s pretty boring.

Classic everything?

Zach: Like you know I like all the big names of rock history.

Give me two, three.

Zach: While I was working on this record I was listening to a lot of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. Serge Gainsbourg I like a lot, not that I’m lyrically in tune for that .

 

What does playing music mean to you?

Maarten: It’s a big one. I haven’t played music for a long time. I wanted to study, do other things, just in case I couldn’t make it by playing music. But music gives you energy and makes you go on, so I started playing again. I met up Jasper again and then I came to Zulu Pearls. I did nothing for a year before that. Not playing made me feel very sad, actually. There’s a lot of effort that goes into it, sometimes it’s really hard cos you don’t have time to do things at home, but this is what makes me happy.

Jasper: There are a lot of bands that tour and that you play with that seem kind of bummed out that they are away from home and that they have to do a show again. I can’t imagine ever feeling like that.

Tired?

Jasper: You’re tired that’s for sure. I just can’t really imagine it not being enjoyable to be on the stage and play songs that you like.

You’ve been playing since childhood?

Jasper: Yeah.

Maarten: I’ve played since I was 15. It’s all my life. By the time I was 16 I played in bands, was touring Europe and had my first record out. To be in a van with six/seven other people and play all these different venues at the age of 16  was the best feeling. I think it’s the best thing one can do.

Jasper: I did one small tour in the US and I realized that in Europe you can play Berlin one day, Hamburg on another, then Amsterdam and Antwerp or something and then you go to Paris. In the US you play New York and then you play Philadelphia and then you play Shitsville, Wherever, and then you go to another similar place. There’s like literally 5 cool cities in the US.

Zach: That is sort of half-way why I ended up moving over here. I knew I’d probably be doing this and at some point I will be going on tours somewhere, and I preferred to live over here. When you are on tour in Europe you see cool new shit and cool new countries all the time. Instead of Baltimore, New Jersey and the middle of the country, I just don’t care for that.

Jasper: For example you play in a strip mall, New Jersey.

Zach: Although there is no scene to speak of, the way I know it from home, from my entire life of playing in bands, just the quality of life of being in a band here and in a band there is different.  Even in terms of playing shows that he’s talking about. We’ll play four more times this month but it’s been far better than okay. In the US it’s about driving15 minutes in the city, playing a shitty show, in a shitty club run by assholes and then aspiring to play in other cities. I personally wouldn’t like to come back. I really wouldn’t give a shit. I’d stay home on my coast, and I’d like to go playing on the west coast.

Brodie: When you are actually touring and playing those shows and you do the math and work out the logistics of it, it doesn’t look too good. You need to hire a car, drive for five and a half hours, fuck around, do the soundcheck, try and convince the venue to give you some beers, and all of this stuff just to play for 30 minutes. And when you do the math you think “Fuck, what am I doing?”, but then you do the 30 minutes and you realize why you do it. And then the next morning you wake up thinking “Fuck, I have to drive for five and a half hours”.

Maarten: Once I got really fed up with it and I ended up quitting music. When you play in a band everybody sees you playing the 30 minutes, but there’s so much going on that the public doesn’t see. There’s all this other stuff, driving around, sound-checking, gear, you play the gig, and then it’s late and you have to take everything down to the wagon again and drive somewhere else, and this goes on and on. At one point I just snapped. I got really mad and threw the drum-set all over the stage because a part of the rented gear was missing. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Do you guys ever busk?

Jasper: No. Fuck it.

Zach: That’s a big philosophical difference, as far as what we consider worth doing as a  band and with music as such. In college, I was never one of the people to take their fucking acoustic guitar out and play insane super loud songs nobody wants to hear. It’s the same thing with busking for me. There are cool bands out there that do it. I saw that band Camera here, and I think that’s cool, but as far as busking it’s not what I’m about. I don’t give buskers a second thought. I don’t have that in my record collection. It’s not something I aspire to. I can do that in my room. I don’t want people throwing change at me. People can do whatever they want, of course.

Jasper: Throwing money at us, that’s okay if we’re on a proper stage with a proper PA.

Zach: They can throw all the money they want. That would be cool. People should be throwing money at shows more often.

Brodie: But just notes, not coins. That would be good.

Zach: Rolled up notes, paper plane notes.

Brodie: Coins could be a little bit dangerous .

Zach: Yeah, no coins.

Brodie: A 2 EUR piece is a good one though.

Zach: That is a good one. You can shove some 2 EUR in a piece of bread .

 

Zulu Pearls are Zach Van Hoozer (lyrics, vocals, guitar), Jasper Uhl (guitar), Maarten Van Oers (drums) and Brodie White (bass).

Their nearest upcoming gig will take place in White Trash, Fast Food on 27th August. Check them out.

Interview and photo: Olga Baczynska

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