We had a chat with My Baby , Dutch/New Zealand band based in Amsterdam, about their upcoming album “sake, sake , sake” an eclectic project filled with different styles of sounds. It’s out on April 22 so keep an eye out for it!

  • Your music style can be described as a combination of Rock, Dance and Blues elements which have a psychedelic effect on the audience during live shows. When did your musical journey start?

Our journey started somewhere before 2012, it was approximately 2005 and we were already playing in another Soul inspired band. We started recording and making stuff that was split off from that band. We felt like we wanted to go in the same direction with music, it felt natural. Initially, Daniel would travel to the Netherlands from New Zealand since he was actually born in the Netherlands but then moved in with his mum. We did that for six, seven years. While working on the second album we split up from some of the band members and finally ended up with the three of us, which then became ‘My Baby.’ After a year and a half in the studio together we decided to produce the album and after we played the album live we decided to become a band.  

  • You are releasing your fifth album – sake sake sake – on April 22 . A 13 track project mixed by Steve Dub, a sound engineer that also mixed artists like Chemical Brothers, Prodigy… How was working with him and the creative process of the album? 

The album was supposed to come out in 2020, but we had to postpone it. We got in contact with Steve Dub because we thought it was a good match for this project. The creative process started before this album, even before the pandemic. With everything being postponed we had the time to create songs that were influenced by living during those times. We wanted to explore more of a fragile side of ourselves and our society so we were exploring and flirting with some post-apocalyptic futuristic topics. With everything happening in the world, and the COVID pandemic we wanted to include those topics in our songs. 

  • How is the workflow in the studio?

Cato starts improvising lyric-wise. It all happens subconsciously, we come up with words and together we start interpreting them. We also try to avoid too many ideas, to have a more abstract form of inspiration to work with. I am happy if other people have completely different ideas, that is what is cool about making music: it is something different for everybody. 

  • Would you like to collaborate with different musicians here, in the Netherlands? 

We haven’t really thought about that because the last couple of years we were always on tour or going places. We feel like a band is not like artists or DJ producers, who collaborate regularly. 

  • You play the drums and your guitar but also there are a lot of synthesized sounds, what are the synths that you use?

The funny thing is, a lot of times they are not actual synths, we put all the guitars through synthesizers and synthesizing modules. For example, a lot of the origin of the sounds you hear comes from guitars. Even vocals can go through the synthesizer. Some of them are even actual synthesizers. We always want to emulate EDM music by trying to use a lot of our voice, sampling a voice, and then repeating it. For the drums, we also use a sample of drums, then modify it to create a new and weird sound. 

  • Any plans for the near future?

We just had two big sold out shows at Paradiso which was amazing!

Also, in April, there are a couple more shows in the Netherlands and then there is also the Liberation day festival. It looks like it is going back to normal.

And of course, we also have the new album coming out on the 22th of April. 

Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0c103ZyWDycpfVxR0lNrjm

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mybabymybabymybaby/

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mybabywashere