Start Listening To: Ciao Lucifer
The Dutch funk-pop duo discuss live energy, AI anxiety, and why they think irony isn't as harmless as it seems.
If music journalism teaches you anything, it’s to not assume that artists of a more morose creative temperament are deeper than their counterparts. All in the same day, a slowcore artist who refuses to write in anything but vague proverbs leaves you with “It’s all just about the music, man” as your only usable headline - and a funk-pop jam band will catapult the conversation from preferring upbeat music to noting how said upbeat music could be a potential antidote to political propaganda. As a duo full of surprises, Amsterdam-based gnarly-funk-pop Ciao Lucifer repeatedly translates their trademark carefree levity into a loftier set of philosophical remarks: read their thoughts on the social consequences of disaffected modern music, their shifting recording philosophy, and, yes, battling Trump-era nihilism.
Tell me about some creative breakthroughs you’ve had recently - what do you think differentiated ‘Good News’ from previous projects like ‘All Work, No Play’?
Marnix: “Recently, we made a new record that’s coming out after this summer - the main thing we’ve done in that is really embrace our live sound, so we’ve started recording in one take. When we play live, we don’t use any backing tracks. We just try to capture that energy of a live show recently.
Willem: “Yeah, and we recorded the whole of the new album in three days! The previous record ‘All Work No Play’ was quite the opposite - we really went into a rabbit hole, and we let that go for now to focus on live energy.
That actually forays into a question I had - your music focuses so much on being ‘immediately enjoyable’. Do you often refine your private process based on what your live audiences seem to be most receptive to?
Willem: “It kind of happened automatically as we were touring. We really like writing songs, so we never stopped. Even while touring, we would write a song that day and feel it out on soundcheck that same evening. You start to refine your material when you can test reactions live. That’s how we started back in high school; we wanted a way for outsiders to make contact with other kids.
Marnix: And it feels like an urgent thing to do now with music becoming so easily made with A.I. It becomes hard to even make a distinction between what is computer-made music or human music, and in a live situation it’s obvious.
Would you ever put out a live record?
Marnix: Maybe we would, although it feels like for a live record it would have to be a super special show. Maybe put on something quite out of the ordinary?
Willem: That would be cool, actually, thanks for the idea!
Do you intend to stay a duo, or are you interested in expanding your jam-band type project?
Marnix: We have tinkered with that idea a lot. With every record we make, we think ‘We gotta get more people involved’, or ‘Let’s just get someone on a horn section’. But we always end up doing it just the two of us, because we want to keep finding different ways we can express ourselves as a duo. We might involve more people at some point, but it would probably be a temporary thing. It’s actually a cool restriction.
Willem: The funny thing is we discovered that the minimalism of the two-piece is actually the point of the project. It was hard not to add people and make it more…average.
In what ways do you think you balance each other out and add contrast to each other’s natural styles?
Marnix: A lot of ways, actually. I’d say I usually like to work very quickly and intuitively and go on the very immediate feeling I get from a piece of music. Willem is very detail-oriented and can grind on something for a long time, and I think that’s where we contradict each other but also fill each other’s skill set gaps.
Willem: He prefers to make something and finish it in a day; I can take years, no problem. So somewhere in between, we meet. The three-day album was great to be a little fearful and feel that energy.
What are some unexpected influences that inform your sound?
Marnix: On the newest single ‘Kissing In The Rain’, I was doing a sort of theater project with a lot of Bach music. Our music doesn’t sound anything like Bach, but I liked that wherever there was an ascending line, there was a descending line; we tried to get that into the writing of the verse. There’s this moment where the bass goes down while the melody goes up, and that was a very conscious moment of trying to do something Bach but in a funk setting.
Willem: I think in general, we like music that sticks out in some kind of way. It doesn’t matter where it’s from - really anything that catches our attention, whether it’s Bach or northern British donk music.
Have you ever heard your music described in a way that surprised you, for better or for worse?
Willem: A lot of our official PR texts have some sort of root in something an audience member said to us before. There was someone who said our music was an ‘endorphin bomb’, and we put that on our website for sure. It’s one of those descriptors that you couldn’t make up about your own music, but it’s nice to believe it if someone else says it.
Are there any musical techniques you’re currently working to sharpen?
I’m currently starting to accept the fact that I am probably the world’s first professional kazoo player, because I play kazoo while drumming and I have a little microphone that sends effects through it. It’s hard for me to accept this fact, but as soon as I embody it more, I’ll become even more skilled.
Marnix: For now, it’s actually about letting go of technique and trying to just sing based on the feeling in my body, mouth, and throat rather than how it comes out. I love artists who sound ugly, but you can tell it clearly feels good for them.
A lot of indie music right now leans heavily into irony or detachment, but your work has such a sincerity to it - was that ever something you felt hesitant about?
Willem: We totally hate that ironic tone, because it’s so easy.
Marnix: And sometimes it pretends to be so open, but when it’s that ironic in feel, I can’t say or feel anything about it because it’s already negating any criticism. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that this is that is so popular now? I guess it's more of an unconscious thing where we just didn’t gravitate toward irony at first - and then at some point we were looking around and thinking, ‘Now we consciously don’t want to do this.’
Willem: And let’s get dark: irony is a great starting point for nihilism, and nihilism leads to the sort of political situation that we are currently getting ourselves into. I mean, I do use irony all the time. Irony is a very Dutch thing, but it’s also Dutch to be extremely forward and direct - so we’re going that route in our music instead. People are so scared of not being cool. Fuck that. Let’s get connected and be human together.
Circling back to the point on nihilism - do you mean the way modern governments are being run are suggestive of ethically-void policymakers, or more so that the general population has gotten so nihilist that we aren’t pushing back?
Willem: I think there’s a reason for certain people to want you to be a nihilist. They want you to give up and be detached, and only joke about it. Have you heard of Kayfaybe wrestling? There are all these theories about how Trumpism instills this veneer of reality TV to seem gruesome and divide audiences - but there are actual bombs. They create a sort of joke out of violence, but it’s not a joke. People are actually dying.
Anyway, that’s why we’re not ironic.