Bert: Dave does the drumming, singing and writing songs, he does his own B music, he runs a lot and works out (laughs).

Dave: He writes songs, he sings in the studio but not live... And that's it (laughs). Oh, he rides bikes and takes wonderful pictures!

Mickael: Tom places bass, he is the one who takes care of others, on a late-night he'll make sure to take you home safely, and he's one of the most amazing bass players that we've seen. If you know how complex our songs are, we always challenge him to go to the next level...

Tom: I don't him that well but he's a singer... No, I know him pretty well (laughs). If I had to represent him through a symbol it would be a microphone, for us, he's not only the singer but he translates everything we feel and spreads the word, we're quieter.

Mickael: We released our first album in 2006, we were a small, local band but we had the mission not to play in Belgium, we wanted to play abroad. That was very bold, nobody in Belgium believed that we could do that. At the same time, Dave went on tour with Soulwax, and on the day he reached out to the owner of the record company and gave them the music and that's how we got signed and started out. We played a lot in the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia, and they would say that we were “Europe's answer to Los Claxons.”
A couple of years later we signed to !K7, a German label, and we released the album Synrise, which is also a totally iconic song for Goose that a lot of people know, and it was used for games and adverts... Then we released the third and eventually the fourth album, which was recorded in Los Angeles, inspired by the city – we could say that's the lighter version of Goose. We released an album and then an EP and now we're here.

Mickael: Well, Dave and I went to kindergarten together (laughs).

Dave: And even before that we were born in the same hospital.
Mickael: And in kindergarten, I met Bert, and since then we've sort of had the same hobbies, when he started playing the drums I started to play the guitar and we played music together. We got to know Dave when we were 16 because Dave and Bert were together in a ‘youth movement.’ In college, around that time, we met Tom, who was really successful, and we reached out to him asking if he would join the band and asked him if he could release a single, which never happened.
Tom: I'm still waiting for the single (laughs).
Mickael: We've been playing the four of us together since the year 2000.

Tom: The formation of the group, as we know it, was back in the year 2000, but before that the three of them were already playing in a band with other people. So, Dave's dad was filming all of the footage from the concerts, and that's how we managed to compile a video of old images that somehow match perfectly with this new song.
Dave: In 2000 we became Goose.

Bert: Loamysoil. It's a combination of a special kind of dirt and soil.

Dave: It wasn't a good name (laughs). And also, with Tom coming in, it was a new band. It was something that could have more potential for a longer period of time.
Mickael: We were kids who were learning to play instruments and we were having fun, we educated each other, musically. As we are also friends, we have also grown up together.

Dave: We take care of that. We also have our own projects, so we go away for a while, we do our own thing and we come back with a fresh mind. That gives you energy – then your band has something new again.
Mickael: We always find ways to do something new. Sometimes we do things that are a bit extreme, like building a home studio. To us, that was a way of ‘going into the future’ together.

Mickael: It's a bigger building where we can still live and work together, and we don't always have to be on top of each other, we give ourselves freedom: one person works in one room on another project... But then we eat together at noon and work together as a collective. That was fresh input to the band, to be able to work together, although not always we're literally or physically working together on the same thing on the same project.
Safari Studios is the place where we work, Goose is our project and we challenge each other every time we make an album. It's not like we collect ten songs and move on with our lives, we always want to find something new that helps us creatively, that we have not heard before.
Bert: We are friends who are having fun, we try not to treat this like a job, or not that much, we take care of it so that it doesn't become boring.
Mickael: Maybe we will open a restaurant next.

Mickael: It was a journey. When we started working on the album, we wanted to be free of all external expectations and go on lockdown together, – unrelated to Covid. We talked about what challenges us and realised that we wanted to get back on tour and play, that's how we started to make the album. We also wanted to be very musical with the songwriting, so, if the previous EP was very electronic, this would also be but, in this case, we didn't want to let the machine speak, instead of the humans behind it.
Nobody was looking over our shoulder trying to figure out what we were doing or checking if it fits a certain genre... We just wanted to focus on what we wanted to do, and we had a lot of fun in the process. We then all agreed that we had to go to Motorbass Studios in Paris to finish it. We knew that the vibe in the studio is amazing, and we knew it would bring a certain kind of magic to the album, and it definitely did. We prepared all the songs in our home studio but left enough room for that magic. After those 3 weeks here, we went home with a completely different album we thought we were making.

Mickael: For a long time. We talked about the idea of having a place. We had a studio above a bar, which came in really handy (laughs). But after a while, it became too small, it was just one room.
Tom: We were evolving as people and as a band and that room became too small, something needed to change.

Mickael: No, it's more like a bar – a private bar.

Mickael: That's exactly it, if it's not fun then there's something wrong because we're friends. We try to find ways to keep it fun.

Dave: Well, it was just a happy coincidence. They were different pieces that fell together at the right moment.
Tom: Our producer first came to our home studio to experience our home, our vibe, he experienced how we made all those tracks. After, we worked for 2 weeks over there and then we moved to Paris to finish the recordings, as the opportunity came up.
Bert: We were also more isolated here. Safari is our island but it's still in our hometown, we have our families there... So we have more distractions. We knew that we needed a short period of time to focus on this in order to work fast.
Tom: We had a great time recording here. We knew that it was important to enjoy ourselves to do something creative. The city of Paris helped us to achieve what we wanted. That all adds to the result.

Dave: It's been a ride and you can hear that in the music – all those nice dinners we had (laughs).
Mickael: I'd like to compare the album with a house party, it has different stages: a bit boring at the start (when you're a bit anxious) to extreme highs and lows.

Mickael: Yes, definitely.

Bert: Or everyone wants to play their own songs so all of the songs are different...

Bert: It could have been somewhere else but the way it happened is the right way. It had to be Paris because of our producer... I cannot imagine this happening in a different city but...
Dave: It would have been different.
Mickael: Even the way the studio and the studio engineer work... Everything has an impact on what the album sounds like. It's the combination of people who make the album, not necessarily the city.
Dave: I still think a big part of our album was filmed in our hometown of Kortrijk, recording in Motorbass was the cherry on top. It was a present that we gave to ourselves by finishing it here, and it's thanks to our producer, Victor.

Dave: Yes but you have to choose the right kind of person and not have too many opinions. We had a very intimate team, everyone was here because they wanted to be in the room, not because they were hired. It was a really fun process, and we had no external advice from managers, companies or industry people.

Dave: Yeah, with Victor we can just be musicians.
Bert: We don't have to think of the technical stuff.
Tom: It's a sort of freedom, we can just play our instruments and throw out ideas and we're all there for each other.
Mickael: It's also nice to have someone act as a captain, like “we're going in that direction!” As a creative, you start to doubt yourself.

Dave: I'd say, don't overthink it. You don't have to be ‘too conscious.’
Mickael: You have to be open to the magic that is music or art. I really do think that every time we come up with chords or a melody, they come out of nowhere and it moves you, I think that's really special.
Dave: In a way, we're still really naive, we just play and that's part of the magic: we don't always know what we're doing. We're not interested in explaining the technical parts.

All: Yeah.

Mickael: We're also playing at Mallorca and Lanzarote! We're very excited because it's been a long time since we played on an extended tour like that, so we're playing in many different cities.

Bert: We don't have specific goals but we want to keep doing what we love.
Dave: We want to make more records, meet new people...
Mickael: 5 years ago I would have said Coachella but no, surprise could be anywhere, we could have the best gig ever at a random city. We want to be able to be active.