Getting to Know… The Halo Trees | Interview 🎤

For our 209^th Q&A, Sascha Blach provides stellar, insightful, and in-depth answers on behalf of her indie rock band, The Halo Trees.  

“W

ith us, the listeners will find a lot of feeling, depth and hand-made instrumentation.” Intriguing, 🎙️ The Halo Trees! The Berlin, Germany band are our esteemed interviews for the 209^th Q&A on The Musical Hype.  Here, vocalist and guitarist 🎙️ Sascha Blach answers our burning questions, providing awesome insight about the indie rock collective.  “I started the whole thing as a solo project in my studio and only looked for other musicians when my vision – i.e. the first suitable songs – was mature enough,” she shares, regarding the background of the collective.  Later, she emphasizes the DIY nature of the band: “With us, everything really happens in-house: In addition to things like songwriting, recording, mixing, and mastering (in our own studio), we also do all of our videos, graphics and artworks ourselves…” Awesome! Rather than spoil any more of this in-depth Q&A, you can read 🎤 Getting to Know… The Halo Trees: Interview No. 209 for yourself!

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Starting things off, for those who may not be familiar with The Halo Trees, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

🎤 Haha, nice start. We are The Halo Trees from Berlin in Germany. I would describe our music as indie rock in the broadest sense, but we are a bit darker and more melancholy than many other bands in the genre. With us, the listeners will find a lot of feeling, depth and hand-made instrumentation. We use a lot of toms, have rather deep vocals and in addition to guitar, bass and synths also use a violin. We have been compared to Nick Cave, David Bowie, The National or Lambchop in the past, but I think we sound independent enough that your readers should check us out.

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Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your band form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

🎤 I’ve been active as a musician, singer, songwriter, and producer for a long time, and I always try new things. Over the years I have released music in many genres. With The Halo Trees, I wanted to start a band that I can play well into old age, because the music is so timeless that it could still play when I was 60 or 70 years old. That was about 4 years ago. It was also important to me to develop a sound that leaves a lot of space for my deep voice. I started the whole thing as a solo project in my studio and only looked for other musicians when my vision – i.e. the first suitable songs – was mature enough. It was more of a musical vision than a technical one, because you can only influence the success to a limited extent anyway.

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Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

🎤 Well, let’s put it this way: the market for new bands is difficult. Compared to my earlier bands, again, a lot more difficult. In the early 2000s there wasn’t that much of anything, and people were even more open to new ideas, which also opened up more options. That was certainly an experience that we had to make with The Halo Trees in the first few years, because of course we tried a lot, but also received many, many rejections, whether from labels, bookers, magazines, festivals … and often not even a rejection. Others are already saying that the market is actually dead. Well, I don’t know if it’s that extreme, but the big gatekeepers Facebook, Spotify and YouTube and their algorithms can make bands big – often depending on their investments – but they can also ensure that bands will never be known beyond a small circle. My consequence: I primarily make music for myself – everything else is an extra.

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Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

🎤 I grew up mostly with metal, grunge, and alternative in the 90s. That left its mark. Later on, my taste in music broadened and today I also enjoy listening to electronic music, folk, pop, soundtracks and classic rock and much more. I’m trying not to limit myself and I think you can hear that openness in The Halo Trees. But of course, rock bands with deep vocals were kind of an inspiration when we started. Less gothic rock bands, but more rock/indie bands such as Madrugada or The National. But it quickly became something of its own – or it is still an ongoing process because our development is certainly not over yet.

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Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

🎤 The irony of fate for us was that just after we released our debut album 💿 Antennas To The Sky and played a handful of concerts, Corona came and quickly turned us back into a temporary studio project. Therefore, we do not yet have such a large pool from which I could report. Every now and then I dream of a total failure on stage – that the technology doesn’t work, I’ve forgotten all the songs or completely wasted the performance – but in reality, everything has gone very well so far. Sorry, no sensations at this point.

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Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

🎤 I have a standard boring answer to this question 😉 There is so much work going into every song I release that they are all my babies. And just as a mother (hopefully) loves her children equally intensely, so do I with my songs. If they weren’t important to me, I would sort them out beforehand. It feels like I sing them all in turn to myself. But in doubt the latest studio album is always the best 😉 Our second album, 💿 Summergloom, will be released on October 8th. And I’m extremely proud of that.

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Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

🎤 Since I have already mentioned our new album and it goes without saying that everyone should listen to it, I could emphasize that we are a real DIY band. Well, I know that’s what a lot of artists say of themselves. But with us, everything really happens in-house: In addition to things like songwriting, recording, mixing and mastering (in our own studio), we also do all of our videos, graphics and artworks ourselves, have our own shop at www.wintersolitude.de, and manage ourselves and we also publish on our own label. Other artists have huge teams for this. I’m proud of that too, especially since I’ve acquired almost all of these aspects myself. It’s a hell of a lot of work, but also great fun.

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Closing things out, what are The Halo Trees currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

🎤 Now that our upcoming album, 💿 Summergloom, is no longer a secret, I can reveal that we are already working on the third album, which will hopefully be released next year. But I don’t want to reveal any details about this yet. Meanwhile, two videos 📼 🎶 have been released for Summergloom so far, which I think are worth watching: 🎵 “Leave No Fear” and 🎵 “Dark Clouds Over London”.

And more will follow in the next few weeks. Summergloom will be released on CD and digital on October 8th, followed by vinyl later in the year. Thanks for the interview and check us out at http://thehalotrees.bandcamp.com/.

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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Getting to Know… The Halo Trees: Interview No. 209 🎤 [📷: The Halo Trees, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype]

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