Jacco van Elst, Nicolai Adolfs and brothers Gerben and Gibson Houwer are The Fire Harvest. What started out as Gerben’s solo project has evolved into the current, close-knit band. Each member is an experienced musician – devoted to making this deeply melancholic music, while at the same time having lots of fun together. This is actually a story about four Dutch blokes with different personalities who have known each other for fifteen years, and what results if they come together each week: music somewhere between slowcore, country- noir and post-rock. What comes out are sober, gloomy and at times haunting songs with tormented singing, reminiscent of the likes of Palace Brothers, Idaho and Low.
“We’ve had no musical education, but have been around for twenty years. We don’t want prefab but prefer craftsmanship – and we really enjoy making music just because it keeps on changing and with every step we want to improve ourselves.” The basis for this album comes from conversations while on tour in Germany. Gerben wrote them down and cut them to pieces. The songs sometimes hint at social criticism, but more often end up quite personal, like the family story of the resistance weapon that is lying in a cabinet somewhere. Details remain unknown and unspecified – much like the music itself tempts the imagination. The nature of the stories which lurk behind the eight songs and whose lives they reflect upon is entirely up to you to decide.
For ‘Open Water’ they entered the studio with Michael Feuerstack. The singer- songwriter and producer from Montreal is a good friend, and he offered the chance to help capture the next step in their sound within the familiarity of their own environment and studio. The band held on to their principle of recording ‘live’. “For us the recordings are a documentation of a certain musical period. Therefore we find it important that the dynamics of rehearsing and performing can be heard in the resulting recordings: This is where we stand and what we can do.”
