Coming April 28, Dutch post-punk, techno grunge duo Aux Raus will launch its new album called All Creeping Things Stopped Creeping at Amsterdam’s venue Trouw. The band’s third album, put out on record label TopNotch, promises to be a whole lot different than 2006 record This Is How This Works en The Brick Is In The Air, which was released in 2009. BLEND spoke to Aux Raus’ members Bastiaan Bosma and Luuk Bouwman, read the interview after the jump.

Bosma (31) and Luuk Bouwman (33) met in art school in 1999, where the two connected through their shared interest in grunge and punk music. Bosma was already in a band called The Faking Orgasms but was in for a new challenge; he started looking for a new sound together with Bouwman. By mixing up-tempo beats with techno kicks, guitars and vocals, a fresh sound evolved. After handing a demo to Carlos Amorales, a visual artist and record label owner from Mexico-City, the two were asked to play at several venues spread over the world. ‘We played in Italy, New York and Mexico. After that, we spent a month at a Mexican studio recording our first album, which was released on Amorales’ label.’ Back in The Netherlands, Aux Raus started performing regularly and got picked up by dj and so-called ‘disco dinosaur’ Joost Van Bellen, which had its impact on their popularity: Aux Raus became pretty big in the electro scene. At that time, electro and nu rave were on a rise, with Klaxons as its major precursor. ‘Joost Van Bellen referred to the hype as ‘rock&rave’. Although we never really had the feeling we were ‘hot’ or something, we did get picked up by that scene for a while. When that buzz passed, we started playing several other scenes, experimented with dj-ing and created a more danceable record, The Brick Is In The Air.’

Promo video for All Creeping Things Stopped Creeping

Kees De Koning, owner of the mainly hip hop-oriented record label TopNotch, wondered why the guys never really had their big breakthrough and took them on. ‘We feel really comfortable working with TopNotch. This will be the second album to be released on the label and we were given complete free reign. As opposed to The Brick Is In The Air, All Creeping Things Stopped Creeping is a lot more uncouth and simple. We didn’t discuss our ideas that much, we just started working an put in a lot of gut feeling.’ What came out is a rough and honest piece of work that comes fairly close to the ideal sound Bosma and Bouwman were looking for. ‘We feel as if this is the kind of music we really like to make. Everything just fell into place, which feels really good.’

Aux Raus’ set on Red Light Radio

For All Creeping Things Stopped Creeping, they’ve been working in the studio together for about a year. About this process, the duo is clear: ‘We didn’t really think of the sound we created, nor did we really understand what we were doing exactly, we just created music. That’s basically it.’ Apart from some vocals contributed by their friend Kiki of Malle Pietje And The Bimbo’s, every single note on the album was produced by Bosma and Bouwman. ‘We did take on an extra guitarist for live performances, though. Thomas Sciarone of Malkovich and The Devil’s Blood will step in when needed, as will Oeds from band Gewapend Beton. We want to do as many gigs as possible this summer and play a lot of festivals. We needed an extra guitarist to amplify the sound of the guitars, so it will be the same as can be heard on the album.’

New video \ Oh No, It’s Them!

Since both Bouwman and Bosma have a background in visual art and video, they spent a lot of attention on the visual image of the band. ‘For the upcoming album, we asked digital artist Rafaël Rozendaal to create the album cover art and visuals that will be used during the upcoming shows. We’ve been working on the preparations for the release party for almost two months already and it promises to be quite spectacular. Also, we’re designing a new collection of t-shirts together with friends.’

Aux Raus \ Coffin Poser. A song of the duo’s 2009 album The Brick Is In The Air

On the side, Aux Raus does several things to keep up appearances on the Internet. ‘We came up with a franchise project a while ago in which we asked people all over the world to start their own Aux Raus and go perform in their own country. The Belgian Aux Raus does pretty well, actually.’ Last year, when Aux Raus was playing in Serbia, some guy stepped up to them and said he really liked their music, that it had been the second concert he’d ever attended (the first being Metallica, but he had liked Aux Raus better) and that he noticed how they weren’t really big on the Internet. He then offered to become their ‘Internet coach’, which Bouwman and Bosma thought was pretty funny so they agreed on giving it a go. ‘Ever since, he’s sending us emails about what we should and shouldn’t post on our website, how often we should do this and he even gets a little bit frustrated when we’re slacking.’

Want to go to Aux Raus’ release party at Trouw? BLEND gives away 2×2 tickets and 2 signed copies of All Creeping Things Stopped Creeping. If you’d like to have a chance at winning, send an email to loes@blend.nl.