The cheerful duo The Secret Love Parade have just released their second self-produced album, which is just as lovely as the girls are. We sat down with them for an interview.

So the reason why I pulled your CD out of the big pile at the office was the cover artwork.. It’s very nice. Who did it?
Aino: Yes we like it a lot! It is done by my boyfriend Thijs Kuijken; he told us he could translate the feeling of the album into one image, which worked out very well right away. We’re really happy with the way it turned out.

The first time I listened to the album, I was a bit surprised to find out you were actually Dutch. Because you don’t sound Dutch at all.. Do you like music of other Holland-based artists at all?
Janna: Ah that’s…. A good thing I guess! Thanks. Well obviously we do not like all Dutch music, but there are some good things happening in the underground scene, for example the Rotterdam-based band Samling and the other bands on our label Snowstar. Aino: We are sharing our practice space with the Amsterdam-based band Lola Kite, we’ve toured together as well and we really like their music a lot. They’re gonna release a new album soon actually.

Ah yes I’m also quite fond of Lola Kite, good to hear. Anyway, so you guys recorded this album, like the previous one, by yourself. How did that work? Did anyone help you with the production?
Janna: Yes we self-produce. This time Jasper Verhulst of Lola Kite helped us with the recording. We’ve come a long way since the first album, but it’s nice to have someone around that can reflect on what we do. We’ve spent the whole summer recording in our practice space, de Vondelbunker (in Vondelpark, Amsterdam). Aino: It’s nice that we could just take our time instead of rushing to record everything in a studio in just a timeframe of a week. This way it’s a little less forced, things can grow more organically. Janna: The only problem is that one of the tramlines is located very closeby so when recording we have to take into account the noise the passing tram makes..

Yes it’s really quite loud! So how did that work? Did you keep a timetable of the tram closeby so you could work around it ha?
Janna: Not really, but at a certain point you grow accustomed to it and work around it. We couldn’t really record around five in the afternoon for example. But nights are fine, and generally it was not that much of the problem unless we were recording the singing.

So how did you start making music? Did you go to musicschool or take lessons?
Aino: Well, we didn’t really go to school, we took some classes, but we’re mostly self-taught. I took violin lessons once. Janna: Yeah I used to have a boyfriend who played the bass, and I thought that was quite cool so I started playing bass as well. Aino: Ever since then we pretty much taught ourselves to play all the instruments on the album, and to sing as well. I think it also shows in the sound of our music.

Next to music, what else do you do? Are you making any money of this?
Aino: I’m teaching English at a highschool three days a week and that’s actually a lot less stressful and busy than still studying myself, because then you have classes, internships and so on…  Janna: I am still in uni, I study History. We do manage to do both, but it can be really busy at times, we have to plan well. Aino: And about the money: we are not losing money but the money we do make from making music, we usually spend right away on instruments and such. Janna: We haven’t scored a big hit yet. It would be nice, to be on the radio. It might get things going for us..

Do you play a lot of gigs?
Aino: Well the next couple of months we’re rather busy, playing in different parts of the country one or twice a week. It’s a really nice mix as well, we open for some bands, such as Moss, and we’re really excited about playing with Still Corners in OCC1. Bands we really like to play with as well.

What kind of music do yo listen to yourself?
Aino: I just started listening to the Warpaint EP – I know their album already – and to The War on Drugs. Janna: I’m a little more in the past.. I like a lot of sixties and eighties music. I’m slowly coming towards the present time, but will probably eighty years old before that actually happens ha!

And how about Au Revoir Simone? Your music does seem to sound a bit similar, do you listen to their music at all?
Aino: Well I’ve listened to the first CD, and I quite liked it. I don’t listen to them a lot though. Janna: I don’t really listen to their music. The comparison has been drawn, and quite a lot as well. But we don’t really refer to their music. It’s quite funny, because older people generally draw comparisons with our music to eighties bands like Susan Vega, but we don’t even know them ha! So I guess it’s a a coincidence. There are bands we really like and which probably influence us without us realising it, such as Radiohead.

So what bands do actually influence you?
Aino: That’s really hard to say. But for sure The Knife, Grimm Limbo, low electronic sounds in general.. And a lot of Belle & Sebastian.

Ah yes, The Knife is definately echoed in ‘The Victorians Are Here’. What always strikes me about Belle & Sebastian is the way their songs sound so cheerful, but the lyrics are usually rather dark. But people don’t always pay a lot of attention to lyrics though, it seems..
Janna: Well I guess that depends on the genre as well. Aino: Definately, singer songwriter for example is all about the lyrics. Janna: Yes, and if it’s stupid synthpop with really dumb lyrics you will notice.. But there’s definately a double layer in their music. People think our music is always really cute and sweet, but we definately have deeper layer as well.. I hope people do notice that.

So what are your songs? What are your roles in composing them?
Janna: I wrote the lyrics for this album. I think some of the songs refer to specific situations, but most of them can be interpreted in many different ways, so everyone can relate to them.  I usually start playing with a guitar, but in the end we might completely leave the guitar out because we use so many other instruments. Aino: You search for sounds that seem to go well together, start singing together and then it becomes a Secret Love Parade song. Janna: Sometimes it takes a really long time before it works, sometimes we finish in one day. Aino: Lately we are starting to be more precise, we used to be more easily satisfied but we take the time now to make it work better. Jasper also helped us in that process by telling us ‘This is good, done, don’t touch it anymore’. At a certain moment you just loose track of what you are doing. Janna to Aino: The other day I found this MP3 we recorded once in the kitchen while we were really drunk, I think at the time we thought it was totally awesome but when I listened to it again it was a really strange song.

What about Japan? You were in magazines and sold records there, did you go there on tour as well?
Aino: That was before MySpace died, it was all a bit more vague back then, people would message you.. Once upon a time we got a message from ElleGirl Korea that they wanted to interview us, we thought it was spam or so and didn’t thing that much of it. Janna: When they sent us the magazine with the interview we finally believed it. We were even in there two more times. Aino: Our debut album has also been released in Japan, but I think in the disaster there all copies and contacts in general got lost.. Anyway, Black Atlantic did a tour there, we haven’t yet. Would be nice though..

Did you tour abroad at all?
Janna: Not really, we just did a summer tour in Berlin, which was in 2009 or so.. Aino: We hope to go to Berlin this year and might go to a showcase festival in England, but that’s not sure yet. Janna: We should go abroad to test if our sound is really un-Dutch! Aino: We don’t have a steady plan yet to conquer Europe. Probably nothing will happen if we try to do so haha. But for now we just dream… the ambition is definately there, we just have to do it. Janna: Get on a plane, be welcomed by big banners saying: great you’re finally here!! And we’ll be famous at once ha.

You had your album launch in Paradiso last week. It was sold out, crazy right?
Aino: Ha we both had dreams of empty halls and people not showing up the night prior. But it all went really well. Janna: The good thing about being the main act is that you don’t have to win over the audience; they are all there for you! When you are the opening act people are generally more sceptic, there’s this physical distance between the stage and the audience: the ‘forbidden circle’. You really have to make it work. But Paradiso was a lot of fun, we played for a really long time, the light was great and the visuals bij Thijs were really nice. It was a bit overwhelming, the first three songs of the tracklist we were still amazed by the great response from the audience, they were all cheering!

Anthing else you like to share?
We’ve got a new video coming out soon, we filmed it last weekend with Vrederick who did a lot of our promo photos as well. And we’re touring a lot!

Thank you, I’ll be sure to catch you in Melkweg or Bitterzoet!