Labasheeda came to Canada to play Wavelength #468, a fun show that also featured sets by Wax Mannequin, La Casa Muerte, and Innes Wilson and his Opposition. The show coincided with one of those music festival weeks, I forget if it was the one sponsored by Now or Eye but they’re both bankrolled by Rogers communications and the Government of Canada. They promptly returned to the Netherlands. A week later their new cd “A FEW OF THE POPULATION” charted at #15 on CIUT. Coincidence? Probably. They have a good thing going and it's nice that a few Canucks got a chance to experience this. It's hard for small indie bands to arrange their own tour. We are lucky kids that we had a chance to experience their haunting sound first hand. Here’s a tit-for-tat between Saskia van der Giessen and Doc Pickles. It was fun to get a glimpse of her headspace and approach to recording and about the creative process in general. The language barrier was a little difficult, but Doc and Saskia are both fluent in D.I.Y.

DP: You in the frost of the cold north. Does the weather affect your music? Does dreary weather make you write more aggressive songs? if you lived in a sunny climate do you think your songs would feel more relaxed?

SV: Well, we actually live in the west of a western country, so the weather is pretty temperate over here. But the rain can make me very moody and I think that indeed your environment has an influence on how you feel and how you write music.

DP: What do you do when you are angry at one of your songs? Do you rehearse it, do you take it out onstage with you and fight with it during a live show

SV: In the past, when our former bass player was angry at one of our songs, we would rehearse it to death as punishment. Nowadays we have a more relaxed relationship with our songs; we got used to the difficult characters of some of them.

DP: Have you ever been brought to tears by a live performance?

SV: Inside tears, no real tears. It comes when I feel that something is really happening, when music becomes very intense. One of the last concerts I have seen was Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy by the way, that was such beautifully arranged music with a great violin player. That really does something to me.

DP: How does one "see" sound? Does it have to do with memory and the impressions a song creates comes from those memories? Does it have to do with your reaction in the moment and is it the song that carves its meaning onto you?

SV: I think the memories you associate a song are very important, ’cause many songs refer to important moments in a persons life. Like the song that you always heard on the radio as a kid, or the music that you listen to during difficult times or the favorite band of your ex-boy/-girlfriend.There is also a very direct physical reaction on sound. I think we also listen on a very abstract level to music and a song can surely overwhelm me. 

DP: Does your interpretation of a song change through the years? Has a song you wrote early on in your musical adventure transformed itself over the years to mean something entirely different to you than it did originally or does an old song transfix the feelings all those years ago and does the meaning remain immobile?

SV: The meaning stays the same if it is about a concrete subject, but the feeling can change after a while. This is very much the case with some songs that I wrote after two of my friends died in a car crash. There are also songs were I use words as an atmosphere. This are colleagues and I put also feelings in it of the moment. 

DP: How do you see the meaning of recording in the creative process and how does a different recording method change a song? 

SV: A recording is something different cause it is fixed .The recording gives a new view on your materials .Sometimes new ideas are added in the studio. Some of it we use on stage, some of it only works on a recording. A song evolves trough the time so I see a recording as a registration of a moment in this process.