Definitely be sure to check out their music video for the song “Easy Way”:

Say hi and add them on Facebook here.

Tickets for the show are on sale here.
Can’t wait to see you all April 6th at the Melkweg in Amsterdam to celebrate the release of the new album!

Photography by Max Schwartz.

Making video is a lot of work and by making DestineTV, I kinda knew what I was getting myself in to. I also knew that I was not able to do this alone. Not just the time consuming editing, subtitling and all other aspects that need to be taken care of, also filming was something I wanted somebody else to do. The best footage doesn’t get shot when you have to film yourself, because you will simply miss the spontaneous moments if you don’t have a camera running all the time. That’s why we asked Robin Datema to make sure that every move we make is filmed. Robin or one of his crew members joined us everywhere we went and filmed everything throughout the whole year.

When I landed in Amsterdam a few weeks ago after finishing my work in the studio for the new album, Robin and I had to finish editing the film. It is a crazy amount of work and the deadlines were strict and tight. More than once we found ourselves skipping nights of sleep and canceling appointments to get everything done on time. With great help of everyone involved making the film what it is now, I am thrilled to say that the Footprints documentary is finished. It has been a monster to make, but when I see it now I have a smile from ear to ear. I love creating something that seems impossible, losing myself completely in the process and finally see something that makes me proud.

Check out the ‘FOOTPRINTS: a year in the life’ DVD cover below. Lucas from Pankra and Hubrecht created the artwork for the DVD. It will be available worldwide, and you will be able to order it online on March 3rd. That’s also the day the DVD will premiere in cinema Pathé in Tilburg. Hope to see at lot of you there!

How to vote, in Indonesian: Untuk mendukung pilihanmu bisa ketik DA Kode Nominasi Kirim Ke 6288 (Rp.2000,- /SMS) . Contoh : DA BT5 kirim ke 6288.

What delays did/will you use? Pedal board walk-through please! By Maurits Nienhuis on Facebook
What kind of effect pedals do you use Hubrecht? By @Anthea on Twitter
In the studio we always use digital effects. All delays on the guitars come from Pro-Tools, no pedals were used while tracking. The great thing about that is, that you can adjust and change any delay or effect whenever you want. It’s really flexible. If you record parts with a certain amount or type of effect in realtime, and you change your mind later on in the process, you have to re-record the entire part. That can be pretty time consuming and frustrating. Live I use a Dunlop 95Q Cry Baby wah, a Dunlop DVP-1 volume pedal, and all delay, reverb, compression, phaser, boost, tremolo and pitch come from my TC Electronic G-System. With my G-System I can switch multiple effects like delay and pitch (for example for the intro of ‘In Your Arms’) and channels on my amp at the same time. In almost every part of our songs we use different effects and gain settings on the amp, so with this setup I can switch all of this really quick without too much tap dancing.

How many times did you guys watch the Bold and the Beautiful while recording? ; ) By Tim van Doorn on Facebook
Haha not a single time. Sorry to disappoint you. I did watch a lot of movies the past few weeks. When you’ve been concentrating and focusing on music the entire day in the studio your brain is fried at the end of the day. At that point I love to just watch a movie and don’t think about anything. I watched a lot of movies starring Jason Statham with Laurens; ‘Chaos’ was our favorite.

Have you experienced any cases of language / cultural barrier? Inside or outside the studio? By Riekus van Montfort on Facebook
On a cultural level, not really. Maybe except for our producer James’ taste of and vision on music, in a very positive way. We’re exactly on the same page about the fact that we want our music to be powerful, catchy and have interesting and big arrangements. He really gets what we are going for. Language wise it can be difficult, we experienced that especially with the first album we recorded in America. Music is all about feeling and emotion, and it’s really hard to even express that in your own language sometimes. But because this is the second record we’re working with James it’s a lot easier now, we kind of use the same dictionary haha. And because we’ve spent so much time in America, I think we’ve lived in America for about 5 months now in total, our English improved too. But for example there was this situation where Robin was doing vocals for a song, and James told him he thought some notes were a bit ‘shaky’. Robin thought James ment that he shouldn’t use any vibrato, but James actually ment that he should sing it stronger, but with vibrato. So after a few takes Robin went into the control room and they talked about it in detail, and then found out they both meant something totally different haha.

Will there be a Dutch tour after the album comes out? If so, will you play Limburg? By Cindy Knapen on Facebook
The release show for the album will be on April 6 in Melkweg Amsterdam. We will probably play some other club shows in The Netherlands this year too, but can’t confirm anything about that yet.

What do you guys want to achieve in 2012? By Samantha van de Ven on Facebook
Release our new album, release our DVD ‘FOOTPRINTS: a year in the life’, play summer festivals, and play shows across Europe to promote the new album.

Any collabs with other artists? By @jjongism on Twitter
No, there are no features by other artists. We thought about it, but if we do something like that we really want it to add something to the song and we don’t want just have somebody else on the album for the sake of having someone else on the album haha. Maybe next time!

Can you tell something about the outboard gear you are using? By @Hinnieboeboe on Twitter
We use multiple microphone pre-amps, compressors and EQs. James has a rack with amazing outboard gear in his studio, and we use a lot of processing while tracking. Because James is so experienced he knows how far he can push it during tracking so you have to do a lot less processing during the mixing. Most of James’ gear is custom made. He uses a 1176 style compressor on vocals for example, and a Fairchild kind of compressor on bass. For every instrument he has different ones. And during mixing a lot of the sound comes from the SSL 4000 E board he mixes on. The channel strip EQ and compression are amazing and very typical. They are really warm an dirty.

Favorite lyric off the new album? By @bex_themonkey on Twitter
The lyric that means the most to me by far is a song called ‘Night Skies’. Robin wrote this lyric when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and for months straight I have listened to the demo of Night Skies every day, when I went to see her in the hospital. Most of the time Robin writes lyrics that you can interpret in multiple ways, and for me this lyric captured a big part of how I was feeling at that time. A lot of the lyrics on our new record are more emotional and maybe a bit heavier than the ones on Lightspeed I think. In the process of writing this album we’ve gone through some pretty heavy emotions, some very sad, some fantastic, and I think that shows in some of the lyrics and the way Robin is able to deliver them.

How much time did you spend in the studio for your first album? Are you doing something different this way around? By @Lotte_Music on Twitter
For the first album we’ve spent about six weeks in the studio. For the second record the amount of time we’re in the studio is about the same, around six weeks too. The great thing about this album is that we knew how recording an album with a producer works. We knew how to prepare for the studio, how much we had to rehearse, what the global schedule was going to be and so on. In the recording process we didn’t change much, because we were really happy with the work flow in the studio with the first record. I only paid a little more attention to the scheduling this time, so we could avoid the 20-hour workdays in the studio at the end of the recording and mixing process, like we had the first time.

How bad is the smell? ; ) By @NikkiOldekamp on Twitter
It’s pretty good actually! The airco works fine, and we don’t sleep in the studio but at a hotel. We take a shower every day so we’re fresh and clean when we get in the studio in the morning haha.

How long does it take to record and edit one full song? By @RatedRemy on Twitter
The average is around four days per song. Rough schedule: One day for pre-production, setting up the drums, tuning, and recording the drums. We’re extremely picky on drums because the entire song will be recorded over these drums, and drums are an important part of our music. Let’s say one day for bass and most of the electric guitars. We always record a shit load of guitars. First we do the rhythm guitars, then all the clean and crunch parts, and the lead parts. One day for acoustic guitars (takes a lot of time setting up because microphone placement and room sound are extremely important), and all keyboards, piano and synths. And one day for the lead vocals, editing vocals (going through the different takes and deciding on which parts are best) and all the backing vocals.

Do you use a lot of samples for the drums and why or not? By @MakeLeonCount on Twitter
We blend in samples on kick, snare and toms. We love extremely punchy, tight and powerful drum sounds, and our producer James is a genius in achieving that. Blending in samples works great, but it’s really important to make the original drum sounds as good as possible. James has incredible overhead microphones that pick up the entire drum kit and the room. If you hear those mics ‘solo’, you can’t believe a sound like that comes from just two mics. During mixing we sometimes brought the overheads up in certain parts of the songs to make the drums sound bigger and to add more of the ‘room’ sound.

In what country do you hope your new album sells the most and why? By @lovatogoesdutch on Twitter
I hope our new album sells the most in all countries of the world where we’ve never been before haha. So we can tour there!

What’s your favorite song of the new album and why? By @Silencegirl on Twitter
Which song are you currently most proud of? By Pieter Zwaan on Facebook
It’s hard to pick just one. I’m really proud of all the songs on our second album. But if I had to pick one I’d go for a song called ‘Best Kept Secret’ right now. It’s really dynamic, and some of my favorite lead guitar parts are in it. The song structure is very different from most songs, and we changed a lot of the arrangement during pre-production with James.

Do you already have an album title? How many songs are on the album? By @Addicted_to_ on Twitter
Yes we know! We will tell you all about it very soon, as well as the track listing. We’ll do something cool with it.

What kind of amps and microphones did you use? And what did you use for strings and effects? By @borjacobs on Twitter
We used a Bogner 4×12″ cabinet with a Shure SM57 in front of it. Really basic setup. The main amps we used were a Bad Cat 30R and a Bogner Ecstacy Classic. Guitars were a ’79 Gibson Les Paul Custom, a Tom Anderson Telecaster and a very old and rare G&L Stratocaster. James has a ton of different plugins for strings and effects, he uses a lot of Native Instruments bundles.

That’s it! Hope my answers are clear and useful!

When our first album Lightspeed got released I felt a huge sense of accomplishment: I wrote at least 25 songs for it and after all the knitpicking and hard work, we created an album that I’m to this day still extremely proud of. Every single note is a result of putting heart and soul in it and it’s an indescribable feeling whenever people experience the same when they listen to it.

Lightspeed did amazing things for us: we toured more than 15 different countries, went to China, Japan, Indonesia, heard our own music on the radio and tv, sold out shows, toured with some of our childhood heroes, did Holland’s two most wellknown festivals… It felt like all of the dreams I had as a kid came true in a split-second and I’ll forever tell everyone how grateful I am.

Then the moment when you start writing the second album and realize it should actually be at least as good (or better) than the first one. It is widely known by everybody in the music business and it can paralyze you if you find yourself thinking too much about it. Lots of bands and artists have choked on it.

I started writing again and compared every new idea to our older songs; it’s easy to throw away a song if it seems not good enough. I actually didn’t necessarily feel other people’s pressure so much, but just felt the bar that I raised a little higher for myself. For example, I wanted every single melody to be really strong, emotional and memorable. And every lyric to be clear but still intriguing.

In the whole process I’ve been at places where I cursed my own perfectionism and self-discipline. There were weeks when I was working like a mad professor, trying out a million things and actually not seeing any other people for a long time. There are days when creativity doesn’t give you what you’re hoping for, and all the while you see the clock ticking towards a deadline.

Imagine how big of a relief it is when pieces finally fall into place and I actually started finishing songs that I thought were very good. I listened to it a hundred times in a row, raised my hands up in the air and even shed some tears at times when my own words cut through me like a knife.

Sometimes words and melodies form in your mind and they can end up being decent; at other times things seem to form in your subconscience and they can end up great. But when every bone in your body immediately tells you that it’s not good but great, to me that’s magical.

On the moment I’m writing this we finished recording the whole second album and only have 3 days of mixing left in Plush Studios in Orlando. Our amazing producer James Paul Wisner once again proved that there’s noone in the world that understands our music like he does. Recording the first album I learned so much of him: I spent every second looking over his shoulder and I can tell that it shows in our new songs.

There’s no feeling like the one that says: mission complete. The album comes out April 6th. It would mean a lot if you’d purchase it and you’d feel a part of the excitement that I do now.

See you soon!
Robin