I'm Kai Hugo and I perform under Palmbomen and Palmbomen II. While Palmbomen is me as a band in a traditional band setup. No sequencers or machines, just people playing, Palmbomen II is my electronic project where I control all machines and sequencers. Important in all of this is that the recording stays really close to how I perform it. With the band I could perform the songs exactly like how we recorded them. These new Palmbomen II EPs are (just like my previous album) recorded like live jams that I play with the same liveset. For me it's important to keep the feeling of making songs live, rather than playing them back and have a quick sense of working in the studio to keep it spontaneously. In the mean time I moved to Los Angeles where I started recording more songs while the Palmbomen II album was being released.
Influences were the Dutch Bunker scene (think of songs like 'I-F - The Search' and 'I-F - I Do Because I Couldn't Care Less' and 'Electronome - Bro') to the Belgium New Beat scene of late 80s early 90s (I love the sadness in songs like 'Teknokrat's - What Did She Say?' and 'Zsa Zsa Laboum - Something Scary' which almost has the atmosphere to me like a Lynch movie has). And always a lot of the Chicago house scene influenced me and I always keep finding new music that I like (think of 'Felix Da Housecat - Free Love', released on a dutch label, which I like being such an introvert song, and all the Acid from chicago like 'Farley Jackmaster Funk - Acid Trip' and all the other great Acid house music). At the same time I'm close to a lot of shoegaze music and things around that like Slowdive, and Cocteau Twins and Pixies and a milion more bands, which I think you can hear in the vocals and melodies and harmonies. Nowadays artists that influence me are my best friends, which who happen to work with, Antenna (who previously released an EP on BIS too) and my friend Betonkust (with who I released two EPs last year on 1080p and Pinkman Records).
Recording all happened in 2014-2015 in my garage in Silverlake in Los Angeles. The way I work is, like my previous record, that I record a song a day. During the day I write melodies and drums and harmonies, in the evening I feel like a song is coming together and at night I force myself to record this and record the master to my tape machine I always used. This forces me to stay creative and open, and never loose myself in a song. Next day I start with the next. In the end I had like 50 songs. I went through them with my buddy Betonkust (who always helps me with this) and together we made a selection and arranged the songs to be a bit shorter. It ended up becoming 4 different EPs that kind of form one big album all together. Then I recorded some vocals for songs that I thought fitted them with my muse Blue (who played Cindy in my music video) and my other singing girl Barrie (who's uncle played John Lee Roche).
The whole record is themed around 'Cindy'. The same 'Cindy' as in the previous 'Cindy Savalas' video around who I'm writing a short movie at the moment. The videos and these four EPs form kind of a prequel to this and are introducing a little bit of the world I wanna create in this movie.
