An Interview with Vanden Dool

A new EP release from Vanden Dool manages to deliver a soiree of pop approaches that range from cinematic, orchestrated, dream, indie, and more, and it all comes together to deliver a lush personality, but also this amazing atmosphere that you fall right into.

I Don't Know If You Can Love Me is a release that certainly delves pretty deep into the artist's persona and character, as the songs do get personal and let a lot of inner thought come spilling out for all the soak in, which I find quite brave but still somewhat vulnerable at the same time.

The record starts with "I'm Not In Love With You", which takes those vast and orchestrated elements of strings and synth pads that float around, giving the song this expansive and spacious tonality, along with the vocals that get right in your face and start explaining everything.

This is the kind of song that works amazingly as an introduction to the record as a whole, simply because it gives some of those great staples that you'll hear throughout the rest of the release.

However, listening to this record from start to finish is probably the best way to go, seeing that the songs do interconnect with each other, and as an EP, you don't want to miss any of the different styles that it actually has to deliver.

Tracks like "I Want Your World" bring in a different approach. It still has that great sort of expansive feel, but it hits more like a new wave style track with different sounds and terms of the synthesizers and keys, along with a more upswing beat, giving the track a super danceable vibe.

It's this track that you can start to hear the artist's many influences that helped bring this whole record together, and probably helped him flourish as an artist in general.

The song is followed by "Not What You Want", which, to me, brings together those two great elements. The vast underbelly and the overcoat of New Wave style pop, but what grabs you about this track in particular are the lyrics.

On this song, the lyrics are fast-paced, and he's still just letting so much of that inner thought come out, so when you listen to it, a lot of that personality and those thoughts are flying at you.

This is part of the brilliance of a record like this. It gives you layers. Not just texturally and musically, but personality-wise as well. There are layers to be peeled back throughout this EP, and it works wonders in terms of shedding light on who Vanden Dool is.

The entire EP is well worth listening to, especially if you love a cinematic sort of pop music that blends classic, vintage '80s New Wave synthesizers and beats into a more current and spacious dream.

No matter what, it's that personality and those lyrics that give you so much more.

This is an artist who gives pieces of himself and his music and isn't afraid to hold much back when he does, so you're getting something incredibly authentic.

This is the attribute that stuck with me, along with some of the hooks on a few tracks that bounced around in my head for hours after they were over.

This is a record that does have a great level of catchiness and still manages to be slightly experimental, outside the box in its own way, and completely honest from start to finish.

With the release of such a well-woven record, we wanted to have a sit-down with the artist to find out where there's actually came from and what might be coming up next for him.

Here's what happened.

Buzz Slayers: Let's talk about I Don't Know If You Can Love Me! This EP was riddled with personality and came through with some amazing pop tunes both classic and fresh!  Where did this track come from?" 

I've always pulled from music that was made since I started making music despite using modern technology to make it. There's a character to 80s new wave, synth-pop and post-punk that speaks to me, and the artists contemporary to me that I love the most also pull from these sources. Despite being mostly into alternative music and valuing artistic integrity over making a product with mainstream potential, I still very much have pop sensibilities when it comes to the structure of my songs as do those artists, so I do try to throw in hooks and melodic bits to keep the listener engaged.

Buzz Slayers: I'm hearing a few different approaches to this record! Who are some of your biggest musical influences?

My influences are pretty diverse between tracks. "I Want Your World" and "Somebody That Someone Can Love" were very inspired by darkwave, with the former leaning toward Depeche Mode and the latter leaning toward BLVCK CEILING and oOoOO. "Not What You Want" was more of a Naked and Famous or M83-type track. The others were a culmination of things that I couldn't pinpoint without spending weeks thinking about where they came from.

Buzz Slayers: Did you record this at a home setup, or at a big studio?

Most of what you hear was composed on my laptop using virtual instruments and plugins with vocals recorded in a little bedroom setup at my stage bassist Tristan Smetana's apartment, who had just freshly moved to Calgary at the time. The exception to this rule was the opening track "I'm Not in Love with You", which was recorded at MacEwan University. It was part of a quick recording session for the residency I was doing there at the time, so I arranged it for session musicians as I wasn't sure when I would next get an opportunity to have real instruments recorded with the costs covered. The only thing cut out of the version I released was the guitar; I decided to rearrange it to a more electronic setting to fit the rest of the EP and unfortunately the guitar parts would have made everything too cluttered. Even the recorded drums were taken out before I realized the electronic beat I made didn't have the same life to it.

Buzz Slayers: How did this all start for you as an artist?

I'd wanted to form a rock band with friends of mine since high school, but this plan never came to fruition as everyone was too busy. By the end of grade 12 I decided I wanted to pursue music seriously as an artistic outlet and applied for the University of Lethbridge's Digital Audio Arts program so that I could get some production and engineering experience. I had studio access while I was there and used them to record a song with some friends that was originally intended to be for a new wave-influenced band that I wanted to form with them, but it ended up becoming a solo demo with them as studio musicians instead. I'd get more practice writing, recording and producing at home with a cheap USB mic covered by a cloth bag for a DIY "pop filter" and a lite version of Pro Tools; which eventually graduated to Reaper, a pile of free VST plugins and microphones borrowed from friends. This was roughly how my setup looked up until 2021; since then I've always gone to other people for vocal recordings as I feel better about the results when I'm not recording all by myself.

Buzz Slayers: Are you performing live right now?

I naturally have been focusing on my current home of Calgary for live shows and try to book shows here as much as I can. I've done a few touring shows across Canada. I've been trying to restrain myself from overdoing it lately as it's ruined me financially and morale-wise more than once, but I always guarantee that there will be a couple of out-of-town shows every February for an annual winter mini-tour as well as a trip to Montreal as it seems to have one of the most promising music scenes for me. Now that my following numbers are starting to get substantial I'd also like to look into whether it would be feasible to do some shows in Europe, Latin America or Asia sometime in the next couple of years (the US is a write-off right now for obvious reasons, but if things ever cool down there I might put it into consideration as well).

Buzz Slayers: Now that this is out, what's next for you?

I've been taking it easy now that the first big push for campaigning is over, but I'm in the early stages of pre-production for a new standalone single that I hope to have out by the end of 2026. I've also been compiling a master list of Canadian festivals to apply to and the list has gotten quite huge, so my name is going to be on a lot more applications in the next few months than in previous years. Who knows, maybe one of them will even let me play.

Buzz Slayers: Who's in your headphones right now?

I always make sure to listen to a bit of CHVRCHES every week. Beyond that it's mostly algorithmic recommendations and artists that I'd just seen live, which currently means catching up with the artists that played at Terminus Festival this year; so Leathers, Twin Tribes, Sacred Skin, Madeline Goldstein, MATTE BLVCK and the like are on the immediate horizon. That means a lot of darker and more gothic music at the moment, which is good because that's the direction I'm looking to go for the next release.

Buzz Slayers: What would you tell people they can expect on this release?

A good amount of variety in electronic sounds and a lot of very sad lyrics about loneliness.

"Buzz Slayers: Before we go, what would you like to express to fans of the music?"

There's plenty more where that came from. There's a healthy amount of back catalogue for new listeners, and for those wanting more beyond that I haven't stopped writing, so stay tuned because new music is guaranteed to come again.

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