Interview by Carol Wright | Photographer: Rêveur (@reveur_cgn)
We got to chat with German band Rikas about their song creation process, how the band came to be, and “I Always Think Of You (When I Listen to This Song).” Make sure to listen to their latest release “Superstitious” here.
Take us back to the beginning. How did Rikas come to be?
We have known each other since school and have been in bands together since our teenage years. I think we started to have a vision of what we wanted to do after a busking trip around Europe. Back then we mostly performed songs from The Beatles or The Beach Boys. But seeing people dancing and enjoying our performances in cities like Paris, Milan or Amsterdam felt so good, that we wanted nothing more than to just be in a band, write our own songs and go on tour.
After working together for quite some time. Do you all have a tried and true song creation process now?
We are not a band that works with the same formula over and over. I think we love to switch up the environments that we are in to get inspired. We recorded our album Showtime in the south of Spain and wrote a lot of the demos in Berlin for our upcoming EP “Short Stories.” Let’s see what happens next. Maybe a trip to Tokyo. I mean after all, we are all part of the songwriting process due to the fact that we have four singers. We like to say that we use a lot of colors and at the end that mixture of palettes is our sound in some ways.
Tell our readers about “I Always Think Of You (When I Listen To This Song).” Did a specific relationship inspire the lyrics?
To be honest it was a specific relationship that inspired the lyrics but more from an outside perspective. The demo and the lyrics were written on the same day and I wanted it to have a sort of indie movie soundtrack to it. More in the style of music like Juno, 500 Days of Summer or Marriage Story. I like to think that this track is a song that can relate to some people who come out of a long relationship, but can look back at the good things and the sweet memories they made. And personally it also deals with the little but big struggles that come with being alone again.
“I Always Think Of You (When I Listen To This Song)” is your second release of 2021. With the world starting to open back up again, have these positive times been an inspiration for your music?
First of all we are very grateful that things are lighting up again for us at the moment. But to be honest we aren’t in a post-pandemic era quite yet. I think Coroniavirus will still be an issue in the next 2-3 years, as the pandemic is just rolling out in other parts of the world. But for now we are happy to get back on the road, share new songs and music and meet new people. I think that is the thing we have missed the most. Performing and making new friends on the road.
How creatively involved were each of you in the music video for “I Always Think Of You (When I Listen To This Song)?”
We made the video with our good friends Chiara Poma and Franziska Goll at this beautiful place outside of Stuttgart called Erpfenhausen. We wanted it to be DIY and not too clean. But we had to change the concept as I rolled my ankle a couple days before the video shoot. Chiara did a great job directing the video and we are super happy with the result. I think we are a very perfectionist band when it comes to videos and most of the time are not easy to satisfy, as the ideas pretty much always come from us in some ways. So it’s always a pleasure when we find people who share our vision.
What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?
I think just try to stay creative and step up your game as a songwriter and musician over and over. It’s gotta be fun and don’t get too focused on comparing yourself with other people on the Internet because there will always be musicians better than you in some kind of way. But you have to try to find your own identity as an artist and find out what feels good for you. And for sure listen to Rikas cause our band is really good. Just kidding.