The DIY Philosophers of the Limburgish Countryside: In Conversation with Hugs of the Sky
Photo by Maxime Bervoets
Based in Belgium but encompassing a wider European and international worldview, Hugs of the Sky are an emerging rock act. The three-piece is led by Boris Willems on vocals and guitar, Sigi Willems on bass, and Seppe Camps on drumsー and yes, Boris and Sigi are brothers. Their latest album, Tangerine Boredom Delusion, is a surreal meditation on isolation and love in the time of coronavirus. Sonically, the album draws from a variety of influences, including modern psychedelia, jangly 60s revival akin to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and medieval chants. With the release of this latest album and their upcoming supporting tour with goth/post-punk legends Sisters of Mercy, Hugs of the Sky are a band to look out for!
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did Hugs of the Sky come to be?
[SIGI]: I’d always grown up around music. Originally the band was just me, my brother, and my dad playing together. At some point, my dad told us to find an actual drummer our own age. So we recruited some friends for the keys and bass, making the band Insect Soldier of the Sky. Our music at the time played soft, psychedelic music. At the same time, my brother Boris had another band called Hugs, and we ended up merging the two groups to make Hugs of the Sky. For a long time there were six members, but at a certain point we split because we wanted a more minimalistic sound. So now it’s just the three of us: a drummer, guitarist, and bass guitar.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Tell me more about your family.
[SIGI]: My dad is a music nerd, like his whole living room is filled with vinyls. I remember sitting in the car and my dad would put on bands like The Fall, Einstürzende Neubauten and a lot of noise, punk, and psychedelic rock. I think it was sitting in my car with my dad that my music taste began to form. I started playing in my youth because I was, well, following what my brother did. You know how siblings are. Since he was my older brother, I looked up to him as a role model. So when he started playing the bass, I picked up the guitar; though at a certain point we switched instruments.
It took a lot of time for us to become close like we are now. For a period of time, it was hard for us to talk to each other. But the last couple years, especially during coronavirus, we’ve managed to express our emotions and learn to care for each other. In hard times, we are always there for one another. It’s nice to play in a band with someone that you care about, because I feel like I can be transparent about the music. When I’m not content with a song, I can tell Boris because he knows that I have what’s best in mind for the band.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does the song-writing process between the two of you look like?
[SIGI]: Usually it is my brother who comes up with broad structures of the song, and he also writes the lyrics. Then me and Seppe add our own instruments and, after that, we work on the song together as a group. When I write bass lines I usually pay attention to the melody and make a bassline that compliments the rest of the instrumentals. When I have no inspiration, I try to listen to songs by bands with heavy bass lines, like Tame Impala, Ty Segall, Meatbodies, and suchー bands that are in a similar genre.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Sick! I actually play the bass too. (I pan my camera to show the bass in the corner)
[SIGI]: You also have a Joy Division poster over there, too. The first bass lines I ever learned were by Peter Hook.
[UNPUBLISHED]: That’s mad. They’re definitely one of my favorite bands.
[SIGI]: I actually wrote a paper on them in university, like about the aesthetic of Joy Division. I looked at the combination of sonic and visual aesthetics that created the identity of the band. Cause’ the man who photographed Joy Division, Anton Corbijn, also directed Control, the Ian Curtis biopic; so I looked at how his visual portrayal established the persona of Ian Curtis, as intellectual, depressed, tortured geniuses. The depiction of them in that way impacts how we view the band now, like thinking that Curtis’ suicide was meant to happen.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The movie 24 Hour Party People comes to mind too, where Joy Division is depicted as what they really are: rambunctious young adults at the cusp of twenty. It’s all so fascinating. So, besides Joy Division and your dad’s music… Do you have any other influences in your music?
[SIGI]: I’d say Queens of the Stone Age, our drummer Seppe is especially a big fan of Joey Castillo. Also bands like Osees, Meatbodies, The Cure, Beck, Masters of Reality, early Tame Impalaー though I’d say Tame Impala is a lot more polished than what we are aiming for. Maybe also Fat White Family and Warmduscher; they’re more raw.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Would you consider yourselves a DIY project?
[SIGI]: For a long time, more than ten years, we recorded all by ourselves. Though the last couple of years we’ve had a distributor in Belgium, Wagonmaniac. They are situated in Ghent, at Kinky Star, a small venue which hosts a lot of underground Belgium bands. But they’re very nice music nerds and are also around the age of my dad. That’s a strange thing about Hugs of the Sky: I expected our audience to be more hipster youth, but our demographic seems to be older rock fans and anarchists.. which is fine by me, I guess.
Back to the DIY questionー yeah there are some agencies that we work with for promotion and such, but we still feel independent. When you’re in an independent band, everyone you meet along the road can become your partner later down the line. I hate to use the word ‘networking’, but as a DIY band it’s important to at least make friends with other bands and have each other’s backs. We have a lot of solidarity between these bands, because if we didn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to face the industry. It’s nice when you arrange a tour or show and get to meet lots of people who are so committed to music and don’t care about the money. My favorite part about touring is getting to play at small venues and getting to meet so many people before and after the show. We get to travel a lot, too, because of touring; France, Germany, Austria, Spain…. we were supposed to play in the UK but had to cancel those shows because of the omicron variant.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Would you say you have more of an international fanbase?
[SIGI]: Yeah, it’s more international. Belgium is such a small country and the genre we play is quite niche we’re often forced to go abroadー actually, I think we have a larger fan base in France than we do in Belgium. I enjoy not being restricted to a single nationー you get to experience a variety of languages, cultures, and perspectives. You start to realize that the borders are quite arbitrary, and that we are connected beyond these boundaries.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did you end up as a psychedelic rock band?
[SIGI]: For my brother, I think he was already writing these types of songs before he had actually listened to a lot of psychedelic music; then he started listening to a lot of psychedelic bands, especially the Australian modern scene. We didn’t really decide to automatically become a psychedelic rock band, I guess we grew into it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Have you guys ever experimented with psychedelics?
[SIGI]: Um, yeah. Though I wouldn’t say that we’re at the level of, say, The Doors. It’s not like we are taking drugs in order to make music, but it’s more of an indirect link where the music comes first then the psychedelics. My brother and I both studied philosophy. I feel like the experience of doing a lot of philosophy is similar to when you, say, eat mushrooms. You gain a lot of that same insight.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How has studying philosophy influenced yourselves and your music?
[SIGI]: I think for my brother, it was Nietczhe who was his biggest influence. While making our previous album, Virtual Lullaby Circus, he was reading a lot of Deleuze. I think it’s inevitable that those readings have influenced his songwriting. For me, I think I adapt philosophical ideas around my lifestyle, which in turn affects the way I play musicー but there is a less direct influence from philosophy onto my music. When it comes to philosophy, I’m more interested in social and economic liberationー like I come from a Marxist background. I’m trying to combat suppression in the music scene and use music as a way to fight back.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Let’s talk about your upcoming LP, Tangerine Boredom Delusion. Could you describe the album in three words?
[SIGI]: Dreamy. Fuzzy. Hmm…. No, I would say spacey, fuzzy, and, um, catchy.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I feel like a theme in the album is boredom and isolation. I was wondering how much of the album was written in quarantine?
[SIGI]: Lockdown definitely had a big influence on Boris’ mental health. Writing songs for him was therapy, as a way to cope with the lack of socialization and adventure. I think he made up strange adventurous stories in his head and tried to put it in song. There is a gloomy side to the album, but I also think there is a ray of hope, in the end.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Would you say that the album has an overarching narrative?
[SIGI]: I guess there is one character who kind of undergoes this psychosis. He’s trying to cope with this desolate world, and inventing his own new world. I guess it could be seen as one character, but he becomes several other people at the same time. Kind of like a self-transformation, where we are constantly becoming or trying to become another person. It can also be interpreted in an optimistic sense where we are always reinventing ourselves and possibly becoming better.
Without speaking on behalf of your brother… I’m curious about the theme of love in this album and how it connects to delusion?
[SIGI]: He wanted to express that love makes us a mad man. Like, we often make a false and idealized image of a person when you are in love. Especially in this age where we are surrounded by digital images and lacking close contact to others, it’s easy to fall into a delusion about someone.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have a favorite song on the album?
[SIGI]: I think my personal favorite would be “Tangerine Nightmare.” It’s a lot softer and melancholic than the other songs on the album. I also like “Pond at the Clinic” because it has a medieval and nightmarish vibe, like we are in a parody of Pan’s Labyrinth.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I feel like “Tangerine Nightmare” was your “Beatles moment.” What inspired that shift in tone?
[SIGI]: Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. At the time we were listening to a lot of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They have a lot of simple, catchy, yet very brilliant songs. They’re a great band to get inspiration from. Also my brother is inspired by Anton Newcombe’s lyrics; they both speak with a lot of metaphors, where he plays this madman performer.
[UNPUBLISHED]: It’s so interesting that you're reviving a 90s band that was reviving the 60s. Do you think your approach to music is similar to that of the Brian Jonestown Massacre?
[SIGI]: In some ways, yeah. Though we haven’t fought each other on stage. Yet.
[UNPUBLISHED]: One bit of exciting news is that you guys are set to tour with Sisters of Mercy this summer. How are you feeling about that?
[SIGI]: It’s going to be a strange shift, going from small venues to thousands of people, but I look forward to it. I’m curious whether the Sisters of Mercy fans will like usー like I don’t want to be impolite, but they’re probably a lot older than us and we don’t sound a lot like Sisters of Mercy. So it was a bit surprising… My first reaction was that it was a prank.When we finally meet Sisters of Mercy, one of the first things we ask will probably be why we were chosen for the tour.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I always wonder what it’s like for younger musicians to meet older ones, I feel like the experiences can vary greatly.
[SIGI]: Yeah. During one of our first tours we met Chris Cacavas, he’s played on Green On Red and Dream Syndicates. We were playing with some jazz band and it turned out he was a part of itー he’s played for some legendary rock bands but he was so down to earth. He actually invited us for dinner in Karlsruhe. I think it might’ve been Chris who suggested us as a support act to Sisters of Mercy.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are your emotions surrounding the release of the new album? Does it all feel brand new to you?
[SIGI]: Not really. We wrote the songs at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, so it’s been a long buildup to the release. We played some of the songs from Tangerine Boredom Delusion in Antwerp and people were surprised to hear new songs, but we’d already been sitting with them for over a year. But yeah, it’s exciting to be able to perform them and see people’s reactions.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are you looking forward to this year?
[SIGI]: Well obviously the Sisters of Mercy tour. I’m excited to see where the tour takes us, it’ll be a lot more professional and serious than we’re used to. But we’ll try not to think about that and be our own chaotic selves on stage. We’re trying not to lose that DIY streak because it’s an important part of our band’s identity.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As a sibling myself, I imagine that I’d easily get mad if I let my younger brother do all the talking… so I’m wondering if there’s anything he’d like to say at the interview.
[SIGI]: That he loves his little brother so much (laughs). Well, he actually gave me a list of things to sayー not true, by the way. Actually, though, I think since we are so close, he trusts me enough to do this interview and talk about our music.