It might have been 1998. the spring of 1998. those couple of months hardly anyone remembers nowadays, because they were all too busy being numb. or sore. if you didn't know any better - if for example you happened to be a tourist visiting ghent, belgium back then, we'd like to apologize: it must have seemed like the dullest city on earth.
Then again, you have yourself to blame as well. if only you'd looked a little harder, if only you'd tried to scratch the surface, you would have noticed that something was up.
important decisions were being made.
It might have been niek meul's house. it might have been that room - the one which takes itself for a kitchen. the members of das pop showed up for a meeting which would change their lives. they had songs, lots of them. good ones, too. they were able to deliver pretty accurate renditions of those songs to an audience. which brings us to the problem: they had no audience. someone suggested that maybe a lack of dedication was to blame. after long and difficult negotiations the members of das pop reached a unanimous decision: if they ever wanted to be really successful, they would have to go all the way. day jobs were given up, foster parents plans cancelled, but still, somehow, the world became a better place that day.
"we satisfy an essential need: we make the music we want to hear. besides, what better way to spend your time than to hang around with three of your best friends and grab a guitar, or be on stage together?", says singer bent van looy,"or, to a lesser extent, to get to share a shower in a sports hall with the band after a concert?" ( if at this point you're thinking of the classic shower scene in "carrie", we can assure you: it's happened to others before you. if you're thinking of a shower scene in your softcore porn flick of choice: good for you.)
The rest is history: das pop find a studio, discover a man named phil vinall, who - appropriately enough- turns out to be a producer, and record their highly successful debut album "i love", a wonderfully intense and painstakingly polished journey into the land of pop. a record which they're all still very proud of to this day.
"There's one thing about "i love" that still bothers me, though. it's not the kind of album you can do the dishes to. believe me, i've tried." - reinhard vanbergen, lead guitar

"THE HUMAN THING"
when -after a long and exhausting european tour- the time comes to record a follow-up, hopes are high. with phil 'odb' vinall once again producing, das pop set out to make an even better album. alas, the hard laws of music interfere. what started rather innocently as the making of a new das pop record soon turns into a gruesome oddysee - a journey which takes them from a friend's apartment, transformed into a recording studio using hundreds of blankets, via an old theatre in ghent, where an indoor badminton court is erected to provide the band with an illusion of physical activity, to the skyline studios in düsseldorf, where the mixing desk is used until it's auctioned off to the highest bidder and moved out. the average working day is 18 hours long. like some inane reality show with the cameras turned off, band members are forced to endure each other's body odours, opinions and exceedingly lame solo's. this, predictably enough, leads to a lot of conflicts.

"OUR FIRST RECORD WAS ALL ABOUT POP, THIS ONE IS ABOUT DAS POP"
- bent van looy
The good news is that this second offering is even better than the first one, revealing a substantially more mature das pop. the title track gives it away: "let's do the human thing/ stop being interesting".
this record is less brain, more heart. das pop: your favourite band, now also available with emotion.
"honestly, which human being could ever touch you the way a perfect song does? it's a bummer for mankind, but music is actually better than people. nothing is more powerful, except maybe the occasional love affair", comments van looy.
Cynical? you bet. but the music benefits from it- as songs like "neversleeper", or the pedal steel goodness-driven "another world" clearly demonstrate. and the unnerving "all wrong" is simply breathtaking - the perfect soundtrack for al your suicide attempts.
This doesn't mean that das pop forgot about your booty - au contraire: just listen to the single "telephone love", groovy as hell and- about time, too- an anthem for those oft-forgotten employees of the phone sex industry. or "turn", a perverted cathedral of lewdness that could have been made by eminem if the the gang he grew up with had been called bader-meinhof. and we didn't even mention "we live again": imagine the theme song of a "mission impossible" remake, anno 2020, played by a genetically reanimated e.l.o.
we hate to have to be the ones to break it to you, but "the human thing" is a milestone masquerading as an album. if your shrink keeps telling you to go to your happy place: you've just found it. so whatever you're doing right now: stop and listen. do you wanna do the human thing?
das pop are: niek meul, lieven moors, reinhard vanbergen, and bent van.