Feng Suave
Feng Suave are an Alternative/Soul duo from Amsterdam, Netherlands. Adding in ‘70’s-remnant pop grooves, members Daniël Schoemaker and Daniël de Jong write and produce a delicate output of…
Feng Suave are an Alternative/Soul duo from Amsterdam, Netherlands. Adding in ‘70’s-remnant pop grooves, members Daniël Schoemaker and Daniël de Jong write and produce a delicate output of contemporary yet timeless music.
With a COLORS STUDIO performance and support from DUMMY, Billboard USA, Notion & Line of Best Fit – the band’s ‘Warping Youth’ EP (2020) helped to introduce a wider audience, resulting in over 150 million streams to date. Influenced by legacy artists like Bill Withers and The Beatles, as well as contemporary favourites Foxygen, Homeshake and Tame Impala – Feng Suave gently marry together sounds from different decades.
‘Warping Youth’ offered the first opportunity for the duo to cement a sonic identity, after 2017’s eponymous debut EP ‘Feng Suave’, and follow-up single ‘Venus Flytrap’ (2018). The Daniel’s cited their Warping Youth moment by stating “We aimed at distancing ourselves from the contemporary ‘bedroom’ sound of our first releases and tried to stay true to the music we like.”
With a nod of approval from Iggy Pop on his BBC 6 Music show, Feng Suave went on to get rotation support on The Netherlands’ stations 3FM and Radio 2 as well as being announced as one of Spotify’s global RADAR camp campaign as an artist to watch. The group have performed coveted live sets at Best Kept Secret, Reeperbahn (2019 ‘Anchor Award’ Nominees) and North Sea Jazz Festival, whilst playing other key shows alongside the likes of sandy (alex g) & Khruangbin.
Following the recent release of a fresh new single ‘Tomb For Rockets’ on May 07 2021, the Dutch outfit have now confirmed a new EP titled ‘So Much For Gardening’ due to be released on Friday August 27 2021. Recorded at Helmbreker Studio (Haarlem, Netherlands) with engineer Jasper Geluk (Altın Gün). The new track is an RnB-inspired number which breaks sonic ground from the duo. Tracked just about entirely live and straight to tape, the recording and production was overseen once again by the Daniel’s themselves, and the output is highlighted with an earnest, crisp production sound that forms a bed under dreamy vocal lines and cinematic instrumentation.
On the new song, the duo said:
‘So Much For Gardening’ was recorded throughout the tail end of 2020. For this release, we decided to record analogue to Tape. This was a first time for us and also provided a nice change from our previous recording experiences which often
involved overdubbing every instrument onto a digital grid, and thus provided us an opportunity to capture a raw and dense sound.
By avoiding the usual computerised workstation and focussing in and around analogue instruments, it changed a lot for us creatively and allowed us to focus more on capturing a genuine moment rather than recording a flawless take.
Our engineer Jasper Geluk played an integral part in the process, as we introduced string arrangements to our recordings for the first time and again worked with our long-time friends, band members and collaborators Adura Sulaiman, Kike Swagerman, Ivar Otten and Gino Buragevic.
The four songs on this EP avoid one single collective mood or narrative, and instead take on individual themes. ‘Unweaving the Rainbow Forever’is a playful allusion to the ongoing environmental catastrophe and ‘Come Gather ‘Round’ is a somewhat cynical reproach of capitalism and greed which also includes a nod to the prospect of the impending end of civilisation, whereas ‘Show Me’ is a very personal song which deals with insurmountable individual emotional grief while ‘Tomb For Rockets’ is kind of all of the above, and kind of just a love song.