05 Nov 2013 — Lukas Dubro
Stine Omar doesn't know what prompted her to speak to Max Boss that one afternoon in Berlin. Did god show his face here? Or did she just follow a whim? One thing is for certain: On that day, two people came together who definitely belong together. A friendship began, that soon led to making art. Stine and Max recorded videos of themselves and started a musical project which they first called Euroshit and later on became Easter.
The music of Easter is hard to locate, it is a mix of various styles, times and genres. Because of this, the music was given the obscurest of labels, such as post human or post gender. We met with Max and Stine on a sunny afternoon in the backyard of the famous champagne bar Smaragd in Wedding. They had spent the whole day at the lake and didn't wear underwear. Stine had a slight sunstroke. After a chat about Tropical Island, their band and food, they gave us a banana.
Read the interview with the duo after the break. It first appeared in German in Cartouche #4. Go here to find out where to purchase a copy of the magazine.
Aside from the interview, we're happy to premiere the new video for Easter's wistful and most excellent song "Sky". Check it out below.
(Photo by Tonje Thilesen)
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It's always a kind of trip to go to Wedding. Do you like it here?
Stine: We love Wedding! I've been living here for two years with my friends Franz Augustin and Osman Eriksson.
Max: I moved to Wedding last year, felt home very soon! Still, I wanna try to convince Stine and my brother to move to LA.
Stine: Taco stands everywhere, I heard.
You like tacos?
Stine: Yes.
Max: Makes you happy.
Stine: It does make me happy! Beans! We have a song coming up about tacos! TV TRAY TACO NITE.
Talking about your band Easter: A lot of your songs are accompanied by a video. Could you explain why?
Stine: It's fun to make music videos. And super easy too. Ideally we would want every song to have a music video. Just to have it on Youtube with some eye candy.
Max: The plan was to make an album and to make a video for each song. We prefer to post a Youtube link over Soundcloud, it's more interesting and popular at the same time.
The video for "The Heat" plays at Tropical Island. What is your impression of this utopian waterpark?
Stine: It was sick. Everything was grey. We arrived there in the afternoon and stayed until 3 in the morning. We walked around in this huge thing until there was almost no more other people – only these super scared flamingos. One day we will free them. We also sat down at this perfectly prepared table that people left who had to catch the last bus to civilization. It was filled with tapas.
Max: But overall it wasn't as bizarre as I had expected. I thought they're close to bankruptcy and it's this ghostly place, but it was actually quite crowded during daytime. You often see people walking in the back in our video. I had intended that there would be no one in the back. I also thought they have a more real beach, but it was just some sand at the edge of the pool. Not beachy. The initial image I had for the video was that we would stand navel deep in the water close to the beach. But it wasn't possible.
Why did you want to do the video there?
Max: Outside was the darkest Berlin winter. We wanted heat. It's like 32°C. We also wanted to go because everybody knew about it but nobody had actually been there.
Stine: We only realized afterwards how much it fits the song. Because it was written in Lanzarote last year where i was studying satanism at a beach surrounded by fat sunburned pensioners.
Would you ever go there again?
Stine: I'd rather go to Plötzensee.
Max: They have amazing slides but I don't get why the white trash goes there. It's so much more expensive then to actually fly to the south.
Seeing all these videos and listening to your songs, it seems like you are very determined about your style. How difficult is it to develop your own artistic language?
Stine: I don't know anything about style. It's just the meeting of the two of us. It's just what's going on in the making.
Max: If there is a process, it is very much visible. Because we put out everything we do. There is no unreleased demos or stuff. It's funny when people see things in your work that you haven't intended. All this artificiality and coldness in our visuals. And then you look at the Facebook cover photo and you kind of understand what they mean.
How do you see your music? Do you have any intentions?
Stine: Maybe to put this image of a perfectly shaped horse ass into people's head. But besides that I just do it because it's more fun than anything else. And that I want to be with Max all the time anyway. Very much what we do is about reaching more fun.
Max: Yes. MORE FUN. In capital letters.
Stine: And exclamation mark.
Max: In a way this is a precondition for me to contribute or to collaborate with someone, to not have really an intention. To let go of what you would do just by yourself. To trust in the qualities of another person. That's the reason why you wanna work with someone. Because you believe what the other person does is good and will bring something new. And you just let go. This is what a collaboration is about.
How do you write songs?
Max: The base is always Stine's lyrics. There could never be an Easter song without them being there first.
Stine: I write poems. And Max interacts to them in Ableton.
Do you have any influences?
Stine: It's hard to say where it comes from, but it's much about food I think. At least that's my favourite interest.
So food is important?
Stine: Yeah, food. And love and hate and horses.
Is food what Alien Babies is about?
Stine: It's about texture. Texture of weird stuff some people call food.
Do you like cooking?
Stine: Yes.
And eating?
Stine: Yes.
What is your favourite meal? Pasta?
Stine: I hate pasta.
Max: Pasta makes you depressed.
Stine: Pasta makes you sad. I am not allergic, but it's very bad for creative purposes to eat too much pasta. This is probably a huge contemporary problem, because a lot of people eat a lot of pasta, because it's cheap and easy. Sad, sad pasta.
Is there food that makes you happy besides tacos?
Stine: Bananas. Today we only ate bananas at the beach. Yesterday we made ice cream of bananas. We just mashed them and put them in the freezer. Happy days.
Do you eat something specific before you write poems?
Stine: Drugs! potatoes! Do you want Swedish tobacco by the way?
No, thanks.
Stine: But you know it, right? It's a big contributor to happiness and concentration and therefore creativity. I love Snus.
Do you like going to restaurants in general? Do you dine a lot in restaurants?
Stine: Maybe not enough. That's what's great about touring, that you have to eat out. It's of course super nice to be taken to restaurants in new cities. When we were in Den Haag, we had Surinamese for the first time and it was so good. This huge pancake with tofu, potatoes, tempeh, beans and everything that is yellow and good on one pancake. Berlin needs Surinamese, I don't know of anything like that here.
Maybe your love for food is what makes your music so special. How do you like the labels given to you? Like post human?
Stine: That is also very entertaining about making music. That people are so into labeling it. At first I was letting myself be annoyed by it. But now I just think that it is funny, that they throw a new genre on you every week. We don't need to label ourselves, we have the people do that for us.
What are the plans for your band?
Stine: We wanna get big in Japan. At least for going there.
Max: For the candy.
So you like Japanese candy too?
Max: Yes. When we went to Paris the promoter gave us a Japanese candy called Octopus Poop. It has a lot of chemical reactions going on. You need a YouTube tutorial to know how to prepare it. It sure has a crisp taste. I tried to find it in Berlin. It seems to be impossible.
Stine: If anybody knows where we could get it here, they should definitely call us.
You seem to like food a lot!
Stine: The art has always been parallel to the food. Cannot do without.
