The latest Dutch female fronted sensation is
LA VENTURA, so time to catch up with them to talk about
their first album...
Please first introduce your band...
We have Erwin Polderman on the groovy drums, Carla Douw our wonderful singer, Saz Kondic the guitar player for the heavy riffs and Mike Saffrie as the bassman.
Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our keyboard player Marco van Boven, who we will miss dearly. On stage we have our backing track now, to ”fill in” all Marco’s lines and cool samples he made for the album.
Erwin, why did you leave your former band ORPHANAGE?
I had to drive 4 hours to rehearse with them, and after a period of 6 years I did not have enough motivation to keep this going on. We part ways as friends.
Where did you find such a great singer like CARLA DOUW?
Actually she found me. September 2004 she responded on an advertisement I placed on the internet. It seemed she was some unknown talent in this neighbourhood.
Your music has the typical Dutch ff melodic goth metal sound, aren't you afraid people are gonna see your band as yet another WITHIN TEMPTATION/DELAIN kinda band?
Well lets be honest, we are not typical gothic. We do not have opera like vocals. We use more modern nu-metal riffs and have integrated rock influences with some catchy mainstream melody lines that can hardly be called gothic, right?!
The best part of it this blend of styles, is that we get a lot of attention from abroad where our music is picked up as it is, without all the comparisons. This female fronted metal/ rock we play is an upcoming market outside Holland. There we stand our ground, where as for Holland the media is often to narrow-minded, because of all those big and successful names here and starts to compare every thing with them and make their judgement solely on this.
Songs like "Memoria", "Only Love Will Find Its Way" and "Trefoil" have beautiful melodies, can you tell us more about the writing process of thesesongs?
Most songs were written in the sense of one of us makes a “blueprint”, an idea that has the essence of a complete song but without full the layers of the others or worked out in to much detail. When the others approved the idea, each took on their part of filling in the blanks. Together we built up this blueprint and made it into a La-Ventura song. We all have the skills to record at home. So whenever some one had an idea, it would be sent to everybody to work on individually, or give the right feedback on. We did not have the time, unfortunately, to do a lot of jamming at the rehearsals. So for this album the “blueprint idea” was the way to go for us.
Have you had any success in Holland yet (video/airplay)?
The strange part of it is that we seem to have more success outside Holland. We received great reviews from Dutch magazines and have met fantastic people here along the way, but the real opportunities are abroad for us. And maybe we get our break here in the future but for now we’ll check what’s out there!
The worst thing of being a band in Holland is the
fact that media like MTV or TMF are not interested in us “little” bands. They
rather have the big names fro
m America, than support the national talent. So why
spend so much money, trying to get your song on the radio or your video on tv
when knowing there is no way in hell they gonna take your video over the new
Christina Aguilera?!
I noticed you have sites under Hyves, Myspace and such, do you think these are the sites to make a band in the future?
Yes, definitely! MySpace in particularly is one of the best invention to promote and support a band (or yourself for that matter!). Through MySpace “The World” is at your feet. We received a lot of support through MySpace from people all over the world, how cool is that!
Can you please mention to us your inspirations?
We have loads of musical influences brought together to make La-Ventura. Fortunately we have a wide variety of music styles we all listen to and enjoy, ranging from pop (rock) to death metal, from funk to progressive rock. Too many to mention, but to name a few artists:
Sevendust, Kill Switch Engage, Machine Head, Lacuna Coil, Katatonia, A Perfect Circle, 30 Seconds to Mars, Pantera, Kiss, and the list goes on and on and on……
Finally, anything to add for yourself...
Thanks for this interview and let’s see what the future holds for us all! Greetz from La-Ventura!
