Name: Roller Derby
Members: Philine Meyer, Manuel Romero Soria
Nationality: German
Current release: Roller Derby's new album When The Night Comes is out now. Listen here, and buy a physical copy from the band's shop.
Recommendation for their hometown of Hamburg, Germany: The former air raid shelter on Feldstraße in Hamburg is a must-see. It has a green roof from which you have a great view over the city. Inside the building there are many shops and restaurants as well as the local independent radio station ‘ByteFM’ and at least four live music venues.

If you enjoyed this Roller Derby interview and would like to know more about the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, tiktok, and bandcamp.  



For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

For our album, we had a rough idea of what we wanted it to sound like, but we didn't really have a vision. We let ourselves drift when writing the songs and tried out which sounds, chord progressions and melodies we liked.

We approached some songs with more of a plan than others. “Last Night,” for example, sounded completely different when we wrote it than the finished version that can now be heard on the record.

It's definitely not a bad thing to deviate from your original idea from time to time and give other approaches a chance.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

For us lyrics should have an aesthetic sound and should somehow flow with the music.

We also like lyrics that have the potential for deeper meanings without being over-complicated or incomprehensible.

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Most of our themes are human relationships or emotional worlds related to our environment.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

We just let it flow, whatever sounds good to our ears.

We often start with an idea or reference of how the song should ‘be’. But we've also found that when someone from the outside listens to the music, for example our producer Moses Schneider, they interpret a song differently.

It can happen that you get involved with completely new things that you didn't even have in mind before. In the song “Emily's Dance,” for example, we incorporated a lot more 80s elements than planned and we love the result.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece?

It's important to give the songs a little time. Also to find out whether you still like the song after a while and what you would like to improve.

As an artist, however, there is always a tendency not to want to finish and to keep perfecting details. It helps to work with producers, recording engineers or mixers (or sometimes good friends) who can tell you when a song is really finished.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

Obviously, the songs on an album or EP have a certain effect when you listen to them in one session. In our opinion, good records offer a good balance of musical variety and a consistent sound.

With our debut album, we selected every single song consciously for the record and tried to give each song its own vibe. All the tracks from the album can also be listened to individually, but of course they also integrate nicely into the LP.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

At the moment we are happy and relieved that the album is finally out in the world. We're still enjoying it, of course, and there's no emptiness yet.

Maybe we'll have to reflect on the question again when our tour is over in a few weeks. Then the urge to write and record new songs will certainly take over again.