Koi Forest is a band that effortlessly blends deep grooves, fairytale-like harmonies, and immersive visual elements to create a sonic journey unlike any other. Drawing inspiration from the mythical koi carp, their music swims against the current, taking listeners to enchanting and unfamiliar realms. Comprised of drummer Koen Gardebroek, bassist/pianist Deborah Slijkhuis, guitarist Sebastiaan Visser, and singer Selma Ebbens, the group crafts atmospheric experiences that feel both intimate and otherworldly. We had the pleasure of catching up with Koi Forest before their performance at Hidden Gem in Amsterdam to hear more about their creative world.
I am Koen Gardebroek. My name is Sebastiaan. I'm Selma Ebbens. Deborah. And we are Koi Forest, a band from Zwolle. And we formed the band abut five years ago. We were called Selma at that time. Named after Selma. About two years ago, we had a writing camp in Germany and we made such a different vibe than we did before that we thought we need a new band name, so now we are Koi Forest. The difference between Selma and Koi Forest is with Koi Forest we really felt like we had some image with how it would look like with our music. During our live shows we have visuals and scent and we really try to use other instruments than musical instruments to take people along with us in our music. It's really a bit mythical, a bit fairy tale-like. More in the neo soul, R&B, fusion, jazz realm, but we're really quite like genre fluid, we all have very different musical background. We just throw it all in and something comes out.
How did the name Koi Forest come to be?
Sel: We were looking for a name which suited by the fairy tale mythological vibe and tried to find an animal or creature which we found that fitted our band or our music. We came up with the koi fish which is one of the only fish that swims upstream. We really like the idea of swimming upstream with our music and doing things because we just want to create. So that's that's one part of our name and the second part Forest is more mythological.
D: Koi Forest is something like surreal because it doesn't even exist and that's how we also feel about our music. So those two parts combined is Koi Forest.
How do you feel in this current chapter of your life, in your music, in your art?
Seb: It was a moment of clarity. We had written a bunch of new songs and we were working on more, feeling like all of this music that we had been writing was just one thing, one new thing. And we felt the need to depart from our band name anyway. So it just felt very natural to do that.
K: There's new music coming your way because we finished an album, and it's gonna come next year, so stay tuned.
D: Maybe it's nice to say that we wrote everything together, all this music, in this camp, but also after, and everything came super fast. It all just clicked. We were so hyped, just started recording, and recorded everything by ourselves. We have a tiny studio in Zwolle, 15 meters square, and we recorded everything there. Produced everything, and then mixed everything together with Wiboud Burkens, credits for Wiboud, and the album was born. We're gonna release our first single on the 13th of December.
Tijmen de Nooy Photography
If you were to describe the sound of Koi Forest, how would you describe it?
Seb: We have a couple of keywords for that, right?
Sel: Mythological... fairy tale-like... We take a lot of inspiration out of nature, so I hope maybe a bit of feeling like you're in the nature, freedom of creating. That sums it up.
D: We alsocombine acoustic elements with electronic elements. Our album is very live-based, so the three of us, the rhythm section, we recorded everything live together, and then we added a lot of vocal layers, lots of vocal layers.
Sel: We like a lot of layers in our music.
D: And a lot of extra production, extra guitars, so it's very hybrid. And very layered. We really like rich chords, which he comes up with a lot (Sebas), and lyrics.
Sel: And yeah, the lyrics are a bit of the same, sometimes I use things like stories from mythology into the lyrics as a metaphor to tell some of my own stories. A lot of nature things.
Is there a message you'd like to convey in your music?
Sel: Our message is that we really hope we can take people out of their day-to-day life and put them in another vibe for just a moment. More of a vibe where you can be creative and where there's allowed to have a lot of fantasies, where it's allowed to be free, actually.
D: And that's what we strive for. Total creative freedom in our music.
What else is in store for Koi Forest in the near future?
K: We're going to have real vinyls and CDs also. So that's a really exciting thing for us because we never had our music on vinyl. I'm really excited about that one. And we have some surprises. We have two features on the album, and I can't tell which ones, but for us they're really big.
D: We're very happy to have them on the album. They're like our heroes.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
You can follow us on Instagram, it's called koi.forest, and TikTok, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube. We're also making a lot of video material with the music. So I think YouTube might also be cool to follow.
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