Goose

At any given moment, you can be beavering away, as busy as a bee, running around like a headless chicken. The lively, energetic and outright crazed work ethics of Belgian sleaze-mongers, Goose, provide yet another beast for the list of industrious kinship.

Since the 2006 release of their debut album - Bring It On - the wall of synth purveyors have been popping up with exponential frequency: on remixes for Shitdisco, Futureheads and The Cribs; jumping between Europe, Japan and Australia with scene-chums MSTRKRFT and Digitalism; and even during the high-fiving goal celebrations of the NHL ice hockey league. ‘Busy’ has so adamantly attached itself to the band that they even lent their name to a brand of free condoms at this year’s Pukkelpop festival.

Out of breath and chugging for air, base.ad recently caught up with lead singer, Mickael Karkousse, during a very brief work hiatus. “We arrive home, we drop our stuff, we go to sleep and then the day after we’re back in the studio. Then, at the end of the week, back on the road. That’s how it goes,” he confessed, with a lilting Dutch-French cadence.

Take a gander at Goose’s upcoming schedule and you’ll find November 22nd pencilled firmly into the never-ending tour. Along with YouTube favourites Ok Go and electro master Kissy Sell Out, they play the Smirnoff Electric Cabaret at Koko, which Karkousse promises “will have more like a New Year’s Eve vibe”.

This desire to party was precisely the catalyst that delivered the band to their current format. A decade ago they were a covers band, disillusioned with music and their hometown of Kortrijk, Belgium. “After a while we wanted to find our own sound and we knew there was something more than guitars. We really wrote this album out of something that we needed for ourselves. We didn’t tour a lot so our hometown was our environment. Our inspiration, the emptiness of the city. There was nothing going on”.

Their boredom was exasperated by the cost of expensive mic equipment and thus, four years ago, Goose made the experimental transition to computers. The result is layer upon layer of breakdown-and-crescendo electrock, both hardy AND magnetic. Ironically, considering their former apathy towards Belgium life, the album has since won them the Best Alternative accolade at the 2007 Belgian TMF Awards.

Now that they’ve recently completed the final touches to a Martin Solveig remix, work has begun on their second album which Karkousse hopes, very much, to be out at the end of 2008. “We’ve spent so much time at home in the past that now we want to be on tour all the time. The sooner we get the album done, the faster we’re back on tour”