Based on a cursory glance at the imagery (a stark monument of a faceless soldier amidst a desolate wasteland) on VNV Nation’s new album, Of Faith, Power and Glory, you could easily dismiss Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson as yet another cold, industrial-rock band lacking any sense of connection to its fans. Harris, VNV Nation’s lead singer and composer, would beg to differ.
“When we first started out, we were starting in a certain scene,”
says Harris from his Hamburg, Germany home. “Since then, we’ve reached
so many people from so many backgrounds purely by word of mouth, purely
by hearing us, and that’s incredible. I don’t know that we’ve really
changed anything. I guess that VNV Nation’s music has the ability to
reach a broad amount of people.”
Whenever a fan approaches him, Harris starts off the conversation by
asking him or her, “How did you get into us?”
“It floors me how people get to hear us, and that something in what
we do just triggers them,” he says.
The band’s approach continually attracts new listeners of diverse
backgrounds.
“I met a couple of African-American guys at a show in New York, and
I was curious as to how they got into the music,” says Harris. “Because
of their hip-hop background, I wasn’t sure of the crossover point. They
went on to tell me they were big fans of proto-techno, a lot of the
European electronic music in the ’80s, which in fact was inspired by
James Brown. We ended talking about music and wound up sharing so
much.”
Of Faith, Power and Glory marks VNV’s seventh full-length
U.S. release. It’s a continuation of what the duo has done on previous
releases, as it combines electronics and melodies similar to those of
Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. The guys inject emotion into a genre often
stereotyped for its rigidity and dehumanized elements. In cinematic
terms, the band leans more toward The Fifth Element than
Blade Runner.
“Our music is about being human; it’s not about being classified
into a cultural border,” says Harris. “It’s about emotion, the human
element, the human experience. It’s something we are all born with to a
lesser or greater degree.”
VNV’s sound, which Harris calls “future pop,” has garnered a very
dedicated following, which surprises him to this day. He has, however,
attributed some of it to his songwriting approach.
“Basically, it is rock music being made with electronics,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter what instrument is being used. All the elements that
listeners appreciate in what they normally listen to are there. They’re
not put off or think, ‘Oh no, you’ve got a keyboard.'”
It hasn’t hurt that a certain singer in a certain already popular
band, namely AFI’s Davey Havok, became an early emissary for VNV,
wearing the band’s shirts on magazine covers and telling anyone who
would listen about Harris and Jackson’s work. Not so coincidentally,
Havok would form Blakq Audio, an electronic side-project with AFI
cohort Jade Puget, and take a few stylistic cues directly from
Harris.
“We’re very, very grateful to him for him [to] sponsor us in this
way, shape and form, because people go, ‘Hey, Davey likes it, let’s
check them out,’ and they like us, whereas in any other case, they
never would have heard us,” says Harris. “It’s an incredible thing that
he’s become an ambassador for us.”
The upcoming live show, Harris says, will also be a logical
progression of VNV’s work, with Jackson handling percussion and two
keyboardists augmenting the lineup.
“We do what we do and wouldn’t have it any other way,” says Harris.
“It will still have that same primitive passion we had in the
beginning.”
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2009.