PEGA - Just play music, and go on stage with my music, I think that’s the most important ambition I have

Recently, we attended the festival 'The Sound of the Belgian Underground', a voyage of discovery through what lives in the Belgian underground, and one of the notable bands of the evening was PEGA. About their performance in AB we wrote: 'The Brussels trio PEGA plays something between post-punk and mathrock. The band has three ladies who enjoy playing. They master their instruments well, the catchy riffs and drums made us headbang. Simple, good and solid sounding. PEGA gives musical colour in this grey world. It is a band that flirts within post-punk between light-footedness, solid rock (catchy and energetic) and experiment. That way we were quickly convinced. 'You can read the full report here . 
High time to put PEGA in the spotlight via our website as well, we had a nice talk with guitarist/vocalist Barbara and sounded out their future plans ... for her and the band.

To get to the point, tell us a bit more about yourselves who are PEGA, how did it all start, just so our readers can get to know you a bit better :)
We started with a couple friends, just making music together. After something like a year three of us wanted to do more with that music, and create something. And start composing songs together, and bring out some EP’s in 2019 and last year .. That’s how it all started. 

For some reason you been pushed in the direction of post punk, but I hear much more then only post punk into your music. So, Who are your sources of inspiration and how would you describe your own music?
Each of us has a different taste in music. Some of us like more jazz, some of us like more punk/psychedelic . We like also Funk, and Michael Jackson is also among our inspirations. We also like the band Sleeping People?, Fugazi? , which is more mathrock, and Idles. There’s some Chopin and Disco in the mix. Yes we all have different tastes in music, and different inspirations and put this together into PEGA. 

You said Michael Jackson? When I saw you on stage it was just that poppy way of doing, combined with some experimental way of doing that triggers me the most, like I write in my review too. But, you know there are a lot post punk related bands swimming in the water, if you know what mean. What do you think makes you different from other bands?
What we doing is very catchy , we are all different human beings, it’s just difficult to answer this question. Maybe the fact that we like such different kinds of music reflects on why it sounds the way it sounds: we never sat down and decided: we are going to make a x genre style of music. We’ll start, and then we’ll see. Like most bands, no? :)

I saw you live during 'Sound of the Belgian underground' and was deeply impressed, bought a record and absolutely wanted to interview you :) I wrote: ''They master their instruments well, the catchy riffs and drums made us headbang. It sounded simple, good and solid.'' But especially the colourful and playful character appealed to me enormously. Is that description correct, that skipping between instrumental perfection and playfulness, is that a conscious choice? 
We like doing things, and not follow the trail. Soo yes there is a lot of imagination in what we are doing. Soo yes it’s sure a conscious choice doing it on the way we doing it now.

Did the fact that you could play at this festival open any doors you think?
Yes, the organizer of TRIX wanted us to play there, our mate Professeur Postérior contacted us to play in september We play with Milk TV in Chaff on the 4th April. With Nada booking we have found some nice dates, such as Aralunaires(Arlon) and Fete de la Musique(17th in Aumale, 18th at VK. We play in Reflektor in Liege on the 1st of May with the Black Lips,  and have a couple of nice gigs aligned. We also play in Ghent at 19 may. So, Yes, there were sure some good contacts after this gig there.

We are going through difficult times (even if there is a little sunlight at the end of the COVID tunnel - and now there is the war in Ukraine). How did you get through these times as band, as people and as musicians?£
Very difficult actually. Leslie, who’s a Sound Engineer, lost almost all her work, I’ve lost my job too.  A lot of bands broke up, and had to start doing something else for money. I’m running a small label,  We had a release party for a band called Bengal planned for the 24th March 2020. They could not do that because of this pandemic thing, and broke up. So many bands that had to make choices. With this pandemic we sure lost a lot of great bands. pity.  It was a disaster for the music industry.. 

But other bands got inspiration out of this time and got stronger true it. Did you find inspiration to bring out new things for PEGA?£
Yes, we did write two new songs, and have almost finished 2 others. It was difficult because we started working with a new bassist, so we had to kind of get used to each other, but it was fun. Also, we did some residencies in Botanique and Brass, that helped us write more songs and stay motivated :) 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1045086899287678

You said something about you running a small label, that is interesting, can you put some more information about that label here? What bands are there in and things… 
I run a small label called Wild Goose Chase Records (WGC) with which I released tapes of PEGA, TUVALU, Bengal(doens’t exist anymore), Little Musgrave, and soon(everything in the music industry has had a backlog) Alice Perez, and Lou K. I’m working on a funny website for the future.
https://www.facebook.com/wildgoosechaserecords
https://www.instagram.com/wildgoosechaserecords/?hl=en

That’s interesting to know One other thing, you been talking about playing live, but you guys also have play in France and other country’s? Can you tell more about this
We plan to go back on tour outside the country. We wanted to go to Paris and Lyon. We even did a small tour in UK, and it’s funny , we did it at that moment thinking Brexit would make it more difficult, but then Covid came and , well, no touring at all. We went to Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, London, Bristol in 5 days: everyone was so nice, generous, diy scene is fantastic..  Back in Belgium we were playing very often, 3, 4 times per month.
We want to go back to France, do some gigs in Portugal and Germany as well. Soo yes there are plans to play outside the country, and have some experience into doing  that as well.

In 2021 you released an EP 'Têmpte de chips', right in the middle of the corona times, why not wait a bit? 
We knew Aude was going to leave, so we make the decision to bring out this EP before she left, as a closure. She did the artwork. – check it out : https://www.instagram.com/audegrrr/?hl=en  
We also did a small release party in Atelier Claus. In AB we play with our new bass player Juliette. We played two songs we wrote with her, and she brought a lot to the band too ;) She used to play in a well-known band called Moaning Cities.

I think it's a beautiful disc, where the above statement also comes into its own on record I think, how were the general reactions to it?
They were positive, we were super happy to finally have that object ready.I did a videoclip for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BiemYC96KY

Some magazines reviewed it (Larsen, Turnupthevolume) and record shops were happy to sell them both the tape and vinyl. It was awesome.

I also like the flirting between experimentation and accessibility on that record, that's something that comes up all the time. Is that statement correct, do you like to vacillate between the two and is that a conscious choice?
Like I said before, I like pop music, pop is good! There is a lot good pop like Michael Jackson,  I mention already and Amy Winehouse  par example. I like Disney music to, I was obsessed by Walt Disney films on young age. and I like Fado ? so in a way it’s sure a conscious choice doing that yes. Of course the experimental stage it is a nice road to walk, but sometimes it’s good to just sing along and have fun to. 

It’s nice how you being so enthusiastic, but I was wonder what is you ambition? Do you have a goal you want to achieve? And prefer play on a big stage at Sportpaleis or just stay underground? What you prefer?
Just play music, and go on stage with my music Fuck COVID ..  I think that’s the most important ambition I have. Not to become famous and play at big stages. We like to grin at our beautiful audience and friends :) But we would like to open for some of our favorite bands (Idles, do you get the hint? Goat Girl? ;)

Speaking of the future, what are your future plans?
We have two new songs ready, and want to release them somehow. Going on tour like we talk about, that’s the future plans for now, we see where we get after that. 

Thanks for this interview, I just wanted to give you a spotlight to make our readers learn to know you better…Hope to see you on stage soon, and please contact us for future releases