An Interview With The Response

Christchurch based duo The Response have been making a name for themselves with the unique take on indie-pop. Blending elements of electronic music with live instrumentation, The Response’s catalogue is filled with an array of fun and engaging tracks.

We caught up with Andy and Victoria Knopp from The Response following the release of their latest single, ‘Stuck In Your Head’. We talked about their production process, influences and their recent release.

Check out the interview below!

Kia Ora team! First of all, can you tell us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

Hello, we are The Response. We’re made up of Victoria and Andy Knopp and we are an indie-pop duo from Ōtautahi.

I know that you guys are involved in a few different projects. Can you tell me what elements typically make up a track from ‘The Response’?

The Response has me (Andy) singing which is the first distinction from other music we work on. We’re just a two-piece and we play live a lot so the elements are limited to electric guitar, vocals, sampled drums and synth bass. I feel like constraints make you get creative in ways you might not think of if you had endless options at your fingertips. Over the years we’ve pushed the limits of what we can do as a two-piece and it’s created some music we’re super proud of.

Who would be some of your musical influences?

There’s way too much good music happening all the time but some touchstones we keep coming back to for The Response are Vampire Weekend, Beck, Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens. We love classic songwriting.

You guys have just released the new single ‘Stuck In Your Head’, tell me more about that?

The song kind of sounds like it was written for a time like now when everything is locked down and you can’t really go overseas and see the world. But it was actually written a while ago when the feeling of being locked down was only in our minds.

The track features a wicked Moog bassline, can you tell me more about the production process of ‘Stuck In Your Head’?

Thanks! Most of our songs tend to start with a beat but with this one, we were messing around on keyboards and this bass riff just kind of stuck. It ended up becoming the centre for the whole song and we built everything else around that in our home studio.

There’s a really cool video releasing alongside the song that kind of sums up the ‘Zoom Call ’ era we’ve found ourselves in. What was the inspiration behind that?

The song is partly about feeling trapped and it’s a feeling 100% of us can relate to. A webcam style video in our house seemed appropriate and it also gives a little insight into our process of recording a track.

Across your catalogue are a variety of synths, drum machines and live instrumentation. How do you go about putting on a live performance?

We tend to write first and figure out how to play it live later which can be a headache. Vic plays a drum sampler pad and plays an arcade-style button chromatic bass with one foot so that’s our rhythm section. I play the guitar and a tiny keyboard so between us we can usually figure out how to best deliver the song in a live context.

What does the rest of 2021 have in store for The Response?

We’ve been drip-feeding singles from a new album we have coming soon so keep an eye out! In the meantime, we’ve been writing and producing for a number of other artists which has been really cool. Jumping between genres is great exercise and the number of great songs already released from our little home studio this year has been amazing.

You can listen to ‘Stuck In Your Head’ below.

And watch the music video.