Sam Bettens on Rex Rebel: “We completely made our own record”

With Rex Rebel, Sam Bettens is taking a new musical direction. Together with K's Choice bandmates Reinout Swinnen and Wim van der Westen, he made Run: more electronic, more personal, and free from old expectations. About transition, voice, freedom, and the ambition to break through internationally. “Since my transition, I feel much more the need to say things as they are.”

Sam lives in California; Reinout and Wim are in Belgium. Does working together as a band involve a lot of logistical wrangling?
Reinout: “It is a hassle, let's be honest about that. It's not easy. When we manage to get together for a few days, writing a song goes incredibly smoothly. But working remotely is harder. Our sound requires a lot of elements from the very start to compose a track. If you send a song over the internet and the others just don't 'feel' it, you've lost a couple of weeks of work. When you're in the same room, you can respond to each other directly.”
Sam: “So we rely heavily on the internet, and we wait a lot. There's a nine-hour time difference between California and Flanders, so I send something and often don't get a response until twelve hours later. And vice versa. It's pretty cumbersome. If we make a second record, we should just lock ourselves away somewhere together for two weeks.”

You've been working together for years in K's Choice, and previous interviews showed you were immediately in sync, as if everything came naturally. Is that actually a good thing when making new music? Shouldn't it create some friction?
Reinout: “We're good friends first and foremost, but we definitely don't agree on everything. There are plenty of things we've had firm discussions about.”
Sam: “We have enough common ground. We all wanted to make the same kind of record, but our individual tastes are different enough to give each other real input. During the process we discovered exactly which direction we wanted to go, and that made it very exciting and fun.”

Several tracks on Run, like 'Big Shot,' 'Big Boy,' and the title track, are about ambition and an internal struggle around how you present yourself to the outside world. Is there a parallel with people who put on a brave face on social media, leaving out the difficult parts of their lives?
Sam: “I've become much more open in recent years. I think I was always a relatively open book, but since my transition I feel a much stronger need to say things as they are. I have a lot less patience now for things like family secrets, leaving things unspoken, not daring to name the elephant in the room. I want to live more openly and share what's hard about it. Even though I don't have personal experience with it, I find it incredibly admirable when people can talk openly about depression. It's still a taboo, even though it's everywhere and so many people struggle with it. It helps when people dare to talk about something, and I want to be one of those people.”

How do you protect your boundaries, both in your YouTube vlogs and in interviews, when it comes to your personal life?
Reinout: “The two are connected anyway. Who you are is in the lyrics you write, and Sam's transition is part of that. It's almost impossible to separate them.”
Sam: “I also find it very natural and normal that it's being talked about now, and that it coincides with the release of the record. It comes up in the lyrics too, so it would be strange to stay silent about it. We haven't drawn a clear line about what is and isn't allowed.”

You've been in the music business for a long time. What has changed over the years?
Wim: “On Instagram we sometimes get messages from people sending something like 'cool, what you're doing!' You think: I don't really know you, but that's nice. [laughs] That didn't happen before.”
Sam: “People get a glimpse into your private life so much more easily now. And at the label, there's no money for anything anymore. At the start of K's Choice we could spend five weeks recording in Peter Gabriel's studio [British singer and musician, ed.], those days are really over. Back then, record labels also interfered with the music itself so much more, probably because they felt they had the right to. That wasn't the case this time. We made 100 percent our own record, and label V2 said: we want to put this out.”
Reinout: “I don't think it would have worked if they had interfered with the music.”

The Flemish band Hooverphonic was supposed to represent Belgium at the Eurovision Song Contest this year. Does that open a door for you to consider participating?
Sam: “In recent years, bigger names have been taking part. I think that does increase the credibility of Eurovision.”
Reinout: “It would certainly generate an enormous amount of exposure.”
Wim: “I'd really have to think hard about it. Coincidentally, we played in Tel Aviv earlier this year with K's Choice, and Hooverphonic performed there too. Afterwards we went for a drink, and I talked to their drummer. He told me a few things that made me think: this is not for us. That they're not allowed to play their song live during the shows, for example. I find that genuinely unfortunate. Only the vocals can be live, everything else is on tape.”
Reinout: “Oh, then I'm not so sure anymore.”
Wim: “And you can only have a set number of people on stage, there are often people singing along behind the stage. I understand it can be great publicity because millions of people see you. But my musician's heart hesitates.”
Sam: “Then I'd hesitate too. But if you participate and afterwards you can play all over Europe because millions of people know you...”
Reinout: “Luckily there are three of us, so there is always someone who has the deciding vote! We should talk about it again.”

You've been playing together for years as part of K's Choice. Are those first shows as Rex Rebel still nerve-wracking?
Reinout: “Actually downright terrifying. There are so many uncertainties and factors we didn't have before. This album is much more electronic, which means we also need laptops. If a laptop fails, we have a real problem.”
Sam: “It's new material, but it has to be good right away. We're not a group of beginners in their twenties who practiced in a garage and are now slowly playing small venues and trying things out. We're immediately performing at a sold-out Paradiso and Ancienne Belgique. It has to be finished from the very first concert. We can't ease into it.”
Wim: “The audience really expects something when they come to watch. We can't slowly get used to the new material.”
Sam: “With K's Choice, we know exactly which song will have which effect in a venue, when people will spontaneously start clapping or singing along. With this new material, we still have to discover all of that.”

Will any K's Choice classics show up during the concerts, in a more electronic Rex Rebel style?
Sam: “No, we're leaving out all the old K's Choice material. I think the new music is different enough that people won't expect it anyway.”
Reinout: “It would feel strange, it really wouldn't fit. We don't even have a guitar in the car for the Rex Rebel shows, so it genuinely wouldn't be possible.”

What listeners will notice when they play Run is that Sam's voice hasn't really changed after his transition.
Sam: “Run was fully recorded before I even thought about my transition. So no hormones were involved at that time. I think my speaking voice has lowered a little since then, but when I sing, it has changed very little. If we were recording the album now, I honestly don't know whether it would sound different. Maybe it'll still come.”

Does that cause stress?
Sam: “Yes, quite a bit. I was worried my voice might suddenly change right before our first show at Paradiso, at a point where it would be too late to adjust anything. Imagine if I'd suddenly sounded like I was going through puberty, my voice cracking all the time. Fortunately I didn't have any issues during the first concerts. I don't think about it every day, but it's there in the back of my mind. I have no control over it, so I try to let it go. We'll see how my voice evolves.”

The vocals on the album often sound somewhat distorted, or are enhanced with a vocoder. Was that done to anticipate this?
Reinout: “No, that's more of an artistic choice. We distorted a lot of sounds and added effects. Purely to make the whole thing sound the way we wanted.”
Sam: “Maybe our use of effects and vocal distortion will end up helping us too. If my voice does change, we can work with that in a way that fits our musical style. That would be less easy within the K's Choice style.”

You've already achieved so much with K's Choice over the years. Do you have a sense of which milestone you'd most like to reach with Rex Rebel?
Sam: “Coachella!”
Reinout: “Yes, Coachella! Absolutely.”
Sam: “We'd love to play the Coachella festival in California. Not just because it's an amazing festival, but also because it would mean something is actually happening with our music in America. That we have an international career. We want to play everywhere, not just in the Netherlands and Flanders. We've found a manager in America who wants to represent us there, who is now in talks with American labels. It's a long shot, but we definitely want to try.”

The album 'Run' is now available on Bol.com!