Escape The Internet is the crafty name of the project of Bernth, Charles Berthoud and Ola Englund, two guitarists in Bernth and Ola and a bass player in Charles, who’ve made their name as YouTube musicians, inspiring and educating players all over the planet for years now.
Initially escaping the internet into a European tour, two thirds of Escape The Internet will be arriving in Australia in October for three shows with proggy, metal wunderkinds The Omnific in tow.
We caught up with Bernth and Charles ahead of the tour and we start by chatting about how performing on stages for fans differs from their videos on YouTube.
“It’s a very interesting experience,” begins Charles. “Especially since— yeah we’ve both played in bands in the past— but it’s a little different when you go through a period of doing a lot of online stuff, you write a lot of music and you make a lot of videos that you put online, and then you’ve got to play all of those songs that you’ve never played live.”
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With a chuckle, Charles also says he hopes that he can play them.
“Anytime you play a new song live, it’s a bit of a raw feeling!” he explains. Continuing to say that they did a few warm-up shows, the hammer finally dropping with how capable they really were.
The caveat was that, as YouTubers, they’re also entertainers, so they wanted to make sure they bring the humour and entertainment from their channels to the live shows as well.
“It’s not a case of just playing the songs one-by-one with nothing else inbetween.” he concludes.
Bernth’s story is a little different, having worked extensively as a session guitarist and very well versed in live performance.
“I started my YouTube channel much later,” he explains. “So I’ve been a session musician and a hired gun for much longer than I had the channel on YouTube.”
He explains further, that despite having had success as a session musician, he’s playing other people’s songs, exactly as instructed, and Escape The Internet allows him to express himself with his own music.
“It’s much, much more special.” he grins. “People actually know who we are, and you can tell people know the songs.”
Switching to focus on gear, Charles explains that the Australian tour follows a Chinese and Korean tour, all with his Neural DSP Quad Cortex.
“That’s obviously much easier when you’ve got flights involved.” he explains, though is quick to add that even at home and on YouTube he’s using the Cortex.
“It’s pretty great, I really love the sounds I can get out of the Quad Cortex, I usually have a pretty simple chain, one of the more modern amp models, some compression, some EQ, some reverb and then I add distortion for more metal songs. It’s nice to have it all in one package.”
This philosophy extended to their European tour, and while Charles used his Quad Cortex, Bernth used his Kemper.
“That’s still cutting-edge technology to me.” he jests. “People always remind me that it’s been around for quite a while now.”
He continues, explaining that he’s just got off a tour that had an Ableton operator and he didn’t have to worry about any patching or effect switching, establishing his dream to get Escape The Internet to that level of production.
“I like to use my modeller in a way that— I’m not just switching between effects, I’ve got six different amps per song, and actually switch between whole captures.” he says.
Both Bernth and Charles both use their modellers plugged straight into the PA, so there’s no amplification on stage. Tones aside, we shift to instruments.
“I have two basses [with me], I have a four and a six string.” begin Charles. “And Bernth designs the setlist in a way that I have to switch between them after pretty much every song.” he says with a wry smile.
Bernth laughs.
“Just to mess with me.” Charles adds.
“When I went on my very first solo tour, which was the big experiment to see if the people that consume the videos online actually come out, I made the mistake of [touring] with almost ten guitars.” explains Bernth. “Like an 8-string, 7-string, different 6-string guitars and more crazy, experimental guitars.”
“And I didn’t have a guitar tech,” he’s quick to add. “I’m never doing that again, it was a true nightmare.”
Bernth continues, explaining that he went to another extreme for the last tour for Escape The Internet, where he arranged everything for one guitar, getting hooked on that idea. While it’s more demanding on the instrument, it removes the variable of fumbling on a dark stage during a guitar changeover.
Cheekily, I ask about future plans for Escape The Internet.
The guys laugh before Charles dives in.
“Yeah, we want to keep doing this, like this is a band but it’s also a concept where we want to help other online musicians escape the internet, basically.” he says. “So we’re aiming to do this with a rotating lineup.”
“We want to get this to a bigger and bigger production so we can get some pyro involved. That’s really the main goal.”
You can help Escape the Internet reach this goal by attending their shows in Brisbane at The Tivoli on Friday October 31, at Northcote Theatre in Melbourne on Saturday November 1 and The Metro, Sydney on Sunday November 2. Tickets available now from The Phoenix.
