Your name is Uldis Dirnens and you live in Latvia, but at times it seems your life has already been experienced by thousands all over the world. Your first guitar is a wreck scavenged from underneath a tank and is fastened to a clothes hanger and filled with stones.
But suddenly it seems to you that something might have a purpose in this life. You might be living like so many others, but there are songs only you can write. And then you find yourself once again without a job, money, girlfriend or shelter – nothing to lose... And without much thought you apply for a phenomenally popular reality show on TV. When they ask for a nickname, for everyone has one, you say you'll be Detlef, like that guy from the teenage-heroin-junkie bestselling novel We, Children from Bahnhof Zoo set in Berlin in the 70’s. Now you have a roof above your head and a TV camera in your face, but you quickly realize that this is not your reality. You are back on the street, but you feel like leaving a prison. But the prison also teaches something – at least that your reality is your guitar and your band. And once again you are together with the guys.
2004 has just begun and your first radio single --etras Sienas (Four Walls) is at number one on radio SWH chart - the biggest radio in Latvia. And five weeks later it is still there... Damn, who would have believed all of this?! Next the going gets even rougher. The first mega hit Cetras sienas (Four Walls) is followed by the equally successful Stils nevainigs (Style Innocent), Blind Actor and The Time Has Come. Together with 9 other self-composed songs these make up the band's debut album Tu izliecies par sevi (You Pretend to be Yourself, 2004, MicRec). Many consider this album the most exciting example of Latvian guitar rock in many years.…
The second album was recorded in 2006./07 in London under the supervision of British producer and musician Andy Gill (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gang of Four, Futureheads etc.). Detlef Zoo has become more mature and professional as a band, but still has the same contemporary guitar-rock characteristics with influences ranging from the Beatles to Radiohead. The band admits that working with Andy has been a huge experience that has changed them and their music. But that still is the music that only Detlef Zoo can write.
Detlef is the best known band member to the general public ( friends still call him Uldis) but he would be the first to say that Detlef Zoo is a union of four equal friends and members. Martins Millers (bass) along with Detlef is a veteran in the band, having played there since the beginning. “The philosopher of Rhythm†Marks Ameriks (drums) attended a music school where he played percussions, later took part in the recording of the album “15 episodes of Kuba†by project –Kuba and he also took part in the recordings of Jana Zildes’ CD “Staviâ€. But Kaspars Ansons can be very grateful that he had been thrown out of piano and choir classes at children’s music school, because only then he discovered the guitar. Since then he has been a member of different punk bands and even in a big-band, but only in Detlef Zoo he feels like at home. So basically they are four who have no doubt that they can do what noone can. The proof is "If It Makes Us Happy".
