Kings of Convenience – Interview – October 2009 [PART TWO]
By: Samuel Smith
RFB: Where was most of the album written?
EGB: The songs were written in different places. The typical situation was a sound check somewhere; one song was written in a venue in Düsseldorf; another song came up in the town of Bari, in Italy; another was born in Liverpool. Usually being away from home is good for writing.
RFB: I guess the old adage that no-one writes when they feel absolutely settled is true, so completely unsettling yourself and everything around you helps the process on. There’s a track on your new album called ‘Riot on an Empty Street’ which was the title of the last album. How did that come about?
EGB: Guess…
RFB: …You wrote it back then and didn’t want to use it for the album?
EGB: Yes. [laughs] You didn’t have to ask the question!
RFB: Was it a re-recording or a complete re-write that got it on the album?
EGB: We tried to record it five years ago and didn’t manage. I mean we weren’t happy with it, the song was better than the recording, so then we re-recorded it and found that we nailed it.
RFB: The new album is swathed in reverb, the entire thing just swells with it.
EGB: [laughing] There’s not that much reverb! There were some songs where we have been inspired by our sound as a live band. We have used the same sound engineer for the last eight years, and he absolutely loves reverb. he would just [makes noise of gale blowing through a concert hall]. We’ve started to feel like that’s our sound, making those sounds on a soundcheck, it’s just like, those are the sounds that I need. So in a way it’s like, within our very limited space – two guitars – that’s one of the directions you can go in. And I love the sound, it just makes the guitar, which is a very down to earth instrument…but with that reverb it gives it a little bit of this ethereal quality.
RFB: I know one of you plays classical and the other steel strung guitars, which way round is it?
EGB: I’m usually the classical guitar player but there are three songs on this album where…
RFB: …you swap over?
EGB: …well, I play both actually [laughs].
RFB: How did you come to play classical, were you trained?
EGB: Well, I had two guitar lessons. Two or three for a few weeks when I was 17 when I had a teacher. I’m self taught.
RFB: Well, you’ve done well out of it.
[He chuckles]
RFB: As to your musical influences, there’s a strong Bossa Nova sway to your music, and on this album there’s a track called ‘Scars on Land’ which has this swaying emphasis on the first and third beat, it physically rocks you as you listen. How much are you influenced by rhythmic form?
EGB: Interesting you mention that song, because there was one guy I met in New York a few weeks ago who told me that he’d made a freestyle rap over that track, to him it seemed like a rap groove. I don’t know what kind of groove that was inspired by, to me it sounds a little bit trip-hoppy [hums song and rocks back and forth] it’s quite primitive, quite tribal in a way. My idea of guitar playing has always been that guitar is a percussion instrument as well as a melodic instrument.
RFB: Do you listen to much Spanish guitar playing…
EGB: No, not really. I find that I prefer listening to stuff where I don’t feel like a competitor, there’s something about listening to similar stuff which makes you feel like you’re at work – you’re always thinking, ‘hey, how did they do this?’, ‘I need to know how I can do this’, I don’t like getting those ideas while I’m listening to music.
RFB: What are you listening to at the moment?
EGB: To be honest, when I’m tour or when I’m recording an album I listen to very little music, because when there’s an hour free of our day we really need to rest. It’s really not the right...if you were to ask me one year from now, or two years from now I would be able to give you a meaningful answer, but now the answer is nothing.
RFB: On the musician front, you’ve got Bart Davenport, who is quite a good friend of yours, supporting you on your Scandinavian dates. Did you have much control over who’s on the bill?
EGB: It’s always our choice actually. Usually we don’t have a support act, but if there’s someone we know who says ‘please can we support you’…you know. Bart Davenport is very similar to us, but he’s more of a Californian person…
RFB: Very much so…
EGB: [laughs] Yes, very much so.
RFB: The artwork for your new album sets a very strong aesthetic tone for how the album is going to be, how important is both the aural and visual aesthetic to you?
EGB: When we chose the album cover we wanted a picture that seemed real. When we finished recording this spring we hired a photographer and took a lot of pictures around in Bergen, of us in beautiful places, then realised that all of the pictures seemed like we were trying to make an album cover, and somehow that’s not what this album is, this album is a very natural thing. So we ended up using this old – well, not old – this photo from two years ago when we were on holiday in Mexico, a week when we started presenting each other our new ideas for new songs, and it just summed up the whole album. It’s a very natural thing, just a holiday snapshot taken by a friend who happens to be a photographer. We were there at her house on this beach, so when she took this holiday snapshot – it’s like a super high quality holiday snapshot – It wasn’t contrived at all, just of a moment.
RFB: How involved are you in the process of releasing singles?
EGB: Singles? I don’t even know what that means now actually. It’s not physically released as a single…we basically made the album, gave it to the record company and the record company says ‘ok, now we’re going to put out some singles and have them played on the radio’. We didn’t have any say over that. They chose different songs in different countries. In Italy it’s ‘Mrs Cold’.
RFB: I think it’s the single over here as well…
EGB: No, I think it’s ‘Boat Behind’ actually [shrugs]. I’m not sure singles really mean anything for bands like us, if it’s not played much on the radio you wouldn’t notice which songs were singles and which songs weren’t.
RFB: You guys seem quite opposed to publicising yourselves; on your MySpace you had a bit of a rant about people stealing music and another quite funny note about professional photographers at gigs ruining the sound for others there with their noisy cameras. It seems that you’d be quite happy just making music without having to become tangled up in the promotion machine…
EGB: It feels strange because making the music is so hard, it takes an enormous effort, and you spend years and years making an album and finishing it then being left with the expectation that ‘Ok, now the work starts’, as if we hadn’t already climbed Mount Everest already. It seems like many people don’t realise the amount of work we put into recording this album.
RFB: How long did it take to come to the final decision of which songs made it onto the album?
EGB: Some of these songs took four or five years throughout, from the first verse to the last verse took several years to arrive in my head. You need to have a lot of free time to be able to write songs in that way.
RFB: What do you tend to do in your time between albums other than writing?
EGB: Well, I have a family now, which takes up a lot of time, but I like sports – football, ski-ing, tennis, rock climbing…
RFB: Are you going to make some time to go skiing this year?
EGB: Yes. We’re touring now, then I’ll have the winter to just ski.
RFB: Whereabouts do you go to ski?
EGB: Well, Bergen is only 45 minutes drive from the nearest skiing resort, you can even do evening skiing, floodlight skiing….it’s absolutely fantastic, to live in a city and be able to drive to the slopes.
RFB: Are you going to raise your kid as a skiier?
EGB: It seems that most kids in Norway are raised as skiers [he chuckles]. So where did you grow up?
RFB: Myself? Essex, there’s very little snow there, even fewer mountains. There’s only one in actual fact.
EGB: So where do you go to ski?
RFB: Mainly in France, the French Alps...
[Eirik pulls a disapproving face]
EGB: It’s so weird, for me, snow is…it’s just there and then you go skiing, but I would never have though of flying to another country, but that’s how you have to do it if you’re in England.
RFB: When I was younger we used to drive there, at least 29 hours in a packed little car sharing the backseat with 2 others…
EGB: But it makes you appreciate it a bit more. To me that’s a bit like music – the way it was when you had to work, go to a record store, buy a record, you had to make a big effort to get your music, and then when you get it, it’s like ‘oh, I love this album’ and it felt like a real thing.
At this point the interview drifts back off into a lengthy discussion about the benefits of Nordic skiing vs downhill, football, Tom Waits, … etc.
Artists in this article: Kings Of Convenience