A Look Back On 2017: Music

2017 is nearly done, so we thought we’d take a look back on some of the stuff we’ve done this year. Here’s a run-through all the music interviews (there’s a LOT) we did in 2017.

ANTI PONY

The blue hour is something that happens every afternoon when the light is pale blue, right before the sun sets. I don’t know how to explain it, but the meaning of it is that everyone turns blue, and feels a bit sad, during the blue hour. As if all the emotions you’ve been trying to hide all of a sudden takes you over. And I wrote the lyric one afternoon in the blue light, that’s how I came up with that sentence.

EASE

It’s that idea of the metropolis, you have some romantic image of it. I think that it might also be the time of year. When we wrote the lyrics for Latest Aches it was the summer, and we were talking a lot about the city in the summer, it’s really hot and you can only go out in the evenings and you get this anxiety. Add some heartbreak to that…

CHERISH

Evelina Åslin & Senait Tesfai. Photo: Austin Maloney

I think it’s when the song talks to us in a certain way and if we just really like the track. There’s been a few that we rejected, not many, since we’re a new label, but that was because we felt that it wasn’t our style of music. Obviously, our taste comes into it. So it’s subjective, it’s not that the things we reject are necessarily bad. And when rejecting, sometimes we ask them to keep sending us stuff in the future. So far many of the songs we’ve gotten we’ve loved when they were sent to us

YEMI

I think in some ways it’s something I’m naturally going to progress away from. But also, to me it’s not just the title of the album, it’s a concept that a lot of my work is based on. So I feel like there will still be a piece of Neostockholm in whatever I make.

SHITKID

I had to record the vocals for two of the new songs in my car, because I live with people, and I really hate it if people can hear me when I’m recording from scratch. So I recorded them in a car park

PALE HONEY

I still feel it’s important to keep that minimalistic touch. I really don’t like when there’s too much [happening in a song]. I think that silence is a good instrument as well. It can do so much

FATHER JOHN MISTY

It didn’t really have any meaningful effect on my life [for a long time], and now it’s reached a bizarre critical mass. And now it’s like that line: At some point you just can’t control what people use your fake name for. Now I’m like a meme, and people can do whatever they want with it. They can make me say whatever they want. And they can make me symbolic of whatever they want me to be symbolic of

MARLENE

One of my favourite tracks on the EP is actually No Other Place, which I wrote and produced myself. All the time I had this picture in my head of me dancing very slowly with someone in this red-lit, dark room

LINN KOCH-EMMERY

I guess that’s also my sound, I like it when it’s really simple, and I think that it’s simple stuff that can be the most catchy, it gets repetitive in your brain, it’s easy for your mind to get that.

GRIZZLY BEAR

I think at this age, where we are as a band and also as just men, I feel like the band has a voice and we can just develop that. So instead of saying ‘let’s move into electronic pop’ or whatever, we can work on that [the voice] and see where that can take us.

MIRA AASMA

I think I process the darker parts of my mind through stories and tales. It comes from somewhere inside me, I’ve always been fascinated by supernatural things. When I was small I was really into UFOs and the Lough Ness monster. Those were the most exciting things for me.

STEVE BUSCEMI’S DREAMY EYES

There’s a sense of hope in the songs. You go through shit emotionally several times in your life, but there’s some ray of hope that keeps you motivated. You can see that in our poppy elements.

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