How does it feel to finally have Pretend out?
It feels incredible. It took a little while for me to make it. Equal parts happy to be done and happy for people to listen to the whole body of work, since it came out in fragments before. It took three good years and lots of up and downs and intersections of places in life to finish the record. We were both happy that we are done.
Read more here.
A lot of your videos have a very cinematic vision, much like the songs. Do you visualize the music and the videos while you are making them?
I’m not very visual in that sense. I always give the song to someone who I know and I like his or her stuff. The only things I knew about the last video was that I wanted to dance. The other videos have been collaborations where I go to the director and present something, I don’t really give them anything except if I want to be in it or not (laughs). I’ve worked with Magnus Renfors many times here in Stockholm, who always comes with crazy ideas that he always makes happen.
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Dolores Haze, The Haze is Forever
So give us a little background on the band. How did you guys meet and evolve into Dolores Haze?
Nicki (Groovy Nickz, vocal/ bass): I met Tyra, Groovy Fuck, at a party in the spring of 2012, so about three years ago. I had a band already, with another girl, but she didn’t really like playing in a band that much, so I needed a new band. And then I met Tyra. And she told me she had a guitar, so I said ‘You can join my band!’. So she joined, we had another girl who played drums, and we just started jamming together. Playing Nirvana covers, things like that. It didn’t quite work out with the other girl, she dropped out a few months after.
Tyra (Groovy Fuck, guitar) : Then we needed a drummer, so we printed out ads, y’know ‘Drummer Wanted’, and we put them up all over Stockholm.
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Okay, so first of all give us a little background. Who is De Montevert and how did you start off as a musician?
My name is Ellinor, and I’m De Montevert. De Montevert is a very personal and transparent project that I’ve been working on for seven years now. It started when I was 19 and studying sound engineering and music production at a college in Sweden. I have been writing songs since I was 15 but it wasn’t until then I began to write more elaborate songs with electronic influences. I am a classically trained cellist and I have always been engaged in choirs and similar activities, so music has always come very natural to me. But at the age of 19, and in college, I found my peers. We wrote and played together and eventually all of us branded out and started our own solo projects. And since then I’ve been active as De Montevert.
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When you guys are writing songs, how does that process happen. Does someone come up with an idea and bring it to the whole band, and work it out like that?
Arvid: Usually one of us will have an idea, and bring it to the band, and from then on it’ll become totally different.
Michell: We do most of the creation together. Say, if I come with an idea and say ‘I have this’. Then we’ll all start playing and connect up, and in the end the song is created by everybody. But always one of us will come with an idea. Carlos will have an idea, or Maikel will come with an idea, or Arvid. So that’s the process. Someone has an idea, they present it, and if it feels good we’ll all keeping on playing with it. If it doesn’t work out we don’t
Maikel: I think the fun of it is that we never know how it’ll turn out. If I bring, for example, a bass line to the band, I never know what the final song will sound like. You just have an idea, and it’s fun to see how it will end up when we all contribute to it. That’s the fun part of the band I think. It’s not like you come (to the band) with 100% of a song, you have no clue what the final song will sound like once the others add to it.
Read more here.
