So, we were surfing the interweb one day and came across these dudes whose name apparently meant "The Land of Milk and Honey," they played music that ran the gamut of things we loved. They had awesome band photos, and they seemed to have a sunny demeanor. We wrote them an email...turns out, they live in Denmark. We shared a lot of common interests, and figured out that working together would be a good idea. So here it is, we've signed our first band from another continent. Their music: a revelation. Their future: bright. Hopefully they will be coming across the pond soon, to lay waste to all who cross their path.
Here are the Danes in their own words; questions by us / answers by them:
Where are you from?
We’re from Scandinavia - Denmark and Sweden. We all grew up in the provinces. Jeppe grew up very close to Copenhagen. Mike, Christian (they are twins) and Bjorn about 60 kilometers from Copenhagen. Niklas is from a small town in Sweden.
Where are you now (and why)?
We all live in Copenhagen now. Of 5.5 million people in Denmark 1.5 of them are living in Copenhagen. It’s the Scandinavian metropole and from here we can easily get to Stockholm, Oslo, northern Germany etc. Some of us are studying here.
In Copenhagen there’s a lot of different musical tendencies. The environment we have here is very important for us. The scene is very inspiring.
Why do you do what you do?
We create our music because we need to. This is our way of being. To be creative and expressive and hopefully we will keep on creating music like we do now.
What's your musical history?
As a band we’ve been together for about 5 years - even longer as friends. We’ve put out two records on our own label Honningmand Records and there’s more beautiful music to come from that label. We started out playing jazzy stuff picking inspiration from all over. The last couple of years have been like a journey for us. We are specializing the music and our inspiration comes from all over now! Our own voice in the music is clearer now (At least we hope so).
What have you been listening to/reading/watching lately?
Actually the 5 of us have about the same musical taste… That being we all like a lot of different stuff. We are all record collectors and buy quite a lot of records / cd´s.
Think these names are quite frequently on a lot of our cd-players: Animal Collective, Blonde Redhead, Coltrane, Nirvana, Peter Brötzmann, Boda Boda Duo, Sufjan Stevens, Hidden Cameras, John Cage, Ligeti, Charles Ives, Sonic Youth, Blur, Radiohead, Broken Social Scene, Paul Duncan, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine… Just to name a few.
Must admit that 4 out of 5 in Slaraffenland have read Da Vinci Code. Our reading habits are not that original…
What's next?
Hopefully we will come to the States again in order to promote Hometapes and our record on the label. We where stunned by the open minds receiving our music in October 2006 when we played a lot of shows in NYC. More of that to come.
We are currently working on the Hometapes album and it’s going to be great! Unlike our previous two records this one is going to have some vocals on it. That’s new for us. Also we are allowing ourselves to work longer on this record. We recorded the first two records (almost) live in the studio. Only a few overdubs. Now we bought recording equipment so that we can record it ourselves and be sure to get the very best take of a particular song.
