How are you, man?
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.
Where are you?
I'm at home in Gothenburg, Sweden. Born here and I've been living here all my life.
What got you excited about music when you were young?
There are some pictures of me with the big headphones listening to my parents' albums. Apparently I was into music pretty early. But it wasn't like a musical family only. There were some records my dad used to sing when he was younger and my mom liked music, but she was not that good at taking notes. I started playing guitar around 13. No one actually played that much at home at all, but the guitar was there, so I picked it up and started playing and that's when everything took off.
Were there certain records as you progressed through your teen years that really got you excited?
Yeah. So, the first record that me and my brother bought together was Break Machine [by Break Machine]. We were into breakdance and that was very poppy, breakdance music. I was seven, I think. But it wasn't until, I guess 13, 14, that's when I actually had my musical awakening in a way. Like being into both learning the acoustic guitar with The Beatles and bossa nova on one hand with my dad, and also starting to play in bands. Playing bass and at first with a couple of punk bands. The stuff that we were into was Misfits, Black Flag. I was never a record collector, but I would go to my friend's house and I would have tapes. I listened lots to Dead Kennedys. And then there was skateboarding… Dinosaur Jr. was a big influence. Me and our friends got into hardcore. So, it was like going from punk to metal hardcore. Our first seven inch was in ‘93 with a band called Renaissance, and it sounds pretty rough. [laughter] We did that recording with one of my sound engineers that had been recording with Junip and that I played live with.
That might surprise a lot of people to hear that was your path into music, because what you're doing now is just not anything like that. Junip has some of that feeling to it, but actually reminds me so much more of CAN and Neu! with the incessant grooves and the meditative, longer songs, and the way things progress is just very different than hardcore and punk.
Yeah, there was a transition from the loud music to a very soft music. And so late ‘90s, especially me and Elias, the drummer in Junip, we got into Songs: Ohia, Cat Power, and all these post-rock bands. So sometimes loud, and sometimes very suggestive and mellow. I think that was what propelled me into the combination of influences that led to my first album. Having the influences from home, Latin American music and Paul Simon, and later Nick Drake and Elliott Smith [Tape Op #4]. But then having these other styles that were a bit more moody and that had a bit of darkness to them that I felt was interesting to explore.
You've always helmed the recording process for yourself. I read that you pirated some software, and had some cheap gear when you made Veneer.
Yeah. I have to mention Don Alsterberg. He was the one who used to record many of the hardcore bands. Nowadays he's well known for recording Refused and Graveyard and these Swedish rock bands. Back then I asked him for tips how to record. I had my 4-track cassette tape recorder, and he helped me to record in a way where you have the EQ in a certain way, so you don't get too much hiss. He got super excited by the first two tracks when I recorded “Hints” and “Deadweight” on Velveteen, and then put out my first 7-inch in 2001. He was very excited that you could hear the tape compression, even though it was a very lo-fi recording. So since then, it's been one of my go-to things; to think lo-fi, even though many of the recordings have been just mic’ed straight into the computer. The first two tracks were on the tape, but then for the rest of the album, I was recording through tube amplifiers to get that initial distortion, the one that it's difficult to get rid of later. So, you sort of commit. [laughter] And then the guy who mixed the first album, was around the time that you got these reverb emulators, so you could get pretty nice sounding reverbs that sounded like real rooms and impulse reverbs. It's been part of my aesthetic ambition to make it sound not necessarily lo-fi, but to have character, and not go for a clean sound. So therefore, I like some distortion, and I like to use my voice for dubbing to get a bit more variation.
I was going to ask you about the distortion, because there's quite a bit of it on all the records.
Yeah, it's something that I at the start commit to. On this album, I decided to go back to how I used to record my albums, because I skipped that first tube amplifier on some records, and I felt like, no, I need to go back to that. It also functions as a limiter, so you commit to the distortion and you commit to getting a pretty… It sounds pretty done, if you have that. But then the choices come later when I start mixing. On this album, I decided to have a stereo mic on all the time. I have my [Neumann] U 67, where I can do vocals and guitar at the same time. So, I did that for many tracks. And just like 30 centimeters behind, I have my stereo mic, so U 67 and [Neumann] SM 69, both with tubes. The U 67 goes through a tube amplifier, the ART Tube MP Project Series. By having that setup, and also a [Shure SM]57 by the foot, so I can get my foot tapping, I can play very soft, and I just put the mic closer to my face, or play very loud and just mix later with a stereo mic. So, it was a good way to capture the dynamics. I think that was one of the new things that I sort of feel like I got it. I was able to capture the dynamics of especially “A Perfect Storm,” which has this start that is pretty mellow the way I play, but the end is very, very loud. By having the stereo mic a bit further away, I could capture that. Maybe I can talk to you about the saturation and distortion, because there's so many things to say there.
The saturation and distortion is an element that has become like a new instrument in a way. It's a layer of dynamics that happens within the music.
Yeah, I mean, for me, coming from a punk and hardcore background, I feel like I can't only do songs that sound nice. So there needs to be a bit of tension somewhere. In “Heartbeats”, it's that slight distortion towards the third, fourth part of the song. So, you have that golden ratio where you have something that happens towards the later part of the song. That's been a guideline for me, like how to push the demo so it becomes not only good sounding or nice sounding, but to make it interesting. That's where I try to push in different directions, but it's always on a subtle level. So, there's always bringing people back to safety in one or other way. Because it's partly my persona, but also having a bit of trying to use the ear of the listener once in a while. And so, I never push into sort of noise category or into very loud and disturbing category. It's always in the safe zone. But once in a while, just to have a bit of tension. One of the things on this album was to use echo for that. The “Losing Game (Sick)” was a track that sounded good, but it was too monotonous. It needed some more variations. From the start, I knew I was going to use echo on one or two songs, because we did that live and felt like this is an element that needs to be there, like the sound engineers doing the dub part. So, I did that with “Losing Game.” That was really fun to do with the [Universal Audio] EP-34 [Tape Echo] plugin, and just mixing and doing a couple of takes, and I couldn't choose, so I ended up choosing two, and panning them right and left. So that's why you get the sweeping.
If you just parachute it in very quickly to some of your records, it could be perceived as “nice sounding” or “nice music.” But the lyrics, especially on this new record, are very current, and topical about what's going on in the world and the state of things.
Yeah, I've been doing this for a while now, and I have a couple of songs on each album, where I'm pushing things, talking or mentioning stuff that can be provocative, depending on your worldview. But on this album, it's clearer than ever that I'm being a bit more open, more direct, especially if you read the translations. There's one song where I was inspired by murder ballads. One time I was thinking I was going to make a whole album of these type of songs where you have historical events, and you write just in a Bob Dylan-type of way, just write lots of describing lyrics. But I ended up with one song, So “U / Rawls Slöja” is in Swedish, and I have four verses with four different stories from reality, all of them disturbing in different ways. There's a fifth verse where you have someone who's a moral relativist, someone who says that you can't criticize other cultures. So that person starts doing mental gymnastics, and is able to land the conclusion that is basically impossible to land.
Where did you record Against The Dying of the Light?
Yeah, so it's recorded in my studio. My studio is just 20 minutes from home, and it’s basically just a soundproof room in wooden plywood. Very nice sounding, and there's no speakers. I don't actually think of it as a studio. It's more like a soundproof room where I have my mics set up. I can take recordings from two different days, edit them and they sound very similar. Because also the tube amplifier, I've been recording with the same gain on it, so it's been very easy to record this time. Sometimes difficult to mix because of phase problems… I call it Studio Koltrast Guldheden, which means blackbird in Swedish.
And are you working alone or do you have someone there with you?
Yeah, by now it's what I do. I record on my own, and I think that adds to the “mid-fi.” It's a term I use, the “mid-fi” sound.
How do you maintain some perspective on what you're doing if you’re not collaborating?
By now I have some tricks. So, one is to...when I'm recording, I don't push myself more than three to five recordings per session. I do one in the morning, then I have a break, and then I do another one. I also have my listening tricks. One is to be outdoors, listening while running, and the other one is listening while on a very low volume, while doing dishes. To get different perspectives, you need to be in different mind spaces. But the thing with collaborations is that I've always noticed that it's always a compromise, and that's for good or for bad. For me, it's been, to be honest, more bad when it comes to my guitar and vocals, because there's so many minimal decisions to be made. So, when I've been working with someone, it switches really quickly to production instead of just getting the details of the guitar, getting the details of the vocals. So yeah, it's a matter of being stubborn, and being true to my initial sound. I acknowledge that it is for good or bad, but my way to look at it is I start on my own, and I try to do it as good as possible for my ears. Later I get the opportunity to go out and do versions of the songs with a band, with a five-piece band, with harmonies and more percussion. And we did some versions with the orchestra. That's when you get to sort of push the same songs, but in totally different directions sometimes, and that's amazing. Those collaborations I really look forward to.
