Efterklang Release the Ticker-Tape
Published 37 months ago
The peerless Danish band talk about their epic new album Parades.
Danish quintet Efterklang make a sort of apocalyptic orchestral pop, both moving and experimental. Their tremendous new album Parades mostly discards the electronic clicks and hums that characterised their 2004 debut Tripper, leaving not a crack in the icy grandeur of their songs. I spoke to vocalist and producer Casper Clausen.
Dazed Digital: What's changed for the band since Tripper?
Casper Clausen: First of all we've got lots of new inspiration, from working with other artists and musicians or simply by reflecting on other people's work. Also we have definitely become more aware about the concept of Efterklang and how to reach what we're searching for. We learned many things from making Tripper - experimenting with sounds and all sorts of instruments, and then afterwards playing it all live for new audiences. This time we have also had a bit more focus on the song writing - we wanted our songs to have more dynamics. We wanted the quiet parts to be quieter and especially the louder parts to be more apparent and better produced.
DD: Why is the album called Parades?
CC: We like to picture the album as a huge parade walking past the listener. Within this parade there're individual acts and smaller parades exposing them self and sliding in and out of each other.
DD: The album apparently has over 30 guest musicians. How did you find them all?
CC: Most of them are friends, or friends of friends. We meet lots of new people and especially musicians through the music, both recordings and concerts. It is extremely gifting and we like having guests, so that makes total sense to us.
DD: Why are you drawn to such glitchy sounds?
CC: When we started out doing music together, we didn't have that many instruments, but one of them was this CD player which had a really facinating skip function. So we simply recorded different instrument and burned it to a CDR, then put that into the CD player and recorded the skipping back into the computer. There's a good example of this sound in the intro to "Prey & Predator" from Tripper. We didn't use the CD player on Parades though...
DD: The main image I used to get from Tripper was of a terrible catastrophe that should have been prevented. Are there stories behind the music and lyrics on this new album?
CC: What an image! Well, we mostly use images to create a specific mood. Sometimes it's easier talk about the music and where it is heading, when we create an simple picture or scenario for it.
DD: What other Danish bands would you recommend that Dazed readers might not have heard of?
CC: Jab Mica och El, Slaraffenland, Le Fiasko, Our Broken Garden, Frederik Teige, Mit nye Band.
DD: Is Copenhagen a good place to be creative?
CC: Copenhagen is a nice city, but there's also lots of grey to give color.
DD: What are you reading?
CC: At the moment it's Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Parades is out now on the Leaf Label.
