My blog became the official media partner of the 5NDREAS Festival and my task is to fill in the remaining 4 weeks of wait with something interesting. And what could be more interesting than reading about the bands that are about to play on the stage at Feierwerk Kranhalle in Munich? Yeah? It's time for the 3rd one today.
It's not enough to say that they mix post-rock with (neo)classical music, they literally make the former as if it was the latter. Star of Heaven finally released their third album this year and Kyrie is more than inspired by Mozart's works. Not only that, their compositions are so beautiful, so striking, that they should be played in concert halls. It's our luck that we'll hear them on a post-rock festival.
I talked with Anna, Tove and Rasmus, 3/5 of the lineup. And although some of the Scandinavian reserved nature was clearly noticeable, we had a great conversation in the end. Thank you, guys!
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ŁŚ: When I listen to your sound, I feel like it comes from two different worlds, from the world of neoclassical music and from the world of post-rock music. Do you think that there is a connection between those two?
Anna Löfstrand: There is a connection. When I was young, I listened to classical music a lot. Then I started to listen to post-rock and after a while, I was like, “Oh! It's not such a big difference!”. They're similarly atmospheric and dynamic. I really like to listen for the post-rock elements in classical music, if you know what I mean.
Rasmus Grip: I totally agree and I wish that we could learn more from classical music as one of the things I find boring with most music is that it repeats itself all the time. And the classical one doesn't really do that in the same way. From what I understand of its principles, it's mostly about variations of the same theme, playing it in a different way, sometimes stronger, sometimes faster, changing the tonality and so on. It’s also repetitions, but slightly different.
Tove Rhodiner: Both give more freedom as well. You can make a song go for 20 minutes or 3 minutes as well, while regular pop music is always around 4 minutes. We also do that thing that you said, Rasmus, that we have a theme, but we kind of reuse it in various places and with various approaches. That makes it more interesting because every time time you hear it, you think of it in a new way.
ŁŚ: Would you say that you are more like neoclassical post-rock or more like post-rock neoclassical? What's the more dominant world of music in your work?
AL: For me, it's post-rock. And this classical part is something that comes to us on its own, we didn't choose it to be our thing, we just started to make post-rock and it came to us.
RG: On the topic of classical music, perhaps we can add that our last release is very much inspired by this genre. What we did was we took the Great Mass, a mass written by Mozart, and chose one composition from it, called Kyrie. We slowed it down like maybe four times and then we tried to copy the dynamics of the result of the whole process. So let's say that the song is five minutes long. Then we slowed it down so it's 70 minutes long instead. And then we tried to follow the dynamics of the song. So when it's loud, we would be loud. And if it's bass and, let's say piccolo flute, then we tried to play bass and something that reminded us of a piccolo flute. So in that sense it's very, very much inspired by classical music.
Some of us like Arvo Pärt (Estonian composer - author’s note) as well, so we try to understand a bit how he does what he does.
ŁŚ: I wanted to ask you about those inspirations. Who inspires you the most? Except for Mozart, but we'll come back to Kyrie in a second.
RG: That's the funny thing about this band, everyone has different inspirations. Really, the favorite band of one of us may be a band someone else hates. And so on. So we have really opposing views, but me and Linus (Hjerpe, guitarist in Star of Heaven - author’s note), we listened mostly to metal music in our younger years. When I was growing up, Scandinavian black metal was a very big thing here in Sweden.
ŁŚ: And you, Anna, you said you listen to classical music. I don't think you could have two more distant things, right? Black metal and classical music.
AL: I like so many different kinds of music. I like melodic music the most, but it could be any genre.
ŁŚ: Like Abba?
AL: Yeah, for example! But I also like black metal. And when music gives me these dark melodic vibes, I'm immediately sold. It's also very much about the chord progression and things like that.
TR: I, for example, don't really listen to post-rock at all. And it means that I don't really know what I'm aiming for when playing music. And I think maybe that's partially why our band sounds like it does. Like something different. Perhaps we're aiming for post-rock because that's the closest thing to what we imagine, but then it ends up being something different.
AL: I often want to create a darker song, but it just becomes what it becomes. It feels like we can’t really control that.
RG: And you don't really want to either. For instance, I like Sigur Rós very much, but I don't want to try to make Sigur Rós music because that would feel like a pale copy. You want to try to find your own little niche, something you've never heard before.
ŁŚ: From my experience, the best post-rock comes from people who are not necessarily interested in creating post-rock. They want to make something unique and then they somehow end up creating some kind of post-rock.
TR: I think that if we weren’t labeled post-rock, some of our songs wouldn’t be considered as part of this genre.
RG: Since we use a lot of crescendos and stuff like that, we’re automatically thrown into that genre. That’s my take at least.
ŁŚ: What is the characteristic of post-rock music that you value the most? I could see that in some descriptions you mentioned the cinematic feeling of your music as one of those, but also the emotional component.
RG: I want to make music that is worthy, if you understand what I mean. Something you don't have to be ashamed of when it comes to the emotional moments. So it never sounds like clown music. Not that there’s anything wrong with clown music, but you wouldn't play it at the funeral, or perhaps you would, but that would be a very different type of funeral.
Music that is worthy, well suited for the dark or but also for the happy moments.
ŁŚ: So we’re talking about emotions then. Is it easy for you to transform emotions you want to express into your music?
AL: Yeah, sometimes. I often feel like I want to express even more than we end up doing. I also easily become very happy when the music we make becomes something beautiful. I'm the one who is the most in love with our music. I'm our biggest fan (laughs).
Sometimes it's frustrating because you're looking for something that you can't really find. But at other times it's such a beautiful feeling just to sit there and play. And I think that's what I aim for, to just be in the middle of the emotions. Even if it sounds maybe a little bit cheesy.
TR: Coming back to your original question. I think describing our music as cinematic and emotional is more like an afterthought. It's not like we're always aiming for certain emotions, it just turns out this way in the end. And then I start thinking about our compositions with pictures. This one talks about this sort of scene. For example, we have a song that in my head feels like the last day of school. It’s not titled like that, there is no clue that this piece is about this theme. It just feels like it.
ŁŚ: Now I have to ask which one it is!
RG: It’s called number IV but it’s the third one on Kyrie. We have a song called III, but we haven’t added it to the album. It’s complicated.
ŁŚ: How long have you been playing together?
RG: 15 years?
AL: 12 maybe?
RG: This may interest you. When we started playing together, we wanted to make Swedish cover songs of Kino, the old Russian pop band. But it quickly spiraled out of control and became what you know now.
AL: Yeah, my father was from Russia. So when I was a teenager I felt connected to Russia and Russian culture. So I was working in Moscow for a few weeks and listened to Kino. And then I started to translate the lyrics and that’s how the whole idea of the cover band came about. Even now we have a track called Kino. I'm not ashamed of it, but last years changed a lot. I'm not so proud of my Russian side anymore. It's a little bit strange because, say, 20 years ago, it was something that made me unique in a cool way. So that's why maybe I feel uneasy about it now. And you are from Poland…
ŁŚ: No, don’t worry! I understand that there's politics and there are human beings.
RG: Swedes also conquered Poland, I believe. The good times. (laughs)
ŁŚ: Give us back those treasures you stole! (laughs)
RG: We've lost them. Sorry.
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| Swedish guests in Poland (1655) |
ŁŚ: There is one more connection to Poland in your works. You released a single track about Marie Curie-Skłodowska who was famously Polish. Why did you choose to honor this person in particular?
TR: It was a part of an art project where they had made graphics and texts based on famous people and then asked us if we wanted to make a song about someone. We chose her because I guess we all felt like she was the most interesting person.
ŁŚ: Her name Curie and your new album Kyrie sound so similar that it's almost impossible that it's just coincidence.
RG: It's unfortunate for us as well, because we have to really specify which song we mean.
AL: We are so confused every time we have to rehearse now.
TR: And the first album is also just a bunch of numbers. It's incredibly confusing, so we don't know which song we're thinking about.
RG: Yeah, we have nicknames for the songs so we are not lost all the time.
ŁŚ: Like The End of School Day song, right? Is there a reason why you don’t choose titles for your compositions? Or is it just something that you don't like doing?
TR: Maybe because you don't want to influence someone's experience of listening to our tracks with a lame title.
AL: What I like about instrumental music is that there are no words that tell you what to think or what to feel about a song. It's all in the listener's head.
ŁŚ: So, let's come to your new album, Kyrie. The first thing you published was actually the live album from a concert that you held in a church, and three years later, which is right now, you released the studio album. Was it planned or maybe it was a coincidence?
AL: It just happened. We had almost everything ready but some of us are really fixed on details. Perfectionists. And since we all have full-time jobs, it took time. At our concerts, we like playing songs before they are released and since we are not so famous no one gets angry because something's not available yet. We can do whatever we want.
So then our friend recorded this gig for us and it was a good recording. We wanted to release it also to say that we're still alive.
ŁŚ: I hope it doesn’t mean that we will have to wait another six years for the next album?
AL: No. Rasmus has a really good idea.
RG: So we have a new idea about how to record fast. Our major problem is that much of our time goes into relearning what we came up with before. Record fast instead of waiting one and a half years and then trying to rediscover how we did things.
TR: It's not only the production. When you're trying to recreate the feeling that you had when you played 3 years before, you have some sort of emotional picture of what you're trying to play again, but the feeling just isn't the same.
RG: I've heard this being called “the demo disease”. When you work too much on the demo, so then when you're supposed to record it for real, you are just constantly dissatisfied because it doesn't sound like the first version you did.
ŁŚ: With the new album finally released, you are coming to the 5NDREAS Festival in November. So can you tell us what we can expect from your performance at the festival?
AL: We’ve never played outside of Sweden. It will be fun!
RG: We're going to play our songs and try not to, you know, screw them up. We're not going to play Kyrie in its entirety or we're not going to play only old songs or whatever. It’s gonna be a mix. But we look forward to seeing the other bands play too.
AL: And we really hope that people will enjoy our concert and that they can feel all the feelings, so it's a special moment for them. That would be nice. 🦢
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Star of Heaven will perform at the 5NDREAS Festival on Saturday 28.11.
Save your ticket now (limited availability): https://rausgegangen.de/events/5ndreas-postrock-festival-0/
Check the event on FB: https://fb.me/e/8cyEexXaV
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