Listen to Grasque, the new album from Choir of Young Believers

It's three years since the release of Rhine Gold and the gap between that record and Grasque was down to Choir of Young Believers main man Jannis Makrigiannis becoming disillusioned with conventional indie-alternative-rock music and subsequently going travelling to find new inspiration.

Armed with a pocket synthesiser he regained his passion for music after experiencing the clubs of South America, and returned home to Denmark to work on Grasque (also the original title for the project). The record is COYB's best work yet, a smooth dance-pop record which continues to showcase Makrigiannis's 80s influences but shot through with samples and beats taken from the Dane's new approach to the recording process. Best Fit recently spoke to Makrigiannis about Grasque, and you can read his thoughts below along with the chance to listen to our premiere stream of the album.

Hi Jannis, how are things, are you excited for the release of Grasque?

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long; the album’s been done for almost half a year!”

So what’s happened in the three years since Rhine Gold; I read that you turned your back on music for a while?

“I needed to clear my head and turn my back to it; it’s always been very passion-driven for me to play music and suddenly for some reason everything felt very stale. I didn’t think too much about it but luckily fairly quickly I found my passion and drive to listen and play and write music again…but with a very different approach. I guess you have to leave your old ways to find a new one.”

Was it the cycle that wore you down? The need to do all these things to please other people, to give them another guitar-based record?

“Yeah; you should just not give a fuck about other people and I feel that I don’t give a fuck about what other people think about the band. I’m doing this first and foremost for myself and my friends. I really enjoy that way of hanging out. But it does affect you, how other people hear the music…”

So what happened when you went travelling…did you find inspiration in new places and new people?

“One of things which really inspired me and made me think about my new approach to music was that I started going clubbing, checking raves. That’s where I discovered my passion again…I was so fucking fed up with guitar-driven rock, pop, alternative, indie, whatever. I found absolutely no inspiration whatsoever in that scene where I came from. I spent a couple of months in Buenos Aires, Argentina and when you go travelling you often find yourself in situations you wouldn’t find yourself in back home. It seems more exotic to do all kinds of things you never would do normally….it helped me open up.”

What was it about the raves which inspired you?

“I went to some nice raves and I really enjoy that way of listening and involving yourself in the music. When you go to a big rave it’s not about the DJ or one person or band of people giving you something and you stand and listen. It was this one big mass of people listening to, reacting to and enjoying the music.”

It feels more of a community sometimes, than your conventional rock show…

“Exactly! I found myself noticing that people take the music much more seriously at these clubs, it’d be 3am or 4am and they’d be totally sober – just dancing by themselves for a couple of hours and then they’d go home. I really liked that environment.”

The album does feel more physical than previous records, does that come from the clubbing experience?

“I wanted to make music which had more body or more physicality to it, and what I’ve tried to do – and in my opinion I’ve achieved – with this album was to make a dance pop record. Some of my friends have told me this is NOT a dance pop record but it’s the closest I could get to making one right now.”

So was the recording process different?

“Very much! But that was one of my ideas from the start; the first two albums we recorded very quickly in one studio with a set group of people. This time around the only two people who were there from the start to the end were me and my good friend and producer Aske Zidore. He’s now part of the band. This whole process has been a year and a half, from the first recordings to the final master…we spent a lot of time of it, recorded in six different studios and the process was totally different.”

Your mother gave you a pocket sampler as a gift; is that where the bones of Grasque are found?

“Yeah some of the tracks, but mostly the new-found way of making music came from that. I’ve always been very much into song writing, and that’s where things always started for me…on the piano or the guitar. But on this trip to Buenos Aires I took this pocket sampler; I’d had it for a year and never really used it because I’m not that good with techniques but I brought it on the trip. I fiddled around with it but I didn’t really write songs. It was more like looping weird samples or making soundscapes. Some of those ideas ended up on the record, but for me it was important because I was fed up with guitar and piano. Every time I looked at it reminded me it was the same old patterns, the way I moved my hands…it was boring!”

Did the new processes create a more positive atmosphere in the studio?

“I told Aske this and he laughed because we always had these small fights during the recording of Rhine Gold where he would push me to try something new and I was a bit too afraid or whatever to totally let go…so he was very excited to get started. In the first session we made ‘Grasque’ – in one night! Just by improvising together. That was the real starting point.”

Some of the songs stretch over quite a time…is that as a result of the new approach?

“Yeah, but that’s gonna be my next dogma – to write short songs. The length is obvious on the record…some of them are eight, nine minutes long. So next time I’m gonna make songs two minutes long.”

The album title is Danish for “Greek”…

“Sort of. It’s a different way of spelling it but that’s where it comes from. It was more of an inside joke…”

But it was also going to be the title for the project?

“It was the new band name when me and Aske started recording these things. I remember when we released the first album back in 2008 I had this idea that I wanted to make a sort of classical choir EP. It never happened and the years went by, we toured and then we made Rhine Gold which is very much a band record. I’d wanted to record what we had learned on tour and how we came to play after that time….and for some reason the choir record never happened. I really, really like these two albums that I’ve done, but in my head Choir of Young Believers has always been so much more. This is why I went from not making a new project called Grasque and instead putting it under the name Choir of Young Believers – why change the name…I’ve always wanted it to be a lot of different things and if people don’t follow that then so what. When I had to find an album title, it was important to give these twelve songs a title which made it into one package. They reference each other in the music and the lyrics and samples. These songs are a weird, abstract diary of my last two or three years.”

Are you already thinking ahead to the next version of Choir of Young Believers?

“We already have a lot of new ideas and a new direction to go. We’re planning to record very soon.”

Grasque is out 19 February via Ghostly International.