Danish Inspiration: In conversation with When Saints Go Machine

“It still has the atmosphere of club music, and there are really small details and sounds that come from club music, but…it’s not an up-tempo, dance record – it’s more of a listening experience” responds When Saints Go Machine vocalist Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild when questioned about stylistic differences between their latest effort and their first album. Since its release at the beginning of June, Konkylie has received an array of hugely positive coverage, with fans and critics alike excited satisfied by the long awaited first full length release on British shores from the Danish four piece.

The band of childhood friends have been working together under the When Saints Go Machine moniker for four years. “I think our history is very important, but more important is that we all come from different musical backgrounds. That’s what makes our sound what it is” – their ‘sound’ being an enticing blend of synths, off-kilter tones, ambitious layering, pounding rhythms – all centred around a mesmerising, evocative vocal.

“We haven’t tried to produce any clever tricks or anything. Whatever’s on the album is what we were feeling at that moment. We were trying to explore our sound and whatever we were inspired by – mostly ourselves, actually, we were trying to inspire each other and trying to have fun while doing it. We’re inspired by the people that we talk to about music, and we’re inspired by the different stuff that we all make – talking to each other about music, playing stuff that we make to each other. Situations and experiences – that runs through you, and that’s in the music…it’s something that’s happening all the time. There’s a lot of stuff that we recorded outside , like there’s my younger brother doing the dishes. I’m not inspired by my brother doing the dishes, but you hear it through a microphone or your computer while you’re doing other stuff and you think ‘Oh, I like this sound!’. It’s something that’s intuitive, whatever happens in the process.”

Something which sets When Saints Go Machine apart from their peers is the manner in which they combine their technical abilities as producers with lyrics aching with sincerity, overflowing with tenderness – lyrics which are incredibly human. “It was important to me that all of the songs suit the lyrics. Some of the topics in the songs are really important to me, some things that I needed to write about, or get out. I wrote a lot before we started producing the stuff together so we had a lot of lyrics, choruses and a lot of topics that I was writing about at the time – we had the song with the voice at the centre, and then we created music around it.”

In 2009, the group released their debut album in their native Denmark, an album entitled Ten Makes A Face but an album which wasn’t destined to reach foreign shores in its LP format. The brilliant Fail Forever EP was later released to announce the group’s existence to overseas music fans, but in order to create an album as technically tailored as Konkylie, the band decided that time was a luxury worth exploiting.

“It took two years – I think that was the perfect time to make a record. You need to dig deep to find a direction and we would like to be able to reinvent ourselves every time we put something out. So we need time. I started writing [Konkylie] right after we released the first album in Denmark. Simon has his own side project and Silas and Jonas have their own things (Kenton Slash Demon), so they felt like they had to work on those projects for a couple of months, and while they were doing that, I just started writing songs for the next one. It’s like every other job, you have to work every day, and for me, I’m afraid I’ll forget how to write songs if I stop doing it.”

Two years in the making, Konkylie is an album which plays host to a rich tapestry of engineered sounds, samples, layers and textures, and so isn’t necessarily an easy project to transfer to stage. “We use a lot of samplers to play a lot of stuff, and before we even started working on the live show, we talked about how we wanted to be able to create a dynamic feeling on stage. We wanted to be able to change stuff from gig to gig, and then of course we also reworked some of the songs – made them a bit longer, made a new outro or something that we felt would make for a better live experience. But we’re still working on it and that’s how we wanted it. It shouldn’t be this static thing. We’re still in the process of making it all come together, but it’s nice to have something to work on! It’s good that it’s not perfect from the beginning, that’d be boring!”

Time, and emotional as well as musical energy have been heavily invested in Konkylie, and that care and attention is evident from the first spin. The songs are beautifully balanced, with each track seamlessly slipping into the next. The whole effort feels incredibly natural, but at the same time, technically sophisticated. “A lot of things came really naturally for this album. Right now I’d say my favourite song is ‘Add Ends’, the last song on the album. That one didn’t come that naturally, it took me a year and a half to write that song. I want people to put their own feeling into that song, and experiences, but the song is essentially about losing someone close to you. I lost my dad when we were making this album, and it’s about him. He was really ill when I started writing the song. He passed away and I felt like I had to rewrite the song. It was something that I really wanted to finish for the album, and we all worked on the production, but the lyrics and the melody really took a lot of energy, but also a lot of weight off of my shoulders when it was finished. I think with every song, there’s always something in there – sometimes it’s something that you want to yell, but you kind of hide it. Maybe I’m not that bold, I don’t know. But you put a lot of stuff in your songs, you hide it in there and you get to say it anyway.”

Konkylie vividly denotes an emotional journey, from a songwriter and lyricist whose therapy comes from investing himself in his music. For British When Saints Go Machine fans, the wait for Konkylie has felt quite long – the album was indeed highly anticipated. But good things come to those who wait, as goes the old proverb, with the end result being a truly hypnotic album from an authentic, endearing, unfathomably gifted group of musicians.

“We’re proud of the album, but it’s funny – the only way we’re able to follow what’s going on is on Facebook and with PR updates and stuff. So in Copenhagen, you walk around and kind of feel like people are looking at you – you have teenagers coming over and telling you that they really love the album and stuff, and you think ‘shit, ok – things have changed!’. But it’s nice to be able to start from scratch again, it keeps you on point when you have to start from the beginning somewhere else. If you have to work hard, you’ll get a lot further, you know?”