TLOBF Interview // Turboweekend

Denmark’s Turboweekend have steadily seen their affable stock rise in the last few years following the release of acclaimed sophomore album Ghost Of A Chance in 2009 and stellar appearances at Roskilde and SPOT. The recent Bound EP was a brief collaborative affair tinged with equal portions of the mirthful and morose to placate the acquired aficionado. 2011 sees the release of their anticipated third LP, and an imminent UK tour is sure to further assimilate curious beings to their burgeoning flock.

Christian Adofo speaks to the Danish three-piece about melancholic love, the wonder of David Byrne and the emergent music scene in Copenhagen.

Hello Turboweekend. How are you all at this present time?

Good thank you. We’ve just had our morning coffee in the studio.

A tad generic question to start with but what was the inspiration behind your buoyant band name?

We originally had a much more narrow agenda. When we started out in 2006, we aimed exclusively at the clubs and dancefloors, and Turboweekend seemed like a proper eye-catcher. Much has happened since then, but it seems too late now to change the name. We’re just hoping that people will interpret it in a wider sense than it was originally intended. We usually console ourselves by remembering other band names that look funny on paper such as Red Hot Chili Peppers or The Pixies.

I’ve viewed a few concert clips online and what strikes me immediately is the honesty of the crowd toward live interpretations of their favourite songs. Is this a pivotal duty as artists to develop your sound further beyond the studio confines?

Definitely. There’s nothing more boring than a band that sounds as if they just put on the album. The whole live experience is very much in the tension between the recorded versions and the live interpretations. That’s where you feel that you’re actually witnessing something live. Of course you want to keep the essence and the highlights of the song, but you don’t want to copy it to the note. The recorded versions of our songs are often more tightly arranged, while the live versions tend to exploit some of the grooves and build-ups more, and get a bit wilder and sometimes even out of control.

The video for ‘Wash Out’ from the debut Night Shift LP seemed like a cool and innovative experience with permanent marker drawn instruments on the skin, and synchronised boyband dance moves in the sand. Do you adopt a playful slant to most of your music videos?

That particular video is quite silly, or playful if you like, and even though it was fun to make, we also like the more sombre vibe of Plastic Kids videos for ‘After Hours’ and ‘Trouble Is’. That’s not to say that we won’t do a funny video again in the future. We have both sides in us. Right now I’m actually directing and producing a video for ‘Into The Pavement’ from our new EP together with Andy Borglind from Me & Anton who have also done a lot of live recordings for us. It’s going to feature a little haunted 14” TV set that turns it self on and plays a mashup of fans and friends singing the track, and the owner of the set tries everything to turn it off, but ends up just smashing it. We’ve been editing the fan contributions last week, and looking forward to shooting the frame story this week.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/xijsykdx2Us

Songs titles such as ‘Erase Myself’, ‘Your Body Free From Mine’ and ‘Sweet Jezebel’ on sophomore album ‘Ghost Of A Chance’ paint an anguished lovelorn picture. Would it be correct to say melancholic love is a firm base for your lyricism?

There is definitely a thread of melancholic love that runs through a lot of the songs, and I’ve thought about this a lot myself. I think it can be boiled down to an aesthetics, where nothing is so beautiful, or horrible, as what you cannot see. Or the Joni Mitchell proverb “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. Maybe it’s like Billy Corgan says: “I’m in love with my sadness”. Seriously I would love to write a happy love song, but every time I try it just gets so corny. I am aware that this is a fault on my side and not on love’s side, and I’m working on it. There are also other themes in the lyrics than love , and ‘Erase Myself’ wasn’t actually written with that sort of melancholy in mind. It basically tries to describe a complete and undramatic self-annihilation for no specific reason other than the wish to disappear as if you had never existed. The song itself is not undramatic at all, and that’s the crux.

Social networking is rife as a personal platform between musicians and their respective audiences in the modern age. Were these platforms you hoped to target through your original approach in distributing the Bound EP?

We have been promoting the EP through these sites, mostly Facebook, but also through conventional online press. The idea of distributing the EP for free through our own website was actually to build a community of our own separate from the social network sites, and we’ve managed to compile an old school mailing list of 12,000 email addresses with an overview of where in the world all these people live. This kind of information is vital to effective tour planning, and it’s hard to get it any other way. We use Facebook and Twitter a lot for general news updates, and the system of Likes, Re-post, and Comment works just fantastic, and gets the word out to a lot of people really fast without shoving it down their throats. But sometimes you have a special announcement that you don’t want any fan to miss, or you have a special offer just for the people you know will appreciate it, and in that case a mailing list is better. But it’s fluid and we’re still working out new ways to make the two work together.

Another highlight of the recent Bound EP was the bonus single ‘Heaven’ – a Talking Heads cover. Do you think a powerful vocalist such as David Byrne has impacted on Turboweekend at all?

We all appreciate Talking Heads to some extent, but none of us are hardcore fans. I think that is why we could agree to do that track. Personally I caught on to them after watching the Stop Making Sense live video, and was like so many others, fascinated by Byrnes stage presence and his sense of abstract but dramatic build-up throughout the show. I don’t think my voice has any of his quirky qualities, and I guess there’s some kind of envy there. Like the blonde who wants to be a brunette.

When you do a cover version it has the potential of really dividing the waters, because it’s something that people have an opinion about already. Back home we got our first positive feedback on the ‘Heaven’ cover, and it was the first track played on the radio, but then Linda Martin from This Is Fake DIY absolutely hates it in her recent review of the EP. The track is exclusively on the Vinyl edition, and is not part of the free download, so not a lot of people have actually heard it, and I don’t think we will be doing it live. We just recorded it for the hell of it.

Is it imperative for you to assist other Danish compatriots such as Quadron and Efterklang? Bearing in mind the success you’ve had thus far?

With Efterklang it’s actually a win /win situation. We have a bigger crowd in Denmark, but they have a much bigger crowd in the rest of the indie world. I’d say that they were probably assisting us more than the other way around. Quadron is doing really good on the LA soul scene at the moment (signed to Raphael Saadiqs label Plug Research), and have shifted their main focus to the US. I’m not sure how much we’re helping them there. We work with bands and artists that we think are cool, and not bands that we think need help. That being said there’s a natural publicity effect when a more known act mentions or works with a less known act. Even if the genre doesn’t sync up completely, like when Oliver Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon mentions us as his favourite new band of 2010. Kill Screen Music are another cool band who are supporting our DK tour.

In April, you’ll be on tour performing on these isles. What can fans expect from the forthcoming gigs?

We might be testing some of the new stuff that we’re working on in the studio right now for the third album, but mostly it will be a solid mix of songs from Ghost Of A Chance and the Bound EP. The London show at the Borderline is in the beginning of the spring tour, so we’ll have lots of energy, but we’ll be a few dates in so we’ll have tightened up the show. Perfect conditions.

How has the general reception been toward Turboweekend further afield?

Poland has been especially appreciative of the last album. ‘Trouble Is’ was #1 on their national rock station Eska in July, and by the end of the year it was the 8th most played song, and they seem to have picked up the EP as well. We’ve been down to Warsaw once in December, and are going back in May. There was some trouble with the local label not informing us of the radio activity, so we only learned about it through Polish fans on Facebook, but we’re on it now. Switzerland has caught on pretty good as well, and Austria is a close follow up. We had some radio airplay in Germany on Ghost Of A Chance, and we’ll be playing there on the Spring tour also. This year we’re doing our first shows in the Netherlands and Belgium, and generally trying to cover all of Europe north of the Alps approximately.

On the Trouble Is EP, the title track and ‘Holiday’ were remixed by Joker and Russell Lissack of Bloc Party fame. Any plans to collaborate on a longer LP with guest producers in the near future?

Don’t think so, but we’re not ruling anything out at the moment. We’ve been discussing potential producers/mixers for the third album, but haven’t approached anybody yet.

Are you fans of the dubstep scene seeing as you have bass contemparies in the form of 2000f and JKamata?

Silas has been doing some work with Joker after he did his remix of ‘Trouble Is’. You should be hearing about that soon. Apart from that we’re not an active part of the dub step scene, but the beats and sounds are in the air in Copenhagen, just like everywhere else, so bits and pieces might find their way into the studio. Jkamata is a friend of Silas’ big brother and that’s how we know him originally.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/B9Pf2uggtgM

Which LPs are on current rotation for the band?

Martin: Spoon – Transference, Sepultura – Chaos A.D., Jimi Hendrix – The Ultimate Experience, Weezer – Pinkerton, Everything Everything – Man Alive, Dianogah – Qhnnnl, Twin Shadow – Forget

Morten: Eric Satie – Klavierwerke, Jacques Brel – Greatest Hits, Radiohead – In Rainbows

Silas: Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps, Thule Basen – Gate 5, Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse, Bob Dylan – Street Legal, Pixies – Surfer Rosa

Any bands to keep an eye out for in 2011?

When Saints Go Machine (keep an eye out for Nikolaj in our video for ‘Into The Pavement’), Thulebasen, Quadron, Omoreka, L.Y.A., Everything Everything (they’re not very well known in Denmark).

What can aficionados expect from your imminent third LP and do you have a title yet?

For starters it will be just the band, and not a collaboration project like the EP. We’re working in many different directions at the moment and haven’t settled on a general atmosphere. It’s all a big melting pot at the moment, and there’s no title yet, but we have a working folder on the computer called Shitty Demo Mixes.

Turboweekend play at the Borderline in London on April 6 & 7. Bound EP by Turboweekend is available for free download via www.turboweekend.com