On Song; Q&A with Air France

What was the music your parents liked and do you think it’s influenced you at all?

Henrik: I don’t think they like music. I can’t recall a single day of my childhood when there was music in the house unless maybe some italian Christmas songs.
Joel: My dad was a punk. He listened to the Boys, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, stuff like that, and claimed to have tagged his apartment walls. But he stopped listening to music when I was born, the last record he bought was Joy Division’s Closer I think. My mom was into girl groups and divas.

What posters did you have on your wall as a kid?

Henrik: I had a photograph of Robert Desnos grave hanging over my desk.
Joel: Nicole Kidman was very important to me as a seven year old, can’t remember why. I had a BMX Bandits poster. I always fall in love with older girls.

Which songs or albums would you play at a party?

Henrik: Kish Mauve’s “Lose control” (Fred Falke Rmx), the intro over and over again.
Joel:Right now, Amadou et Mariam’s “Sabali”. My fucking top tune of last year, no doubt.

Which songs remind you of a rainy day?

Henrik: “NYC Smile on Me” by Aqua Regia sounds just like when you’re out in a field and get caught in a summer rain that only last for about seven minutes and twenty seconds and still soaks you through and through.
Joel: The Go-Betweens “Streets of your town”. It’s like when you’re mad in love and you ride your bike around her block when it’s pouring.

Which album do you seek solace in when you are feeling sad?

Henrik: I want to listen to cheerful music when I’m sad, and find a way out of it instead of burying myself deeper. So maybe New Order’s Technique.
Joel: I always need something that’ll calm me down. Since I became an international pop artist things have been so hectic for me. So I have a bunch of French and Italian soundtracks from the 60s that I like listening to.

Which album would you play when you wanted to get down to some lovin’?

Henrik: I want silence, otherwise it makes me try to do it in synch and it throws me off.
Joel: I have a friend that made love listening to New Order’s Technique, can’t say who, but he’s an international pop star. Now he can’t listen to it anymore. Sad story.

What music was, or would be, the “first dance” at your wedding?

Henrik: When I got married we danced to an early demo version of “Collapsing at Your Doorstep”. All the people where like, “ahh the Avalanches!” and joined in. I stormed out and left my wife crying on the floor. Sad story, again.
Joel: It didn’t go too well for me either, but I’ll keep it to myself. Too complicated to think about. I go to a therapist because of it.

What was the first gig you went to as a paying customer?

Joel: I think it was this Swedish rockabilly artist called Jerry Williams. It was me, I must have been about eight years old, and 300 pissed greasers.
Henrik: You were there too??

Name the one song you think everyone should hear.

Henrik: New Order’s “All the way”. I have really mixed up emotions about it now, but it blew me away the first time I heard it. I wish I could go back and hear it with innocent ears again, but it’s too late for me.
Joel: There’s a lot of music from the Brazilian 60s and 70s which I always return to periodically every year. I can find everything I like with music there; airy sounds, piping flutes mingling with the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. More modern? Maybe Julian Jabre’s “Swimming Places” or Rah Bands “Sam the Samba Man”.

Which one artist do you think not enough people know about?

Joel: Robert Wyatt, Tessi Uiovo, Marcos Valle, Ngou Bagayoko, Marine Girls, Blueboy and so on.
Henrik: Cath Carroll maybe? She deserves to be a millionaire.

What’s the best thing you’ve heard recently?

Henrik: The CFCF remix of Cassie’s “Official Girl”.
Joel: Daaahling, “4 Steps Closer”

Dead or alive, what 5 acts would you have play with you at a festival?
Henrik: What a question. Confetti, Orange Juice, Prefab Sprout, Francis Lai and I don’t know, Edwyn Collins?

Joel: Fleetwood Mac, Astrud Gilberto, High Places, Main Attraction, Beach Boys.

And finally, who would win in a fight: a stoat or a goat and why?

Henrik: Stoat?
Joel: Goat. He is bigger.