Satellite Stories
Interview by Annette Schaefer
1. You are about to release your second full-length album, Pine Trails. What did you do differently this time around in the writing/recording process? Do you feel there was any growth that occurred?
Hello Annette, There was definitely a lot of growth in us personally and in our music in the new record, we wrote most of our first album nearly 3 years ago, times changed we grew up and musically we feel that in Pine Trails we kinda “found our sound.” We took a lot more time in the studio on the new record, our English was better so we worked much more in detail on lyrics and we introduced a lot of our own influences on the record, as a group we love things from Electronica to hip hop to trap to full on pop. So personally and musically there is a lot of growth, we are very happy with the record.
2. On your Facebook, it says that you recorded Pine Trails in a very rural setting. Was there a purpose behind this and did it have any significant effect on the outcome of the album?
We started writing the album in January of this year, the plan came about by chance actually. We were planning with our management our schedule around performing at Eurosonic Festival and a Norwegian tour we had a week later, one weeks gap between Holland and Norway, there was no way we were going to go home ,our hometown is basically up at lapland. Our manager said why don’t we just hire a lodge in the Swedish countryside and do a record, we thought he was nuts! (He is Scottish so always possible right?) But when we thought about it a bit we decided lets go for it! So the Swedish countryside in -15 winter, snow filled fields and only some horses for company. (This is starting to sound like Broke Back Mountain) By day we would walk in the pine woods just to breath and get some room for ourselves, by night we would write and record demo ́s The album name “Pine Trails” came from those sessions and the environment had a big part to play in that.
3. As a band that has been heavily promoted by the internet, how would you say that has helped the music industry and you as a band? Have you seen a negative side to the internet’s role?
We love it! We embrace it, we are all for the Internet and its place in our band and the industry as a whole, you can read a lot of negatives about everything, “Spotify don’t pay anything” but we have not witnessed that, we have done really well from Spotify and I’m sure in return they have done well from us, thats all cool. We sell a lot of physical albums and for us we just want as many people as possible to hear our music and come to our shows to have a big party. We are all glass half full people we tend to concentrate on the positives of things, there is a negative in everything but the negatives are not in our minds generally.4. Now that your band’s music seems to be getting a bigger reach overseas, the United States included, how important do you feel it is to reach out to those fans?
We are still pretty new to it all, only this year did things start to go pretty fast, we have played 20 Festivals this summer. We played Spain for the first time at this big Festival Arenal Sound, we were booked to headline the second stage, we thought “noone can know us here” at our hotel 20klm away from the Festival there were fans waiting for us and wanting signatures, we get to the Festival our crew is setting up and we were still thinking this cant be right, we go on and it is insane, 15,000 people singing all our songs. I guess that goes hand in hand with the last question, without the internet how could we do this on the first time we have played there? We also toured Japan before our first album came out, Sold out Tokyo and before the show we did a meet and greet for fans, literally hundreds of people waiting to meet the band. We feel really lucky to have all of this, and we plan to try and get to most countries in 2014 and pay these guys back for the support, we make a point of trying to reply to every fan on Facebook and Twitter. For us it is top priority to keep in touch with our fans, that will never change.
5. After watching the video for “Campfire” I noticed there seems to be an intriguing storyline going on. What is the story behind the video?
The story is based on a nordic mythological forest creature called “huldra” who basically lures men into the forest. We decided to make a modern take on this set in a very innocent situation (camping trip). The video also captures the essence of the song and the upcoming album – growing up and starting to see the world in a more cynical/less naive way
6. You guys are labeled as an “indie” band, but “indie” these days seems like a tricky genre to pin down. How would you define your sound?
We always used to say “Party Indie” but I guess we are indie in the way that we do all our decisions ourselfs. Our music would be guitar driven powerful electronic layered melodic pop songs. We draw many influences into our music and we think it kinda works, but yea I totally agree “Indie” is maybe an easy tag right?
7. How do you go about booking a tour? You guys are doing a good string of dates in Europe, any future plans to do any overseas shows?
Our manager gives our agent a whole list of free dates and they go out and fix it all with our promoters around the world, we are really lucky we have a great agency Xray Touring, and we work with some amazing promoters around the world. We have a really big Euro and UK tour coming up starting late January and going to the end of February. It will be taking in 7 or 8 countries.
8. As your band’s success has continued to grow, how have to guys managed to deal? How do you handle the growing fan base?
We find it all really easy, our hometown is so far detached from the music industry, we just work our hardest on everything and our friends are really a good balancing point. The growing fanbase is amazing, this is what we always wanted is to play music in a band together the bigger the audiences the more fun it is for everyone, us and the fans.
9. What would you say has been the most difficult part of your career for you all personally and collectively?
Maybe this is a common thing, but MONEY, struggling to pay the bills, but then our desire to do this always wins through. Who needs money when we an eat carrots right?
10. How did you, or do you continue to, overcome these struggles?|
Make great song so we can tour more and sell some records, a struggle is only an opportunity to find another way, as long as we are mentally happy and in a good place we can deal with an struggle.
11. What is the ‘highlight’ of your career so far?
Tokyo show and that whole trip to Japan, Arenal Sound Festival was mind blowing, actually every day these days some piece of crazy positive new comes and we just think is this for real? It for us shows hard work will always result in good things. Karma maybe.
12. What is the one dream the moment at which point either personally or collectively you would be able to say yes I’ve achieved this, I’m living my dreams?
Being able to play music internationally is a really cool thing that not everyone has the chance to do, so in a way we feel we’ve already achieved something really great. but of course we want to improve all the time on every matter, making even better songs and to be able to reach even more listeners worldwide. we feel the sky really is the limit at the moment.
