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Artist Interviews
Q&A: O’Spada
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 17 June 2010
Formed in 2006, O’Spada are a five-piece from Stockholm. With their varied backgrounds in music, and influences ranging from Prince to the Wu-Tang Clan, the band have created their own unique sound merging soul and funk with hip hop and rock. After gradually gaining a reputation and strong following through their MySpace profile and vivid live performances, the band signed with Despotz Records in 2008. The band released their debut single ‘Time’ last November, while their debut album ‘Pay Off’ is out this week. The band play YoYo at the Notting Hill Arts Club in London tonight. Ahead of that, we caught up with frontwoman Julia Spada to ask the Same Six.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
We’ve all got our own story. Suffering from a serious TLC psychosis, I started writing songs in 1996, dreaming of becoming as good a rapper as Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. Samuel is a former punk drummer/choir boy. Karl was drawn to the electric guitar because it looked cool, and formed a Metallica cover band at thirteen. Johan got his chops playing bass in the local Pentecostal church. Chris always had the dream of being a drummer, but was left with the choice of playing either the violin or the piano, and chose the latter. We met five years ago, when we all played jazz, and practiced polyrhythms and scales all day long. When I held my first solo concert, I headhunted my favourite musicians. The concert went well, and the idea to actually form a band was born. We recorded a demo, and the rest is history…
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
The lyrics to our song ‘W.I.T.H? (Where Is The Hook?)’ pretty much say it all. The songs have been written over a long period of time, and the environment around us has changed from the academic world of a music school far out in the countryside to stressful day jobs and energetic club audiences in Stockholm. But it’s always been about deconstructing the theories we’ve studied and putting the pieces back together into something direct and danceable. It’s not about your skills, it’s not about what you want to “say” with your music, and it’s even less about what you look like or who you know. It’s all about the hooks.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It’s often quite a long process. ‘Time’ is one of our earliest songs and doesn’t sound at all like it first did. When I first showed it to the band, it was a weird little jazz tune, with a fast melody that was almost impossible to sing, partly based on a solo by the saxophone player Cannonball Adderley. Piece by piece, we changed it, and now the only trace of that first melody is the backing vocals in the intro (that used to make up the whole verse). It’s always like that. One of us brings an idea to rehearsal, either a melody and some chords, or just a simple beat. Then we try a billion ideas, and in most cases, we end up with a song that has very little resemblance to the original sketch.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We all have different inspirations, from Prince to Wu Tang Clan to Daft Punk to Al Jarreau. In the beginning, that was quite frustrating because we couldn’t agree on a sound. But now, it feels like a strength because it prevents us from imitating anyone else. Either way, we don’t discuss other artists that much when we make our music.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
“What do you think we sound like?” We’re so crappy at describing our music, so we need all the help we can get…
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Our efforts over the last three and a half years have got to pay off soon, that’s what our song ‘Pay Off’ is about. Basically, we just want O’Spada’s music to spread and be heard, on the radio, at the disco, at your mother’s place. What we long for the most is to go on tour with it. Ultimately, our music is made for playing live.
MORE>> www.ospada.se
