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Artist Interviews
Q&A: The New Wine
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 25 November 2009
The New Wine consists of four young men, all residing in the musical capital of Norway, Bergen. Not long after playing their debut gig, the band caught the attention of Mikal Telle – founder of House Of Telle and former manager of Royksopp, Annie and Kings Of Convenience. Making waves at home and abroad, The New Wine deliver their own brand of delicious and accessible electro-pop, with their influences naturally pointing to the likes of Michael Jackson, LCD Soundsystem and Koji Kondo. Ahead of their gig at London’s 229 on 26 Nov, we caught up with the band’s Geir Hermansen to find out more.
Q1 How did you star out making music?
We all have different musical backgrounds, having played in different bands when growing up. We went to the same high school, that’s how we started making music together. Three of us started sort of a country project, but when our drummer joined in things rapidly changed. In the beginning we played a terrible kind of fusion, just improvising long jam sessions. After about half a year we developed our music into more what it is today.
Q2 What inspired your latest single?
We only just released our first single, ‘Bridge’. It’s hard to point out any direct inspiration. Our songs are the result of everyone’s musical taste and inspiration mixed together in the rehearsal room. I think we wanted to create a light, danceable mid-tempo disco track. And we did.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Our rehearsals often start with half an hour of jamming. Sometimes it sounds horrid, sometimes it turns out to be quite cool. If so, we go on working on the different parts and maybe it turns into a new song. Sometimes one of us has already come up with a cool riff, melody or simply a drum beat, and based on that we make a new track. It rarely happens that someone has written a complete tune before we rehearse.
Q4 Which artists influences your work?
Like I mentioned earlier, we have different musical preferences and are inspired by different kinds of music. We want our audience to dance, and seeing that we call our live concept ‘club music in a band format’, we are inspired by electronic music and club artists such as Lindstrøm and the rest of the Norwegian disco scene, and a lot of artists from labels like DFA and DC Recordings. But we’re also influenced by a lot of older stuff, for example Giorgio Moroder and Duran Duran. And it would be silly not to mention Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I think it’s important that our music is both danceable and simply listenable at the same time. Of course we don’t want to become a 100% dance project, that’s more our live thing. So an introduction to our music for the first time would depend on the mood of the listener. Whether you want to dance or just want to sit back and listen, we’re hopefully suited for both. Basically our music is about a deep love for music from earlier decades, and selecting the right amount of elements from this music. It mustn’t get too 80s, you know. And definitely not too 90s.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single, and for the future?
It feels good to finally release our first single, ‘Bridge’, after having waited for quite a while getting everything together. First of all we want to spread our music by making it available in digital music stores, but there will also be a release on vinyl soon, including great remixes from Norwegian disco duo Frisvold & Lindbæk and London producers Mighty Mouse. By including these tracks we also want to reach out to DJs and a more clubby audience. Regarding the future, the plan is to release an album during the spring/early summer of 2010, and to tour Europe and Scandinavia to promote it.
MORE>> www.thenewwinemusic.com
