New Bella Union signees Lowly are soon to drop their debut album ‘Heba’ – a record they describe as “noise-pop, and everything in between.” Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Incoming on 10th February, the Danish quintet are today previewing the release with a new video for ‘Word’, which you can check out below, first on Dork. It’s an intriguingly simple idea that holds a lot of meaning.
Director Noe Morre comments:
“There is a dangerous tendency in the way we address and discuss the humanitarian crisis is Syria and Europe. The rules of the game seem to be that the one with the loudest, most radical statements, both positive or negative, is the one who is heard – the one who is right. This creates an aggressive, noisy and un-nuanced debate that leaves no room for argumentation or reflection – the foundation of any real discussion or action.
“In our part of the world we are enormously privileged, and it is important we remember that it does not make us superior. That it does not justify reducing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from war, terror and misery to a simple mass; a “stream”, and that it does not justify the aggressive, racist and xenophobic vocabulary that is right now the local and global debate.”
The band take a break from the studio (“making new music and having a great time”) to answer a few questions about ‘Word’, and new album ’Heba’.
Who came up with the concept for ‘Word”s video, and what about it resonated with you?
The concept was inspired by a piece by the artist Adam Jeppesen. The director Noe Morre took it from there and created this equally beautiful and ominous video.
Water plays a big role in the song – both very dangerous but also comforting in sort of a paralysing way. But really, it’s up to the listeners/viewers to draw their own emotions from it.
Hopefully, they have the patience to let themselves be sucked into it a bit.
What is the track itself about, and where does it fit in the scheme of your upcoming album?
We would like the music be open for anyone to put their own feelings into, even though the lyrics in ‘Word’ do point out some intrusive emotions.
Also, Noe Morre’s own words on his video and his interpretation of the song is very interesting to read.
The tracks balances somewhere between the two dynamic outer poles of the album, having a weird and cold calmness on top of the tense rhythmic layer underneath.
When did you begin working on ‘Heba’? What was your starting point?
We started working on ‘Heba’ around mid-2015, with Prepare The Lake being the first song. Not that it was intended to be. We didn’t have a moment where we said, “Alright! Let’s begin making an album.” It was a more fluid thing. Prepare made it to some live concerts, before it was recorded for the album. Almost all of our demos are written by either one or two of the band members, and the demos can vary from being two parts and some lyrics to being a fully arranged song with lots of different melodies and instruments. When a demo is kind of finished, or at least as done as the “makers” want it to be, they introduce it to the rest of the band, who then try to lowlyfie it as well as possible. In the beginning of 2016, we had assembled enough songs for an album plus a bit more, and we were ready to go to the studio to record and produce what was to become ‘Heba’.
Does it sound as you anticipated your debut would?
It actually kind of does. We spent a lot of time figuring out what we wanted the songs to be before we went to the studio, so it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it could have been. But some songs developed a lot in the process, and those are probably the ones we like the most today. We’re often trying stuff out that can help us to be surprised by our own music.
What was the most notable thing you learnt during the record’s creation?
That 15 days in a row in a really small studio is A LOT when you’re six people playing, talking, eating, discussing, farting, sleeping and writing together. We recorded up to two songs a day and ended up cutting some songs of the tracklist. The process was really intense, but also really exciting and you can definitely hear that intensity and excitement on the album. We got kind of surprised by some of our own songs afterwards, because the recordings were so immediate and quick.
But we learnt that there’s a lot of ways to do an album and that we have to do something completely else for the next one.
What inspired the album artwork, and how does it complement the record?
Lotte Rose Kjær Skau is the artist behind it. You should check her out. She is an incredible artist and the cover is actually a depiction of a physical installation she did and it beautifully contrasts the volatile substance of songs on the album with its aesthetic still life calmness.
What do you hope listeners will take from the record?
We want to write about stuff that’s important to us and things that sometimes hurt, so we really hope that people can hear that and if we are lucky can use it for something they find important too.
Finally, how’s the Denmark music scene at the moment? Can you recommend us some bands?
The Danish music scene is really exciting at the moment – and has been for a long time, we think! There are a lot of Danish bands who’ve been doing some really interesting stuff lately. Some quite noisy, some quite poppy, some liberatingly uncategorisable: Ice Cream Cathedral, Peach, Luster, CTM, Cancer, SVIN, Irah, Marching Church, ML Buch. [sc name=”stopper”]