EFTERKLANG INTERVIEW

We talk with Efterklang frontman Casper Clausen about playing festivals, booking 250 rooms for Cliff Richard and why he only asks for half a bottle of whiskey on his rider.

You’re often described as a collective. How many people are actually in Efterklang?
It varies a lot. There’re four core members: me, Rasmus, Mads and Thomas.  The interesting thing about our band is we can’t really play the music ourselves so we always have people with us. A four piece wouldn’t really work. We use too many instruments we can’t play and bring some other musicians to the recordings. When we did the last album Magic Chairs I think we were 18 musicians in all. When we play live it varies from six people to eight and when we perform with the Symphony Orchestra it’s 50.

We probably can’t fit the whole orchestra on the stage at Standon, but how many people do you think you’ll be bringing over?
Probably seven. I’m not  completely sure, but that’s sort of the current set-up with a pianist, guitarist, I’m singing and playing percussion, Mads playing various stuff, Rasmus playing bass, and Thomas singing, playing trumpets and drumming. We are doing a lot of different things. We’ve had a lot of skilled musicians who can play a lot of different things. Sometimes we have a trombone player. I’m not sure if he’s coming as well.

What can the crowd expect from your performance?
If they have listened to our music before then I’m sure they will be surprised by the energy we have on stage. It’s very different from the album. Playing live we tend to focus a lot on the contact we between us and the audience and try to create an atmosphere around that. At good concerts it’s magical at some point.

We played End of the Road last year in England that was one of the best festival experiences ever. I feel like Standon is sort of the same. What I’ve heard about Standon is that it’s this sort of intimate and very specific festival with a nice program. Those kind of festivals I really, really like. It’s a really nice and relaxed atmosphere. I also enjoy big rock and roll festivals, but I can’t stay there for as long. If I had to stay for a while at a festival I would rather pick a Standon. I’m looking forward to it. I have heard Buena Vista Social Club are performing the same day and that’s one band I would really love to see.

This year Standon Calling has a crime theme. What’s the worst crime you have ever committed?
Possibly booking 250 hotel rooms at a local hotel for a Cliff Richard concert when I was a kid. We were pretending we were Cliff Richard’s management and had to book some rooms. But that was kind of funny, I’m not sure if that’s a crime.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever asked for on a rider?
I don’t really have any weird things. We’ve half a bottle of whiskey, never a whole just a half, because we get too drunk and we learned that’s really bad when you are playing. Not good on your head next day if you are playing a lot of concerts. Basically it’s a very middle-of-the-road sort of rider with some beers and some sodas, maybe some towels as well and English newspapers. No blue M&Ms.

How does your latest album Magic Chairs differ to your previous releases?
It’s possibly the most-simple sounding album to date. It’s very much inspired by us as a live band. We tried to record it as a group with a sort of a proper rock album recording. The recording itself all together probably took a month or so. We did it in periods. We went in to the studio for a couple of weeks and recorded all the basic tracks and then took it home with us to do little bits of work and then recorded some strings and brass.

With Magic Chairs we wanted to go somewhere else than with Parades before. That album is very much a layered Frankenstein project. Lots of the songs have 200 or even 250 tracks and it took one and a half years of us just being in the studio. We didn’t play any concerts in that period so we were isolated and dedicated to that. Magic Chairs, on the other hand, was made with us airing songs for an audience. We took some songs with us on a US tour in 2009.

So you almost auditioned the songs?
Exactly. You just got the response right away at some point. Also when playing them you notice a lot of things, you find the things that you want to change and the things that you felt works. That was very new.

Are you working on any new music at the moment?
There’s always new music in the works. Right now it’s just on my computer so it doesn’t really feel like real songs yet. We have a lot of ideas but right now we’ve been concentrating on making this Magic Chairs album work live. The next step is to try and integrate some new songs.

The next sort of project could be picking out a specific place, like a hut in the woods or something and then try and use the surroundings or the environment of that location and then build an album. That’s the basic idea. Not really a concept album but a location album. We opened a chest with Magic Chairs that we want to continue working on. There’re a lot of rhythms and beats and drums that we’d like to explore. A lot of our older material is atmospheric. The drums would be an element, just like a melody on the violin, so would be coming in and out.  At the moment it feels very exciting to work with beats. We’d maybe dive more into that and then combine with a specific sound of a room or a space.

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