Martin Lüscher hat mit  Kasper Eistrup (Gesang, Gitarre) und Mads Tunebjerg (Bass) von Kashmir vor ihrem Zürcher Konzert gesprochen.

Usually the general audience only see a band releasing albums or doing shows, could you tell me, what else is there in the life of a band?

Kasper: We have this documentary film, that was made of the band called rocket brothers and it came out two years made by Danish documentarist Kasper Torsting. He followed the band for four years in the studio, on the road, at home, in Denmark, in America, all kinds of places. That actually gives a very good picture of what more there is to the life of being in a band, in a struggling band. So this is like a little advertising. But yeah you know it’s like you’re saying, there’s a lot of work in it: first of all being good at writing songs, second of all being good at performing them and we’ve been together since we’ve been teenagers, so for us it’s very natural. I remember when we did the first album, it was like: wow! We had to do an album and wow! We got the chance to get into a really nice studio and work with a good producer and all that. And now we made five albums, and that’s just what we do. Once we’ve been touring for a while, and had a short break we all know, that we have to get started again and go back into the process, which is still unbelievably hard sometimes, to come up with new ideas, to bring the band into a new direction artistically. But at the same time it’s very addicting. We are very addicted, we can’t do anything else.

You said it’s hard to bring the band into a new direction, do you mean it’s hard to write new types of songs?

Kasper: I’m talking about the song writing and the inspiration. We are not an AC/DC or Ramones type of bands, who do the same song over and over again. It’s extremely difficult for me as a songwriter to sit down and make the same song over and over again. I have to somehow feel that there’s something new being introduced each time we do a new album, or each time I write a new song, and also the guys in the band are very good at telling me if it’s too much like the old Kashmir. I think it’s a collective restlessness we have, that we feel we have to move on each time. And fortunately we still feel that. The day we stop feeling that we probably have to split up.

Why is he the only one who writes songs?

Mads: Well, apparently it just turned out that way. It’s not that we’re not really involved in the process. We’re doing other tasks, we inspire each others quite a bit, trying to come up with new sounds and arrangements. We’re all producers of the music. We’re all arranging the music and pushing Kasper and his writing back and forth. Sometimes an idea can evolve from Oscar, our drummer, coming up with a drum beat, and then it clicks a bottom and you feed off of that. We’re all very inspired by all kinds of sonic influences. In that way we participate in the writing.

But they still depend on you writing songs.

Kasper: Well, yeah. That’s the way it turned out. All the boys in the band we’re all making music. Oscar has is side project, Mads is doing his own thing and Hendrik is writing arrangements for strings for other bands and for other artists. So if it wasn’t for me I’m sure the boys would do something else, they would do their own thing. That’s the way it turned out. I’m the one that always brings the starting point for the music and for the songs and then we build it together. But I’m as dependent on them as they are on me, because this is the sound of this band. Mads plays his base. He’s got the sound that he has. The same goes for the other members. I could easily go out and make a solo project. But I just don’t feel like, because I feel that I have everything that I want. The other guys are inspiring me a lot, both by playing new music to me but also by giving comments to my ideas. I feel perfectly fine with it.

Did it ever happen, that when you brought a song into the group that it developed into something you didn’t like?

Kasper: [laughs] No. I wouldn’t say that. I’m very much a hand song person and  I like to be a lot involved in the instrumentation and if I feel that the song is moving in a direction I don’t like I’ll say it. But it has happened, that I brought in a song that I liked and the guys didn’t like…

Mads: …and then we won’t have it on the album. We’re all very hand song, we’re all involved. We criticise each other very openly. If Kasper has something in a song we dislike, we talk about it and try to find a way to get around it. In that way we are influential on you writing music.

How do you reach conclusions?

Mads: By agreeing on them. Democratically I think.

Kasper: Sometimes some of the band members have to be convinced. And sometimes it takes some time to say: “Listen to this, it’s fucking great. Play this.” People are never forced to play something they dislike. But we’ve grown together as a unit over the years. Even though we listen to a wide range of different music, we still agree a lot of the time on what is cool.

Mads: Of course we can’t have it that one guy is really unhappy with a part of a song. But we are so fortunate that it always turns out, that either he gets the idea and sees that the part fits the song, or the others are now we know what you are thinking or why you hated the song. We’ll always find out.

Kasper: Sometimes it’s just a matter of putting the right words on it, comparing it to something different. It’s a democracy, but democracy is also diplomacy. You have to give a little and you have to take a little. You can’t just say “no! I won’t do this, I won’t do that!” I think in the beginning it was very difficult for me to change my mind, if I got my mind set on something that was just the way it had to be. I think I’m getting better. If Mads says “I think this theme is a little…” I’m getting better at listening to what the guys say. I think I was afraid of loosing control in the beginning. But now I’m not so much about control anymore.

Mads: Yeah, your loosing up. Well you grew more confident in your writing I suppose.

Kasper: Yes and I grew more confident in the social decision in the band.

Mads: Yeah, exactly. The common overall decision.

Kasper: We love each other so much.

Mads: We’re so dear to each others.

Kasper: No, we don’t love each others, we actually hate each others.

[both laughing]

It sounds all so easy.

Mads: Yeah, doesn’t it.

Kasper: It is very easy.

Mads: At times we really can disagree. But we always end up agreeing somehow. That’s what’s making it worth. We end up producing the music we all love after all. Each person gives his thing to it. Putting his finger print on it.

Kasper: It doesn’t have to be hard. I wouldn’t say that it has to be difficult, before it turns out to be good. Sometimes making music or creating art can com very easy [snips with his fingers]. Brilliant stuff can come out like that. But sometimes you have to spend a longer time to getting the ideas right, or finding the path. That’s the beautiful thing, that there is no formula, at least not for me. You can’t say that if we walk into this corner and wait here for two minutes, the ideas are just gonna come rushing to us. It’s not like that, because the ideas can come at the weirdest times. Being on tour, or being in the supermarket or in the studio on the third month. You can not control it completely. I think this is something we are getting better at accepting it, that the music has to take the control. The music comes first. We don’t come first. We’re in the band, but the music is in front of us. We’re not in front of the music. A lot of people misunderstand that when they go into the music business. They think “oh, I wanna be a rock star, I wanna be famous, I wanna have hit singles and I wanna be on the front cover of all the magazines.” To me that’s completely wrong, because they’re putting themselves in front of the music. That’s not what it’s about. The music is a sacrifice. It’s a holy thing somehow, at least the beautiful music. It comes when you least expect it.

Do you get corrupted by the music industry sometimes?

Mads: Well you do. Whenever the music business is powerful forces the musician to mimic what is successful, what is such a drag, because it kills the creativity and originality. It kills the young bands urge to create something new and unheard. So less power to the music business is more power to the art.

How did you win that struggle?

Kasper: We were one of the fortunate bands, who was given a lot of confidence from our record company from the beginning. That was a tendency that was not unusual at that time. People simply knew that it takes maybe two to three to maybe form albums for a band to develop into create their own sound. Nowadays you have to make it on the first album and if you don’t, you’re out. But then again a new thing is happening, which is very positive. You can’t really suppress the beautiful art, or the good ideas, because it will come anyway. If it’s there it will come the one way or the other. Like a tree growing, it will grow through. If you take the internet and the way the people are exchanging music on the internet. You see all the records company loosing power, simply because they have been too concerned with making the big dope. A lot of young people don’t give a shit, because they know there are a lot a of little weird artists around the world. And the way to get it is a lot easier now, because you have iTunes or the different places on the net, where you can write I like this and there’s like a list with hundred other artists that are related. There’s a freer flow of music, than there used to be. I think in the future we will see even more of that.

I still believe it’s rather hard to get to know these artists. You have to be into music to find these people. If you’re looking at most of the radio stations in Switzerland, they are playing the same tunes over and over again.

Kasper: If you’re interested in music you shouldn’t listen to the radio stations. They are all controlled by record companies and they are controlled by the music charts in England and in America. So they look at the charts for this week and say we better play the same as they play on BBC or we will loose money. Again this is very stupid and very short-sighted. If they were being more experimenting, they might loose listeners at the beginning, but in the long run, they would gain a lot of new listeners, because people are getting fed up with the same pop shit, with the same industrial music.
You might not agree with, but even if people are not that much into music, they have a taste. At least of the people that we know, where we come from all you see on statistic is that radio stations are closing down, they are loosing listeners because they don’t wanna put up with that anymore. They are looking for new ways to find music. That might not be people in the thirties, but if you ask people in their teens or beginning of the twenties, they are much more into it, than people at our age, at least where we come from. I don’t how it is in Switzerland.

I’d like to agree with you, but I got a lot of friends who just listen to anything that is played on the radio.

Kasper: Do something about it. You are on the radio, you got the power.

I think it’s rather difficult to make people listen to other music, or at least to tell them, that there is other music.

Kasper: Well I don’t now too much about that. The people I hang with, my crowd are not listening to the radio. But I know that the common Dane is turning on the radio and they don’t care too much. But they are not setting the rules for the future. And I think in the future we wont see that materialistic approach, where people wanna buy CDs and own a lot of things. I think the tendency is going towards people downloading stuff, or paying someplace to be a member on a website and then they have free access to lots of different music, and then they pay again next month, instead of having all the stuff at home. That’s what I think is going to happen.
 
Wouldn’t you miss the sensation of a vinyl putting on your player?

Kasper: Well I will. But I think the vinyls are going to survive.

Mads: Like books.

Kasper: And you shouldn’t use vinyl as tapestry. I have to tell the listeners that we are in a room, that is covered with vinyl records on the walls. The sales of vinyl are going up in Europe. The CD is dead. It won’t take long and it’s gone, just like the cassette. But the vinyl has a special sound and also people still like to have the sleeve and the cove notes. I think that will stay.


09.02.2006, Abart, Zürich