Artist Interviews

Q&A: Miike Snow

By | Published on Wednesday 12 August 2009

Miike Snow

Formed in 2007, Miike Snow is made up of American singer-songwriter Andrew Wyatt and Swedish songwriting and production duo Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, aka Bloodshy & Avant. Separately they have already built up impressive CVs, Wyatt having just co-produced Daniel Merriweather’s debut album with Mark Ronson, and Bloodshy & Avant best known for their Grammy Award-winning work on Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’. Their debut UK single as Miike Snow is out this week via Sony/Columbia, with their eponymous debut album due out in October, meanwhile you can catch them live at Cargo in London on 21 Aug. Before all that, we spoke to Andrew Wyatt to ask our Same Six Questions.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I started by writing little songs on the piano when I was eight. We had a piano and my dad listened to a lot of Thelonious Monk, so I would try to come up with weird little melodies like him. I truly loved his music even as a child. Christian started out in Swedish punk bands, and listening to a lot of Misfits and Danzig, while Pontus grew up in a musical family and so had a lot of classical music floating around, as well as DJing and booking raver clubs in high school.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
We love a lot of different things… Nina Simone, Booka Shade, Swans. How do you reconcile that? I don’t have any answer. We just do what we do in the studio and that is our answer. Whatever instrument or chords or melody feels good to us, that’s what we go with!

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
We made this record in a studio in Sweden where we had a vast array of instruments and sounds lying about. Starting points, if you wish. From that perspective the song and the track are quite the same thing, it all gets traced-out at the same time. It could be any element that comes first: a vocal idea, a drum machine from an old organ. Or a joke. Seriously. We had a lot of fun making this record. So we just build it from there. I wish I could be more specific but it’s really more like a clothed orgy. We’d be shocked that we got good work done because it didn’t feel constrained at all.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Well, I think a key thing in establishing your own sound is to do like other artists do but not do AS they do. Be creative, take risks, talk about things that have emotional value to you but do it in a way that doesn’t insult the intelligence of those you respect, but as Rakim said: “Don’t sweat the technique”. Some giants: Richard D James, Bjork, Neil Young, Brian Eno.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?

Thank you for illegally downloading our album. Now please come to our concert and buy a t-shirt.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?

Right now our focus has been expanding the dimensions of our live show. It’s become more of a rave, wherein we play 12″ versions of several of our songs. We are loving the long departures. But now we’ve also begun to have people come down to the shows who know all the songs. So for them it’s like, we throw you up in the air for eight minutes or so, then catch you with a chorus that you know and hopefully love. I always feel those are the best concerts – not too hard to get a foothold as the listener, but also not too easy!

MORE>> www.myspace.com/miikesnow



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