Band der Woche: Monoton Tid

Monoton Tid aus Schweden verbinden kühlen Minimal Synth mit eingängigen Pop-Momenten und einer düsteren, persönlichen Atmosphäre. Am 14. August erscheint über BLCK FLWRS eine retrospektive Compilation mit frühen Demos und bisher unveröffentlichten Aufnahmen. Wir haben mit der Band über ihre Entstehung, ihren Sound und die Geschichte hinter den Songs gesprochen.

Who is behind Monoton Tid?
Monoton Tid is Emilia (vocals/synth), Fredrik (synth) and Vince (bass guitar/synth/vocals).

How did you meet, and wha made you decide to start the project?
Vince: The band started a few years ago after I first purchased a drum machine and a Korg Monologue synth, and began to play around with that setup. Around this time I was listening a lot to things like the [i]Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics[/i] compilation and finding bands from the old French minimal synth wave, such as Deux and KaS Product. I have always played in different bands but this was the first time venturing into synth-based music and writing songs with just a synth and bass guitar. I had recently met Fredrik and we had talked about doing some music together, so I sent him a few of the songs I had written in this style and we got into a rehearsal space and tried them out. It felt worth pursuing, so we discussed bringing in a singer and both knew Emilia and felt she would be a great fit. Her voice worked wonderfully and really helped shape the sound of the songs. We started to practice and then put on a small show for friends at the rehearsal space. After that we recorded our demo tape on my old 4-track and did some local shows and went from there.

If you had to describe your music without using any musical terminology, how would you portray it?
Vince: Monoton Tid’s music is cold and mechanical. But it seems to be a theme that somewhere under the gloom and mechanisation lies a simple pop song, as it’s something we’re all into.

What themes are you currently drawn to in your work?
Emilia: The lyrics speak mostly of frustration, anxiety and desire for change, which brings about personal conflict.

How are your music pieces created? Where does the impulse to create something come from for you?
Vince: Most all the songs start with a home demo, usually just stripped-down versions that I record and then send to Emilia and Fredrik. Then we meet up to try songs out and flesh out ideas, usually trying some different synth sounds to find something that fits and maybe change some lyrics. The final songs are quite similar to the initial home demo; we could have spent more time adding layers and different sounds on the tracks, but then they wouldn’t feel like Monoton Tid songs.

Your album Monoton Tid comes out in mid-August. Could you take us through the journey from the very first spark of inspiration to the finished album?
Emilia: We released our first 7″ last year with Push My Buttons Records from Stockholm and since then the band has been inactive, due to other projects, family, moving cities etc. The forthcoming compilation will be released through Black Flowers (BLCK FLWRS), a new label and printing press from Gothenburg. It is more a retrospective of the band during the couple of years we were active, compiling early demos and unreleased tracks.
Vince: So the songs have been sitting there gathering dust, but are now newly mixed for the compilation. There are songs we really liked to play there, so it’s nice they will see the light of day. The compilation features a couple of instrumental tracks, which were just the first things I tried out with the drum machine and synth together, without much expectation, but they led to the earliest songs (‚Den monotona tiden‘, ‚Statisk‘ and ‚Repetition‘).
Emilia: All the songs we did with Monoton Tid were sung in Swedish; however, we did try out a couple of songs in English, and put them in our live set a few times too. They felt right and worked with the rest of our songs, so this compilation features the recorded versions we have of those two tracks, ‚Shattered Lines‘ and ‚Head On Fire‘.
Vince: Other songs such as ‚Min entropi‘ and ‚Vågorna‘ have been staples in our live set since the early days of the band, and these versions were recorded at the same time as our demo tape, however they were never properly released until now.
The opening track ‚Mellan en och fyra väggar‘ is the sound of Monoton Tid, a kind of definitive statement musically. We had a certain sound that we wanted to maintain with Monoton Tid, and we never really deviated from it, and this track is kind of that sound in full force.

How do your surroundings impact your art?
Emilia: The music has been influenced by our surroundings, both the cities we have lived in and the general landscape of Sweden.
We’re all avid readers and like a lot of films too, so the music has been affected by literature and cinema, not just the bands we listen to.

How important is the visual side of Monoton Tid to you? How does the visual aspect relate to and reflect your music?
Vince: Around the time we started Monoton Tid our interest in films grew alongside it, so the visual aspect became more important. At some point early on we did a show at a movie theatre and took the opportunity to play with a visual backdrop. Emilia put together a video and we tried it out. We felt an instant change in our live set and performance, so after that show we saved up some band money and bought our own projector, so that we could continue to have visuals at our live show. Emilia learnt a video editing program and continued to try out new ideas, mostly pieced together from short videos she had filmed both around the city and out in nature. It made a great contrast for the backdrop.
Emilia: It’s been important both for us performing and for the audience to create a kind of immersive space that relates to the music. It turned the shows from being a few people playing on stage to a complete environment.

Check out the forthcoming compilation released by BLCK FLWRS on August 14th, with limited copies available to order on cassette.

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