![]() The songs came to present themselves to us bit by bit, through an endless, lighthearted series of erratic choices. We never worried about following a clear path, trusting that the conscious decision not to worry would be enough to lead us right, and that right doesn't necessarily have to mean rational or even reasonable. Together we made up a downstairs world of explosive colors, big, warm sounds and a very, very uninhibited work process. ![]() A secluded work space close to home but off the earth's surface, a more than generous timeline, and the patient and brilliant sixth member we needed to get through the whole thing safely. Our close friend and sound aficionado of choice Johannes Berglund and his studio in Stockholm presented us with an ideal package for the endeavor. ![]() In our eagerness to please no one but ourselves this time around, we decided to take on the challenge of producing our own music for the first time ever. We named the album "Optica," after the science of light.įor "Optica," we took a sharp turn from the greyscale, indoor landscape of our previous album "Work" in pursuit of boldness, and brightness. Plus, Adam and I could not stop talking about meteors and comets. For me it has been about how one can perceive a place or a person differently depending on the weather or what time of the day you encounter them, and about how I repeatedly chose to sit brick still in the sun on the curb rather than going for lunch with the others because of an absolute need I have to absorb things, like light, alone and consciously to function properly. For some of us it has had a lot to do with photography and visual ideas, everything from light design on stage to finding a shade of a color that says something beyond its name. Over this past year, our band has constantly talked about light. When the light returns to our part of the world in the spring, the metamorphosis of our inhabitants is as shocking as it is endearing, year after year. There are places you can go to receive synthetic sunlight for lack of the real thing during the long winter. Actual doctors prescribe light to us as a cure for ailments and deficiencies. But ask anyone living within or bordering on the Arctic circle and they will most likely have more to say about it than folks from other latitudes. As far as light goes, it may seem excessive to proclaim its significance. During our time underground we have thoroughly discussed both possible scenarios. According to apocalyptic prophecies it is also meant to be the end of time - lights out. 2013 is meant to be the year of our band's 10th anniversary. All the while, we were discussing times long since past in lyrics and musical references, as well as the future, of music, of ourselves, and the world above us. Seasons came and went while we plodded along in the studio, below ground, where the only references to time passing was whether the space heater was on or off and whether we felt hungry or not. ![]() Time, because although we have been known to take our fair share of it between releases, this became the album where we made a conscious decision not to let time be anything but an anonymous passer-by. "Optica," our fourth album, was built on a foundation of those two basic and elusive ideas - time and light. What I didn't know back then, however, was that years travel by at the speed of light. I just always knew that we would last through the years, and I pinned that certainty onto the man and what he said, as one does when one knows something one can't explain any better than that. We have looked back and laughed at moments of almost picturesque struggle, many times, but that's not what I'm talking about. It was nice of him, and I think I might have held onto that one shout, not as words of solace or reassurance, but as an absolute truth. "Don't worry, in ten years you will think back at this moment and laugh!" A man at a gas station shouted at us from across the road: There was a time when we were dragging our instruments along Camden Road on our way from the underground to our very first London show, stopping every other minute for me to catch up with the taller members of our unit, in the hopes of someone having miraculously come up with a painless way to lug an entire orchestra across town on foot. I know that if I did, it was in terms of how much longer I thought it would take for ten years to pass. Ten years is a very long time, when you're young.īack when we were 'four boys and one girl who play together in a band,' I don't know if any of us bothered to think much about where we would be ten years later. And as "always" is a reference to time, and time is a relative concept, don't believe anything I say about it except this: Time is a complicated thing, I've always known that.
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