Miike Snow want to dance with somebody...
Despite what Mark Ronson and Dr Dre would have you believe, producing has to be one of the more thankless jobs in popular music. Forever locked in dark, clinical looking studios, they spend all their time writing melodies, and fretting over drum sounds, just for some douche with white teeth to jump in and take all the glory. It must suck bad.
It definitely got to Kristian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, the Grammy Award-winning production team behind Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic'. Deciding that they’d had enough of skinny blondes like Madonna and Kylie stealing their thunder, the Swedish duo formed Miike Snow with Fires of Rome collaborator Andrew Wyatt as a way to make some dance hits of their own. Sounding like an even more brain-pickling version of Justice meeting The Police, I’m sort of glad they did.
First up, and I have to ask this, you’ve worked with Madonna, Britney Spears and Vampire Weekend. Who’s been the best to work with?
Kristian: Madonna’s great. She’s really easy to get along with and is really hard-working. All of the big names are always easier to work with; it’s the new-comers that you usually end up having problems with.
Is that what made you wind-down the producing thing and start a band?
Me and Pontus have been in bands since we we’re 15, but most people seem to know us from stuff we’ve done for other people. It’s weird really, we never set out to be producers; it just sort of ended up that way. I don’t even know what one is supposed to do.
So the Miike Snow thing is almost a way to isolate you from your studio work?
Yeah. I guess it’s like if you were a designer and someone asked you design a shopping mall with shops here and walks here, you’d do it, but it’s not quite as fun as making whatever you want. With Miike Snow we have the total freedom to write and perform what we like. It allows us to make music without boundaries.
Producing and writing for other people is a great job, but Miike Snow is not a job.
What influences your work?
I don’t really know what my influences are. I mean, I know what I like, but I don’t really think about music in that way. Me, Pontius and Andrew all try and make music we actually like rather than trying to make it sound like this or that.
So you never get that thing when you’re half way through writing a song only to realise you heard it on the radio that morning?
Ha ha ha, sometimes I get that. When me and Pontus are making songs I’m often like, “I really like this; is this someone else’s song?” Most of the time it’s not, but sometimes I do get a strange feeling of déjà vu with melodies.
I heard you used to be in a punk rock band – how do you go from 3 chord punk to trippy dance music?
I got into music through skateboarding so the punk rock scene seemed a natural place to fall into, I was in another band every couple of months. However, it wasn’t really until we started making songs for other people that I started to think, “oh this pop shit’s good”.
I got to say that the last couple of years have seen both punk rock and dance music really come together. You can’t say that Justice aren’t a little bit punk? I really like the way they’re able to make music that you want to dance to, but really has that edge to it as well.
Loads of my favourite bands came from Sweden when I was growing up. What’s with the scene out there, dose the government put stuff in the water?
Sweden has a great scene for rock bands and indie bands. I think we’ve always had a great sense of melody; look at ABBA for example. But we also really benefit from standing outside the whole UK/US scenes. It means we can stand outside and choose the best bits without having to be a part of it.
It’s also really dark most of the time, so there’s nothing to do but stay in the studio.
Beer is also really expensive so you can’t get drunk all the time…
Yeah, that certainly helps too.
Miike Snow are about the set off on a mammoth US tour, but will be back in the UK over the summer. Until then, check out some footage of their show at the Scala here.
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