Having bands in for band interviews is one of the nicest things about the podcast we have established. And this month we can present our first band interview with an established band that has released records and is touring regularly.
The Danish band Ring Them Bells is a band with their roots in indie rock music from the 90’s, but has developed over the years into something more nuanced. The band has references to Madrugada, U2 and Iggy Pop and is hovering in a space between punk, atmospheric rock, indie rock and pop music.
They just released their third studio album and we invited the lead singer and song writer of the band, Johannes Nidam, for a talk about how the album came about, the creative processes, how they work in the band, studio recordings and marketing, promotion and concerts.
It became a very nice conversation and enlightening for guys like Anders, Thomas and I that never came so far with Blue On Blue. This is great content and insights for any upcoming band to get an idea of how todays music industry works at the lower tiers of the system. Hint: no one is paying you a private jet!
Summer is here and The Far Distance Band Podcast will having a break until August. When we are back we are ready to share new Blue On Blue music with you and interesting band interviews.
We were supposed to have another band interview, but that crashed and then we decided to take a talk about Anders and his sample music he has been making over the last 25-30 years. Anders takes us back to how he as a teenager started experimenting with cassette recorders to make sampled music through to the days of his first sampler to make more professional sounding electronic sample music back in the early 1990’s.
It is a wonderful conversation where Anders opens up the world of sampled music, how it works and how he is making his sampled music creatively.
Anybody with interest in sampled music will find this episode great with lots of insigths on how to make sampled music and how to find creative inspiration in the process of creating electronic music.
This summer Niels had the time to dig deep into Soundcloud to screen music and reach out to possible new guests for our Band Interview segment. He stumpled upon the Finnish band Sorot. Atmospheric instrumental music with very strong melodic base. He reached out to guy behind this one-man-band, Samuli Turunen, and he accepted the invitation to have a talk about his music.
It became a nice talk about how Samuli creates his music and how he works with his music idea seeds. But first and foremost we talked about his main inspiration: The whether. How the changing seasons influences his music and how he expresses the season characteristics in his music.
As an easter egg: one of us in the recording falls asleep during the recording – find out who!
We made a new song and it is time to have a talk about it after a handful of band interviews the last months.
We discovered a Talk Talk song from the 1984-album It’s My Life. It’s You being the last track on side B. The song intriqued me, Niels, and we ended up doing a cover version of the song. Whoever knows the song will understand we made a quite different kind of art work out of the wonderful piece of music when listening to our version
Anders and I here have a talk about the original song and the creative process we went through to end up with our own interpretation of the song.
The Far Distance Band podcast is back. The release frequency is now settled at one episode per month and episodes will be released in the first week every month.
In November we released the first half of a band interview with EOAN. Niels has recently got in contact with a very old acquaintance from his teen years that also makes music. Of course, we invited him in for a talk about his band.
Morten is equal to the one-man-band EOAN. The style is melodic, atmospheric and with references to the 80’s. Being a one-man-band is something Niels also did for a handful of years. So Morten and Niels have a talk about the music and how to work as a one-man-band.
In this second episode we dig into EOANs music and how Morten creatively and practically is working with developing music as a one-man-band.
The episode has reflections and insights on how to work creatively and how to shape musical landscapes when you work alone with music.
First a big excuse for the long break!
This is a part time initiative and this summer it has simply not been possible to record any podcasts for the show. Frequency will also scale down as we continue, but we are aiming at releasing one episode pr month.
It is time for another band interview in The Far Distance Band Podcast. Niels has recently got in contact with a very old acquaintance from his teen years that also makes music. Of course, we invited him in for a talk about his band.
Morten is equal to the one-man-band EOAN. The style is melodic, atmospheric and with references to the 80’s.
Being a one-man-band is something Niels also did for a handful of years. So Morten and Niels have a talk about the music and how to work as a one-man-band. But it also become a wonderful talk about self-confidence and golden days of teen-past.
The episode offers insights into how it is working as a one man band and how to work creatively when it is you and yourself creating music.
We are starting to get band interviews into the box and this episode is our second band interview. We have a visit from Aamer Khan from Copenhagen, Denmark. He is the head guy in a three piece playing rock music with a hint of classic rock, indie rock and a pinch of Ozzy.
Aamer is a guitarist and has an almost lifelong passion for gear, pedals, plug-ins and any sound-related issue that helps him shape his expression from the six string. We dig into this passion together with him and it has become a lovely podcast episode.
On our website www.blueonblue.brizy.site you will find a section dedicated to Aamer Khan under 'Band Interviews'. Here you will find a short description and link to his music online.
Please enjoy.
Guitar sound, guitar gear and guitar passion - this is what we dig into in this episode. Niels explains the roots of his guitar passion, how he learned to play it and how his guitar expression and sound has evolved over years.
The episode has advice and knowledge-sharing on how to develop as a guitarist and how to develop your sound and expression.
This is our first band interview. Danish Copenhagen-based Mørkt Stof (Danish for 'Dark Matter') dropped by our virtual podcast studio for a band-to-band talk about shaping sound and expression and digging into how they work as a band. Mørkt Stof plays slow-core rock music with the discourse that less is more and they create wonderful rock sound landscapes with simple but very effective use of the instruments from each of the five band members. The episode contains advice on how to attach song making in a band.
Dig Mørkt Stof on their visually very nice Spotify profile.
open.spotify.com/artist/10fWsTmyS…vYTCCUY9rfzJit8g
We dig into the bass in this episode. Anders shares how he ended up with the bass in his early teen years and we dive into the gear he is using and the sound profile he has developed. Then he explains his bass style and we have a talk about his bass icons. Finally, we circulate around the interaction between us in the band with focus on the function of Anders' bass play in our three-piece set-up.
This episode contains advice and insights on developing bass lines and the bass' function in the creative process of creating songs.
This is part 2 with insigths into the most legendary Blue On Blue concerts back in the 00's. We have a talk about the anecdotes from our live performances and give an account of atmosphere, live recordings, concert places etc during our live band-period from 2004-2010. The episode includes lots of high quality sound bits from a concert recorded by a professional live recording company. This live album is also now available for listening at the Blue On Blue Soundcloud site.
(Special edition episode in Danish)
I den her særudgave af The Far Distance Band Podcast tager har vi gæst Jonas Hansen med ombord til en grundig snak om baggrunden for teksten til The Radio They Fear: Radio24syv skandalen og den politiske lukning af radioen. Det bliver til en god snak om baggrunden for, hvorfor det endte, som det endte, forløbet omkring lukningen og motiver og bevæggrunde for de to politiske partier i centrum i forbindelse med det - for ytringsfriheden - så foruroligende forløb.
In this episode we go back in history to when we were all living in Copenhagen before 2010. We share how it was to be an amateur rock band in Copenhagen in the 00's struggling for fame and what efforts we did to get our gigs. We also share our concert setup and we ended up making DIY concerts to get gigs! The episode includes tips on how too get gigs.
In this episode we dig into the political scandal from Denmark that inspired the lyric for 'The Radio They Fear'. The radio station Radio 24syv was shut down in a dirty corruptive game by the political establishment. It was too open mouthed and too uncompromising in revealing lies and hypocracy which even in Denmark can lead to corruption. Listen and learn what inspired Niels for this lyric. The episode contains advice on lyric development.
We continue digging into our new song "The Radio They Fear". In this episode we go through how the song went from simple draft to the fully recorded version. We explain the creative process that formed the different parts of the song including choice of instruments, how a simple intermezzo turned into a chaos piece and a Hey Judeistic outro, The episode includes advice on how to shape a simple draft melody line into a complex and intriguing structure.
We are launching a new track! We start the fly-in to publishing our new song The Radio They Fear with an episode where we describe the seed of the song and how it started to shape up. We run through the form and style of the track and how we approached the early track in each of our ends of Europe. We also launch a new theme we will cover in the future: Marketing. The episode includes advice on building songs in the early phase.
This is our first guest episode. We have a very nice talk with Kasper Levin - old friend, band member and former home studie owner - about his old home studio he built back around 2004, his recording techniques and building his skill as music producer, his studio set-up and in-between anecdotes from our time together in a band in the mid-1990's. The episode includes advice on recording techniques and hardware and software. Enjoy!
In this episode we have our first talk about the gear we use. We focus on the recording software we use - Pro Tools - and take a first look at how we use it, the functionalities of the sofware, good and bad things and how it helped us create the sound in our new song "I Drag My Feet Along". The episode includes feedback and advice on Pro Tools as home studio tool and the functionalities to shape music.
In this third part of the first Creative-process episode, we take a first look at the lyrical universe of Blue On Blue, where the inspiration to the lyrics come from, the bands lyrical thematics and how it has changed over the years. We go through the meaning of the lyric for "I Drag My Feet Along" and we have short sneaky-peaky bits of all the tracks of the upcoming EP. Finally, we sum up the full duration of preparing "I Drag My Feet Along" from start to end. This episode offers inspiration and tools to develop lyrics.
In this second part of the first Creative-process-episode we dig into how the songs are matured and how the full expression is formed. We look at the two main elements forming the expression of our songs: 1) the combination of instruments and 2) the recording techniques. Here of course we also discuss the 1000 km challenges for this part of the process. The episode offers inspiration to how bands can form the expression they are searching for.