♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ - Hello, and welcome to Dynaudio Unheard. My name is Christopher and I'm your host. He makes music to inspire and motivate. To share the ups and downs. And ELO falls through on that promise with his captivating music and personality. ELO, here you go, the mic. - Thank you. - Thank you so much for being here. - Thank you for having me. - We just saw your recording session in the studio. - Yeah. - How was it? - It was pretty scary, actually. Scary, but fun at the same time. 'Cuz you know, when you're in the studio normally you don't have like hundred people looking at you. But I thought it was good. It was actually fun to like record in front of people and having well-known producer help you through it. So it was a scary experience but pretty good. - You're not the first to say that. And it is like one of the previous artists described it as being a fish in a fish bowl. - You're just in there, in a closed environment and everyone is staring. - Everyone is looking at you, like, everyone is looking at you. So that was, that was scary in the beginning but as we progress, it was, it got fun. And people are cheering you on and you know, you could just feel the energy from outside so that was fun. - That's cool. - Yeah. - One of the things that I noticed was that you approached your recording time very differently from some of the other artists. And you were kind of dissecting your lyrics a little bit and focusing in. Can you talk a little bit about what it was that you were trying to do? - Yeah, well, when I'm recording I like to like, slice my lyrics up into pieces. So I'll probably start with the chorus, If the song starts with the chorus, I'll take that, make that good and then proceed to the verse, and then bridge, just slice by slice. The reason I do that is because then I get to like, record the best of the chorus, the best of the verse, the best of, instead of just taking one take, and then you know. - So you really have time to work it through, right? - Yeah, you really have time like to work it through. If there're some words that has to be pronounced differently then you can do that, when you work the way I work. - Is that, does that come from experience? Have you tried to do it differently before? - Yeah, I think it comes from experience. There's been times where I had to record one takes and if, when I did that, like and then I messed up a word, then you know, you have to start from beginning again. And so this way gives me advantage that I can do it on my, like, the way I want to do it, so. - And I could imagine it also gives you a little bit of freedom to play around. Right? - Yeah, it does because you know when you start by recording one piece, then all the creativity that you get recording that one piece, you can put in that one piece, you know. So if I'm recording a chorus, and suddenly we find that this sound sounds good. Then I can just put it in the chorus. So you just, while you're recording you get creativity coming to you at the same time, so. - I think that it was just a really good glimpse into the whole recording process, right? Which I could see that the audience out here, they, they gave you a lot of love. - Yeah, they did, they did. That was awesome. That was very good, like, they had a lot of energy. They were smiling, you know, so it's perfect. I loved it. - And ELO, I know that with your music, and just to let everyone know, we talked before so we have, we've been through a little bit of it and so I know that you have a huge desire to try and inspire and motivate people. Can you try and talk a little bit about why that's important to you? - Yeah, well, it's important because I've had times in my life where I felt like I was down. I've experienced depression and you know, I've experienced death in my family and stuff like that. And I know it's a normal thing for a lot of people to go through hard times, but the bad thing is we don't talk too much about it. - That's true. - You know, we hide from the bad things of life. And I'm just trying to bring that up as a topic as well in my music, to say, you know what, you're not alone. No matter what you're going through in your life, it's normal that we go through these things, these feelings, these emotions, and we shouldn't try to hide them. We should try to help each other through them. - And I know that, you said you've been through some downs, and I know that you lost your father when you were young. You came to Denmark when you were... - 10 years. - A kid, yeah. You had to go to language school, start in regular school, you were good at football, a tackling. I mean there's been plenty of downs but one of the things that's so striking about you is that you're so positive. I mean, how do you manage to get all of that great positive energy? - I think for me, it's, you know, life happens. Sometimes life is just, it happens, we can't really we can't choose what's gonna happen tomorrow, we can only live and try to do our best while we're here. And I think for me, I recognized that in a young age. That you know what, sometimes life happens, and you need people around you when life happens, and by that, again I believe that there's a higher power somewhere. I believe in a God so that gives me strength as well. So, yeah. - And I mean, again, through all of that adversity that you've met, you've always managed to pull through, right? One of the things we talked about was losing soccer or football, right, your big passion. And then you just, you picked up a notebook and you started scribbling down and something came out of that. - Well, it wasn't that simple. - I'm really over simplifying, I know. - It wasn't that simple, but yeah, I know what you mean. And that's the thing with life, because sometimes when something that you love is taken away from you, then something good will come at some point. We just have to keep going, keep believing and keep trusting that you're going to make it, no matter what you're going through. - And as you said, it wasn't that simple. And do you mind, digging a little bit into that process? How did you go through that period of time and please don't spare the complexity. - Well, first of all, you know, when you have a dream and you have something that you love so much that this is what you want to do, and that gets taken away from you, you break down, of course. I was in tears, I was crying, I was depressed. I was lonely because most of my friends that I had were playing football and now I couldn't be part of the games, you know. So I had to find a place where I could bring all that sorrow down, bring all those thoughts down. As a man, we don't talk too much about emotions, we are very bad at expressing ourselves, and I was bad, I was an introvert, all those kind of things. But then I found that writing my feelings down in a notebook writing my feelings, like just expressing myself really helped me, was like therapy for me. And that's how I started making music, just writing what I'm feeling, writing it down. Making poems out of it and all those kinds of things, so that really helped me to break through and just find a new passion. A new love in music. - And it really has been finding that new love, right? And I mean, on that journey, you're here now you're part of KærligHeden, which is a big deal here in Denmark. A lot of big Danish artists have come through KærligHeden. You're gonna play at Livecam here later. You're among the eight finalists, they're gonna choose three. And I mean, that must be an amazing feeling. - It is. Oh, praise to the most. It really, really is. It's pretty dope just to sit next to you here, talking. Like Dynaudio, this is pretty big for an upcoming artist. So this is a great opprtunity for me to show my talents, to show what I have and yeah, make new contacts, make a new network, bring my music out to the people, so I'm just thankful to have the opportunity. - And I mean, that was one of the things that we also talked about your approach to this whole KærligHeden and that you feel like you're already reaping the benefits. - Yeah, definitely. - And how are you going about that? - Well, I'm just, I'm actually just thankful of the opportunity and when you are thankful of something you start to look at the positive sides instead of focusing on the negative sides. So right now, I'm just looking at the positive sides. I got people, new connections, the people playing at KærligHeden are now my friends, you know, so we can make music together. Producers that we meet. You know, just the whole network, the music business in itself. You just get to have a foot in and that's what all this has given me, so yeah. - What do you think it would mean for your career, if you were chosen among the final three? - I think it would be a really sick thing to happen. It would be pretty good and I think it would make you know, not a lot of people know who ELO is but maybe if I win, I think my name will be somewhere up there, for the upcoming in the Danish music business so it could be nice if it happens. I hope it really happens. - You'll being a little bit modest now. We were talking about networking and you're mentioning it here again right? And I think that that's a really great part about KærligHeden. When you start to look into it, It really is something that opens up the music business to you, right? - Yeah, it does open doors, it does open, yeah, like I said, you get to know people that you never knew. Because as an upcoming artist, it's difficult to go to these kind of parties and meet people that don't know who you are. But once you are KærligHeden, once you're doing this kind of thing, then people start to recognize, "Oh! It's that kid from KærligHeden." "Oh! It's that kid who was recording in the fish tank." So, it gives you, people start to recognize who you are. And that helps a lot. - Definitely. - ELO, I have a final question. - Yeah. - And it's a little bit abstract, so you have to imagine that somehow we built a time machine, and you can use that time machine to go back to the day you started out with music and give yourself one piece of advice that would make the journey easier. What would that piece of advice be? - Wow, um. I think it would be, stop wasting time and get to work. Yeah, I think it would be stop wasting time and get to work because you have something which is special and the world needs to see it. - Perfect, ELO, I know you're playing at Livecam later. It's at eight, right? - Eight. - So, all of you, if you are at Smukfest and you really want to listen to some cool hiphop, make sure to be at Livecam at eight tonight and cheer for our boy, ELO. See you later. ♪ Got that chocolate on my mind ♪ ♪ Milk and honey ♪ ♪ That's the blessing that Moses had to find ♪ ♪ So one Molly for my lot ♪ ♪ You don't know that there is more ♪ ♪ Than the TV ♪