- Hello my name is Lennart. - Hello I'm Jesper. - Hi, my name is Steffan Jorgensen, and I'm from the band Gwænno. - Hello, and welcome to Dynaudio's Unheard. My name is Christopher, and I'm your host. With me, I have Gwænno today. They have a poetic urban pop sound that's honest, filled with love, and depth. Guys, you've just played in the Unheard studio, just come out, how was the experience? - It was very nice, first of all because when you record stuff, you're usually in the safe zone of your own space. And now, we had to do it in this like open, open container, so you can definitely feel the difference between performing live and recording live. Because when we do live sessions there's only us there. So yeah, it was a cool mixture between a gig and a recording session. - Yeah, and at some point I saw that the audience was just like completely loving you guys, right? They were feeling it. - It was very, it was terrifying actually. But still very nice. - A little bit closer than when you're on stage, right? - Yeah. - It was really close. - You really know how animals feel in zoo. - Okay, so Steffan, we spoke before we got down here a little bit for an article that I wrote. And one of the things that we talked a little bit about was your childhood and the musical environment that you grew up in. And you told me that your dad had 1700 - 700 yeah. - CDs. And I think that's, it was everything from Nora Jones to, - Napalm Death. - Exactly. How has that diversity influenced the music that you guys create? - It has had a huge impact on the way that I write music, and in the way I play music, and also, when these guys come on, when we play live, Lennart and Jesper, it's the live band, and I write the music. But yeah, it has had a very big impact because, you know like I said, it's everything from very soft music to very hard music. It's old Death Row, West Coast rap, it's Mew, it's Nick Cave... It's everything... So I've been inspired by everything from '90s Mariah Carey to the Good Life by Kashmir. Yeah, a lot of impact. And when I started to play music, it was like, it revolved around Nirvana and a little more hard music, but I just needed to combine the melodic with the hard, and I think you should allow yourself to be soft, because many musicians I think, I don't know, may be a tiny bit afraid of showing those feelings. - Yeah. - In the right package they are not as corny as, - But how does that, Steffan, and Lennart and Jesper, how does that get expressed when you're in the studio here, trying to combine all of these emotions, what is it that comes to the surface? I don't know because for this session right here, we took some numbers and we dialled them down. So the expression you saw here today will not be the same expression that you will see on Live Camp tomorrow. There it's more, it gets a stadium sound, it gets pushed out. And here it's very down-to-earth, but we got that element of just a pop song with a hook, and a clear hook and a clear verse. And then we got this sort of wit sound from the push controller and the keys. And the trap-urban sound from the drum pad, and then we get the pop song from my voice and the guitar. And those three combined, it's a very easily digestible, but also tastes good, yeah. - Lennart when you join up with Steffan and have to go out and do a live performance, how do you tap into Steffan's energy? - I remembered it as I had to put guitar in his music, and there was no guitar in his music. So it was not easy but again it was a layer that had not existed. I really don't know, but as we are now, it's very different as it was in 2016, when we just started. So we are just evolved to where we are now, together. Steffan is writing the music and we're just live band but again we evolved in this live scene together, so yeah. - And one of the things that I read before, before we got here to Smukfest, was a review of your performance at the Jelling festival, where you really got a lot of praise for these feelings that you give as a live band. I think that one of the sentences was like, you have this mix between really upbeat happiness, and you can just change like that into something that's melancholic, that brings out some sadness in the song. How do you go about making such a change in one song, or even in a live performance. - It's a bit funny because, I don't know who it was, but there was a guy that come over to us and said, "You can't really dance to this," because every song is half-tempo, or what you call it. We don't have any upbeat songs, you can't go and just dance to it, again you feel the punch and I think it's very important for us, when Steffan, Gwænno sits in the studio, he makes this music and have this punch, you can hear it in your headphones, and we want to give that feeling too when we are on the live stage so, it is about... We're only three on stage so we have a lot of space that we can use, so we don't, what you call it... I don't know, but we just we have a lot of space when we are just three people. So Jesper can smash his drums and I can play very, very loud guitars. Yeah so. - Okay my next question is more with, when do you know that you have a good song, or a good track or... - A lot of things comes into play when talking about a good song, because a good song can handle being cut down to that set-up we had in there. And a good song can handle, get pumped up to what we will do upstage. A good song, I don't know, it's when actually the best, the best way to see if you have a great song is if people tell you you have a great song. - But I guess that you must have a, I at least imagine that when you're in the studio, you come up with 10 thousand ideas right? And at some point one of these ideas will just make you go "Shit there it is!" - Yes exactly. And that's how it is, because you go about making your loops and you're writing your lyrics, and then yeah you get that, okay this is the song. And the lyric kind of writes itself, you don't have to force it out. That's how I know it's a good song, it's when the lyric comes natural. But also taking the song to the rehearsal room, and playing with drums and guitar, and you can instantly hear if it's a good song. - But how, do the two of you come into play when you then go into the rehearsing room, and try and add to this feeling of a good song that is about to be created? - For me, when I... Tomorrow we're going to play a new song for the first time. And when we're rehearsing that, when I started rehearsing for myself and then I, I get in mind how I want it to sound on stage, with as little as possible, from the original track, for the drums. The kick is there but the sound is bigger and the fills. So I don't know how, but for me it's just important to set my mark and make it even better. And with the latest song I really get this feeling of looking forward to play it because I think it's very good and just really want people to hear what Gwænno can do, and what we are able to do to add to the track also. - I mean, that has to be what you're going for, right? Having that excitement of, "Oh we're going to play something new tomorrow!" Right? That's what you're aiming for. - Yeah but to add something to what Jesper says, about what we're going to do when we have a new song, that Steffan has come with. It's very different, if it's a spacey song and it's very big, it's much easier to fill in the parts and just jam it out but today we rehearsed his new song we're going to play tomorrow here at Smukfest. It's a bit more tight and it's, it's very difficult to get the same energy in a tight song on stage because you have to just make it sound as big as it is on the track, and that can be a bit difficult when you, - How do you go about that, then is there any kind of technique that you can go to to add that, or is it just it comes as you rehearse? - My technique as a guitarist is to maybe keep it simple but, not sound too much in the sound, if you call it, universe, we have in that song. But it's very difficult, we have to make a decision, are we going to make this song louder than it is on the original track, or are we going to strip it a bit down, or what are we going to do? Because we are using back tracks, so we are very locked in what we can do, - In the arrangement. - Yeah in the arrangement of the song. It's very different. - Yeah. - Okay guys, one of the things that I know Steffan does a lot, is to kind of disappear in the studio. Spending hours and hours listening to songs, finding inspiration. Steffan if you could start out by talking a little bit about that. - Okay I have a side job as a substitute teacher, and I work that job for like two weeks at a time, and then the rest of the time it's music. So my day starts like this, I wake up at around seven, because I've gotten older, I don't sleep in longer than that. And then I go up to the town center, like mall, get a cup of coffee from the baker up there. Drink that, go to the studio. And then I sit there, and it's inside a building, so there's no windows, it's only the time on my computer that kind of shows, - Let's you know what time of day it is? - Exactly, and then I just sit there. Sometimes I don't do anything, I maybe just go on YouTube and check out new plug-ins, and just nerd out techniques. Or I just to make a loop at the beginning of the day, and I will listen to that the whole day, just writing stuff and putting things on, taking things off. And then eight hours goes by, and I'm a happy man. And nothing comes out of that necessarily but most of the times it's just for my pleasure. And that's just how the project got started because I had a lot of things that I started with doing as my own pleasure. And then I noticed, okay there's actually songs here, that I think are good enough for all of these people to hear. And it just needed something organic other than me, because Gwænno is a lot of, it's kind of crooner, crooner-ish. It's very much about the voice and the vocals, it's very much on top of the mix, so it just combines very good, and both Lennart and Jesper comes from a rock band background. So we get this very very unique mixture of urban studio made music combined with grandiose drum fills and big spacious guitars and my suffering vocal on top. So it's just perfect and I can, that's what I want to do, that's what I do, that's where I'm happy. You know I'm happy being at home with my girlfriend too, and doing normal stuff and go to work, but deep down, I know what I want to do and that's the thing. So as long as I can get things to go around, and pay my rent and stuff, because music is sometimes you earn and sometimes you don't, but as long as I get to do that then I'm very happy, and as long as I get to do that there will be more songs for the people and for myself, because mostly the songs are for myself. I like to just go listen to my own songs, sometimes I can go a week where I haven't heard anyone else but my own stuff. Because I go and visualize stuff and dream about stuff, being on that stage, playing that song, singing that song to people. - Is there an element that's kind of therapeutic? - I think so. You know I've always been like, it's better now, but I've been a bit quick-tempered and restless, and school was not very good for me. Of course it was good for me, because then I wouldn't be able to speak English with you, but the thing about being in one place for a long time, other than the studio, I'm not very good at that. So I think that's both a curse and a blessing. - It's kind of your happy place where you can go and actually find that one place where you can be. - Exactly. Exactly. I don't have to, you know it's me. I do what I want to do and I just love it. And look where it has gotten us, a chesterfield couch on Smukfest. - That's not a bad place to be right? - No. No. - And it is a good chesterfield, I mean it's very comfortable. - Yeah it's very good, very good. - Guys, my final question before I'm going to let you go. If you had to go back, all the way to 2016, when Gwænno the project got started, and you could give yourselves one piece of advice, something you've picked up over the last two years, what would that piece of advice be? - Can we both give it an answer? - Yes, please. - Okay, my thing is, you know the music life, it goes like this, uphill downhill, uphill downhill, and I feel like quitting at least once a week. And the most important thing is, never quit, because you get those highs and you get those lows, and I look at people who says, "I don't want to make music anymore because I didn't get that, I didn't get that, I didn't get that." But as long as you keep on going, and you evolve you become better and you practice, then you can do what you want because then it will be good at some point. So that's my advice for myself. - I think I've grown a lot since 2016, and I would say to myself that, fuck the music business. - How come? - I'm coming to a part now where I'm just like, it's all about the music. Two years ago I was really about, okay we got to do this because then we can talk to these people. There's a big festival, in Aarhus, every year called SPOT Festival, where the new artists is going. I remember myself that I was at a party where everybody goes, and I was like, "Oh I have to talk to this guy and this guy, that might help me in the music business." But it's really not, it's all about the music, and maybe one day people will love to hear our music, and they will come, more people to the stage. - And who knows, you guys might be one group performing from opening at Smukfest, right? - Yeah. - Exactly, you never know. That's the thing. - So, that's my advice. - I'm thinking, I'm thinking, but I really don't know what I would do right now. I'd probably have something, but mostly I would say, rehearse, or no, not rehearse, what are you calling it? - Practice. - Practice, yeah. Practice more, - Get better everyday. - Take more time out to practice, not only at being good at playing drums for Gwænno, but also being good at just playing drums. - Jesper is a really good drummer, so I think, and he has had a lot of time, so it's not that he needs to rehearse but, - But still, I easily could do more if I want to but yeah, I just has to show tomorrow, while we can, and hopefully not regret anything tomorrow. - Yeah, yeah hopefully. I don't think we're going to regret anything. But yeah, that's just play music, be happy. - That's three really good pieces of advice. And I mean, you're here now. You've made it to Smukfest. - Yes. - You're playing at Live Camp tomorrow. What time? - Eight o'clock tomorrow. - Eight o'clock tomorrow. Guys, thank you so much for joining us, and remember if you're at Smukfest, come down to KærligHeden, Live Camp tomorrow, eight o'clock, Gwænno's going to be there, bringing bigger sound than they brought today, it's going to be epic. Come by and enjoy it with us. Once again, thank you for your attention. Our name is Gwænno.