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housefloor.de: |
your album „animals“ ››› is out this month on cocoon recordings. how came up the cooperation with the german label? |
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minilogue: |
we've been working with the album quite a while and during this time we also kept a selection of our favorite labels updated with the progress. in september last year we felt that the album was completed and sent the final demo to three labels and cocoon was one of them. pauli and sven had a listen and apparently they liked what they heard :) |
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housefloor.de: |
"animals" ››› covers a wide spectrum of music, it reaches from peaktime techno to beatless deep ambient. when you started producing the album was there a concrete concept for it? what's the idea behind the album?
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minilogue: |
our main goal with minilogue the last years is to create an alias that let us be as creatively free as possible and our aim was to do an album that show our true musical colours and artistic wideness. until now most people have mainly heard the dance floor side of minilogue but in the future we hope that people will see minilogue as a freestyle electronic artist as much as a techno and house act.
in the beginning of the album process we were aiming to do a single cd and merge our musical views on one disc but 80 minutes felt too short for us to build a good journey with both deep ambient and dance floor music. after a while we decided that it had to be a double disc showing our double faced nature. music wise we didn't have a very clear concept from the beginning.of course you're always filled with different ideas and musical directions that you want to explore, but we try to keep all alternatives and directions open when we work on a record... sometimes the unexpected and non planned are the most fantastic, genuine and spontaneous. |
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housefloor.de: |
in may another album of you will be out on the japanese label mule electronic. for the project imps you've teamed up with the australian jazz musicians decoy. bring out the imps has basically been produced during a two weeks jam session. this is a very different approach like to „animals“, right? how can we picture the cooperation of you four in the studio? |
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minilogue: |
imps are indeed a very different project to minilogue. while minilogue is a project we've spend thousands of hours in the studio and on tours, the imps session was made during two weeks of full improvisation, jamming, impsness and laughs with no musical aim and no pressure to make a certain album or not. during the two weeks in the studio we also named all the tracks, did the logo and took the press pics... so the album "bring out the imps" are the most spontaneous record we've ever done. our studio in malmoe is full of outboard equipment like synths, samplers, arpeggiators, drum machines, effects, mixers, heaps of guitar pedals & loop boxes and also loads of different instruments like violins, guitars, piano, organs, drums and percussion. ian and philip are amazing musicians, not only with their main instruments (double bass and soprano sax) but they're also very familiar with most of the instruments in our studio. so all four of us was jamming, sometimes two where jamming in one room and two in another...
when we felt we had something cool we just pressed record in the computer and recorded all things on separate channels, after that some postproduction, cuts and editing ... adding some extra fills or ads! next imps session is planned for later this year and we're already really exited :) |
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housefloor.de: |
in 2007 you have found your own label called minilogue. with which philosophy do you run it? |
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minilogue: |
at the moment the label is a concept label. we will release ten 10"s - each release is dedicated to one of our minilogue animals and with the release we also give the animal its name. its very important for us to work with the great labels that support our music but sometimes it's very nice to have a quick and easy output, you do a couple of tracks, send them to the pressing plant and then you release it. no contracts, disagreements or misunderstandings. if something goes wrong it probably our own fault and we don't need to be angry at someone else. when the physical sales goes down most labels are naturally also getting more specific to find music that will sell a lot. before you could most of the time show a more alternative musical aspect for the b side but today many labels need two "a" side to make the record sell. this is also a back side of digital sales, the sales are track based... before you could force the customer to buy something more underground and less obvious, music that you need some time to get into and understand... digital customers generally gives a track 30 seconds and normally only buy what they are searching for and are used to. with our minilogue label we don't need to think about this... we print a limited edition of the record and no one blame us if it doesn't sell. we've also decided not to release the records digital until 6 month after release date of the vinyl. the next 10" is doiicie... release 25th of may. |
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housefloor.de: |
while other artists are attracted by the metropoles like berlin, london or amsterdam, you keep living in your malmoe. why have you decided to stay in malmoe? |
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minilogue: |
malmoe is a beautiful little city, 250,000 inhabitants... everything in reach with a bike; beach, parks, restaurants, bars, clubs, shops. forty minutes by train and you're in the centre of copenhagen (trains leaves three times an hour 24 hours a day) and best of all 18 minutes by train to copenhagen airport, with direct flights to all major cities in the world, something you start to admire when you play every weekend :). start to sound like a salesman :) both of us comes from the countryside in the south of sweden and we're used to a humble and easy life... the energy, pulse and stress of a big city is great a few weeks a year but to live in it would distract me and give me stress. |
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housefloor.de: |
for you the visual aspect is important, too. often the cover artworks of your releases show fantasy animals and furthermore you're planning a dvd with artful videos. why is it important to you to combine music and optics? |
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minilogue: |
music is only one form of creativity, if we had the time we would love to work more with visuals, photo and many other things ... but we've focused on the music and the closest we can get to working with other forms of art is to cooperate with other artists. on our upcoming dvd we've mainly worked with rob zorhab from new zealand. he's produced the dvd and also did most of the movie/videos. kristoffer ström has also been of great importance for minilogue's visual side, he did our now extremely famous music video for „hitchhiker's choice“ and later also the artwork for the „animals“ album. at the moment he's doing a new music video for us, will also be on the dvd. |
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housefloor.de: |
the name minilogue is composed of minimal and dialogue, which suggests that music is a form communication. so what do you want to tell your listeners and how do they respond? |
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minilogue: |
yes, music is a great way of communicating, both while composing/writing it and while playing it live. and the most beautiful thing with non vocal music is that you communicate something that is open to the listener to interpret, you send out your feelings and thoughts compressed into sounds and rhythms and the listener/dancer is creating their own feelings and thought from it. you don't tell someone how to feel or think but giving them tools to find something themselves. this is one way communication and the dialogue comes to life when you're performing live in front of an audience. we've developed our live set so we can improvise as much as possible. with this possibility we let the audience's reaction have an impact on us and the music we're playing. at a really good gig you're totally in your own world while playing but in the same time feeling the dancefloor and the people as you where dancing with them. |
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housefloor.de: |
for more than ten years you have been working together. what is so special about your cooperation that it stays inspiring? |
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minilogue: |
we must be a perfect match then ;-)
i think we're a good blend of two very different persons with many similar approaches and views on life and music.
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.:: more on minilogue ::. |
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cd review imps - bring out the imps |
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cd review minilogue - animals |
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vinyl review minilogue - space ep |
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vinyl review minilogue - seconds rmxs |
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vinyl review minilogue - leopard ep |
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portrait minilogue |
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