Big Night Won | Interview with Bells Fell Silent

• Describe your sound in 3 words.

Minimalistic, dramatic, exploratory

• What is the story behind your name?

It was a focus point for how I wanted the music to sound like when I first started working with these songs. I imagined a square in Barcelona where I used to live, remembering the silence that appeared after the bells had gone silent. A state of feeling in between two situations: two lives, two loves, two countries. I wanted the music to find that space.

• In “Big Night Won” it seems that you try to communicate a painful feeling. Is this the case? What is the meaning behind the song?

I first wrote it when Donald Trump was elected president. I’m not sure it was a painful feeling, but maybe an angry one. It can be hopeful to feel angry, it can lead to change. The people taking the streets for the Black Lives Matter movement or the people protesting in Belarus need to feel anger to find courage to stand up against oppression.
In the end I think the song is a promise to myself to never accept a world without empathy and kindness. The big night might have won an election that time, but I won’t let it win me over.

• How Important are political statements by music artists? Can music have an impact on political and social developments?

I think all voices are important and can have an impact. But I do not feel that art has a responsibility to tell you what to think or who to vote for. But it can show you the world in new ways and it can let you discover rooms inside yourself and others.

• Do you try your songs in front of a live audience during the composing phase? Was [there?] any song of yours in which you truly believed in but the audience did not embrace?

Sure, we’ve been building this album while playing shows. Although, I think it might have been the other way around. There were a few tracks that felt nice playing live but didn’t fit on the album. But we’ve been lucky, we’ve felt embraced.

• What is your favorite album of the past year?

I hope you don’t mind me naming three.
Phoebe Bridgers – ”Punisher”
I.B Sundström – ”Antropofagernas rike I-II”
Jason Molina – ”Eight gates

• If you could change anything about the music industry, what would it be?

Find a way for musicians to get paid for their music.

• Thank you!

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