Mixing gentle piano sounds, acoustic strings and vocals with minimal electronics, Finja is as organic as it gets. Intensely emotional.
Read our interview with the artists below!
Describe your sound in three words
Into your soul
What is the story behind your name?
There was an old fisherman, who lived in a small town called Finja in Sweden. His name was Endstrøm Kidsø. We met him in a dark night in November in the year 2018. Our car was broken and it started to snow. It was very cold and he helped us with a warm meal. In this night we swore to him that if we formed a band one day it would bear his name. So it happened…
Unfortunately, the story is not true – but to tell we were just looking for a short, nice-sounding name is just too boring … 🙂
Your sound is very organic. Considering that you are both drummers, how does this affect your sound and your creative process in general?
When we perform live, we have a full set of drums on stage. There are always parts of our gig where we play drums and percussion together. The rhythm is also in the foreground in our recordings and we experiment a lot with different sounds, sampled noises from nature and the environment. We process these sounds until we can build a beat out of them.
Tell us a few things about your live act setup. Is Electronika a genre that can be truly performed live?
When we play live, we have drums and an electronic drum set. So we can perform the beat live on stage. Martin also has the option of generating live loops via a sequencer in order to expand the beat. Moritz plays a Moog grandmother analog synthesizer, a dreadbox typhoon analog synthesizer and a moog subharmonicum on stage. All are synchronized with each other via midi. A nord drum pad is used for percussion and other synth sounds. The synthesizers are then passed through various effect devices and processed further. For more sounds, Moritz uses a fender telecaster guitar with delay effects. We also use ableton live for sequencing.
It’s been a long way to get our music on stage. Since we improvise a lot live and leave it to chance, our music always sounds a little different than on the recording. But it would also be too boring for us to play our recordings exactly on stage and so it is always surprising for us and the audience where the sound is developing.
What do you love/hate about Munich? And how do you relate with the Munich music scene?
Compared to Berlin, the music scene and the opportunities to perform are much smaller. A lot is happening in Berlin, especially in the electronics sector. This can already be seen in the fact that our label “esc:ctrl” and “embassy of music” and our management springstoff are based in Berlin. Nevertheless, we are very closely connected to Munich and have played many different and beautiful performances over the past 20 years there. The proximity to the mountains and the beautiful nature around Munich have shaped our sound.
You have already been featured in Spotify editorial playlists. Many upcoming artists will wonder, what is the trick? Is Spotify the music industry’s new Gatekeepers?
We don’t know the trick either. It’s always a gamble. Even if you can question the position of Spotify, the possibility of being able to publish your music anywhere without a record deal is a great opportunity for newcomers to establish themselves. But we do think Spotify has a huge impact on the music market, at least for now.
Your music feels very cinematic to us. If you were asked to rescore a film, which one would you choose?
An alternative and melancholy series that takes place in Norway.
Favorite album of the past decade?
The album “Kiasmos” of Kiasmos from 2014
Thank you!
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