In Don’t Let It In, Remedies blend pop-driven elements with authentic songwriting and a rich string section, while delivering a powerful message about resisting negative influences and staying true to one’s core values. Read our discussion below!
Describe your sound in 3 words
Authentic, thought-provoking, daring.
“Don’t Let It In” explores resisting external pressures and negativity. What inspired you to write this song, and is there a personal story behind it?
Don’t let it in has many different sources of inspiration, and the inspiration has come gradually over the roughly two years we’ve worked on the song. Most of our ideas usually come from jamming and improvisation, and the same applies to this song. We were tired of predictable chord progressions and wanted to create something a little different. It all started with the guitar riff, which is inspired by the playing style of the artist Tallest Man On Earth, while the rapidly changing rhythm is inspired by the MUSE song Micro Cuts. The dramatic choir is something that can be found in Radiohead’s song Exit Music (For A Film), while the more pop-inspired choruses are typical of what the band Kasabian tends to do. All in all, the instrumental is inspired by a mix of bands we listen to a lot.
The vocals and lyrics also came through a lot of testing and countless demos. The singing style can be described as “confrontational,” and is partly inspired by Norwegian female artists Emilie Nicholas and Hanne Hukkelberg. Lyrically, we were inspired by the times we live in, where unpredictable events have tested the world. This includes the COVID pandemic, wars, and shifts in the global balance of power, which present us all with challenges and value choices that were not as relevant just a few years ago. The lyrics are not based on a particular personal story or happening, but rather a portrayal of something we believe many can relate to when large changes shake up what is established and familiar to us.
Your most honest and personal lyric?
It’s tempting to mention some of the stripped-down, atmospheric songs from our upcoming album, but since they haven’t been released yet, we’ll go with the lyrics from the song “Trapped” from our album “Lights Out.” Like most people, we also know some who struggle to cope with life, and this song is about exactly that. It’s often noticeable through changes in behavior, forced laughter, and fake smiles, which are descriptions we use in this text.
Don’t Let It In is the first of three singles from your upcoming album. Can you give us a glimpse into the themes and sonic direction of the record?
We had many ideas we wanted to bring to life, but we also had to make sure there wasn’t too much of a gap in genre and sound between the songs. Generally speaking, the sonic landscape embraces more acoustic and organic elements than anything we’ve done before, and we’ve chosen to include some special songs that are very atmospheric and artistic, nearly bordering on cinematic. Lyrically, we focus a lot on the human mind and related themes such as external influences, how they affect us and how to deal with them. These are themes that have long fascinated us and are becoming more and more relevant as people tend to move away from living simple lives, in favor of being available around the clock, receiving unlimited amounts of unfiltered information from various unconventional sources.
You compose, write, produce, and release music independently. What are the biggest challenges and rewards of taking full creative control?
It is always challenging to know if what you’re producing and writing is of high enough quality, as you quickly become “blind” to your own work. This is especially true if you are working isolated on one song or specific parts of a song for a long time. That’s why it’s nice to be a duo, so we can bounce ideas off each other and be critical of each other’s performances. Along the way, it’s also important to get honest and objective feedback from someone outside the project who isn’t attached to the work. Technical challenges can also arise during the recording sessions, such as microphone placement, room acoustics, phase issues, computer problems, etc. These can be time-consuming, but it gets easier over the years as we gain more experience. We also find YouTube quite helpful.
The benefits of being independent and self-sufficient is that we don’t have any limits on the ideas we want to pursue, so even the weirdest and most creative ideas can come to life. We’ve built ourselves a home studio (yes, we are living together), so time and studio costs are less of an issue. It’s therefore very easy for us to work whenever we want. Creativity and ideas come when you least expect it, and it’s great to be able to record them right away. Lastly, we would like to add that we have an incredible amount of fun making music and love what we do.
How has being from Narvik influenced your music and artistic identity? How do you relate to Norway’s music scene?
Narvik is a small, remote town far north in Norway, and the music scene in the city is quite narrow. This has definitely influenced us in the sense that we have looked outward in search of inspiration and like-minded musicians. Tromsø, which is a city even further north, has a much more bustling music scene, and on a few earlier occasions we have used Kysten studio in Tromsø for drum and vocal recordings. There are many great artists from Norway who represent the Norwegian music scene and have put Norway on the world map when it comes to production and Nordic sound. These include A-HA, Aurora, Sigrid, Kaizers Orchestra, and Kygo. The first four are artists we can relate to in terms of musical preferences. Other Scandinavian artists we look to are Swedish artists such as Tallest Man On Earth, Lykke Li, and Jonossi. These artists have undoubtedly influenced our music.
If the music of Remedies was a film, which film would that be?
It’s an interesting exercise to imagine Remedies in a film setting. It would probably be a movie with various parallel stories happening in real-time, as our lyrics mostly address stories and themes that are relevant today. At the same time, the film would need scenes with different emotional tones, as our music can be both explosive and energetic, as well as intimate and sensitive. The film would also need to be a bit unpredictable and have an element of madness to it. Based on this description, we would probably go for Pulp Fiction.
Would you reveal each other’s funny habits?
There’s a lot to choose from here, but we’ll settle for saying that Tor Erik tends to stick his tongue out when he’s concentrating really hard on making recordings with real emotion, almost as if it helps him keep his balance. Sigrid has to sneeze every time she sees the sun. We looked this up online, and it turns out it has a name: “photic sneeze reflex,” and it occurs in some people when they move into light after staying in dark surroundings for an extended period. It’s probably just a reminder that we’re not used to the sun up here, north of the Arctic Circle.
Thank you!
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