Interview: Little Dragon
With Little Dragon kicking off their European Tour (in support of Nabuma Rubberband) in Paris tonight I thought it only right to post the chat a had a few days ago with their brilliant bassist - Fredrick Wallin. If you don't know who Little Dragon are yet, you're going to want to find out...
Your friend Brian
Butler created a comic book about Nabuma Rubberband. If you could be any comic
book superhero, which would you be and why?
Umm, ah that’s a good question! Two things come to my mind -
either the Silver Surfer or that girl in “Kick Ass”. I don’t know if she’s in
comics. I think she’s from comics originally, but yeah she’s pretty cool.
A lot of inspiration
from this album seems to have come from other music and artists. Where else do
you find that you draw inspiration from?
I mean, honestly I think it’s a lack of hearing what you
want to hear. It’s also just bits and pieces from other artists like say you
really like and then you just want to do something similar to that and put
that idea to an even further instance. Or just a lot of times I’m inspired by
the others in the band like I think we push each other pretty good.
I heard that you like
A Tribe Called Quest?
YEAH! Love them…
If you could have
been there to work with them on any one of their tracks, which one would it be
and why?
To work with? Oh damn! [laughs]
Their songs are just kind of perfect. I don’t know what we would do to… I mean
it would be fun to play some of their songs and stuff but I don’t know what we
could do. Maybe we could reproduce some songs in a new way, like in a more
futuristic way. Do like a remix of it. I really like their song called “The Hop”,
it’s on one of their later albums.
For the recording of Nabuma Rubberband you moved your studio
– still in the same building but a new surrounding nonetheless. Would you ever
think of moving your studio and whole writing process to an entirely different
country all together?
Yeah! I mean I actually had a studio in Berlin for a while
when we were recording Nabuma! I don’t have it anymore but it was good. It
takes time to get connections and build it up but yeah I think that we would
definitely move to have a studio somewhere else if we could – maybe in a warmer
place [laughs].
As a band, you speak
about ‘vibes’ a lot. How important are vibes to you when choosing songs for
your album?
I mean vibes are essential but the funny thing with vibes is
that they tend to change – one day you’re feeling this and then another day you’re
feeling that, but hopefully it will stay on a kind of similar scale if you know
what I mean. But yeah, vibes is crucial! [laughs]
A lot of
electronic/house/dance type of music comes from Sweden, for example Lykke Li,
Avicii and of course Swedish House Mafia. There’s obviously an electronic sound
to your music too. Do you ever see yourselves coming away from this or trying a
completely new genre?
Yeah I mean I think that it’s not so much the electronics
that’s interesting, I think it’s the sound that’s the more interesting thing
for us and electronics has the possibility to do a lot of different sounds. I
think we’ve been talking lately about doing some acoustic stuff next year even
kind of orchestrated stuff. Not the classical instruments but a bit more like
using acoustic instruments.
As well as being
popular for electronic music, Sweden is known for its death metal too. These
are very different genres, so what kind of genre mainly dominates the radio in
Sweden?
It’s really poppy – bands sing in Swedish and they sing in
kind of a similar way. It’s kind of like a mix of Indie, Pop and Electronics,
yeah.
I heard about this
project with Soundgarden where they will play personalised versions of your
songs on a boat? Is that true?!
[laughs] That’d be
great! Um, let’s see, yeah it might be! Let’s hope so!
How did this idea
come about?
Because we are on the same label as them in the US, a label
called – Loma Vista, and I know that the label is always keen to push stuff to
make it more commercial as labels want y’know [laughs] so that was how they got the idea. Yeah I think that could
work really good as well.
You can grab tickets to their European Tour here, it won't be something you want to miss! If you're not from Europe or nearby, keep track of them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud and their website.
You can grab tickets to their European Tour here, it won't be something you want to miss! If you're not from Europe or nearby, keep track of them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud and their website.
