Interview: HALASAN BAZAR
When I’m making a song I’m opening my ribs and a let people look in for a while.
Shortly NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION sat down with Copenhagen-based lo-fi psych-pop band HALASAN BAZAR to find out how they found together, lo-fi production, their intense music and lyrics, the hype that is going and of course hope and passion.
Since you are a pretty international band, where are you from?
We are from Australia, England, Norway and Denmark. But we are all based Denmark.
And how did you find together?
We all met in Copenhagen three or four years ago.
How did you meet each other?
Well, we were playing in some bands and these guys were playing in that band, and we came together by tastes and preferences and a way of thinking maybe. I think we’re going the same direction.
But all of you live in Copenhagen?
Yeah, three of us live together in a collective.
Your new album “Space Junk” was just released…
Actually it’s our second album, but it’s the first one on Crash Symbols Records, a great label from Virginia.
It’s psych music, so it is somehow a hippie atmosphere, right?
Yeah. hippie atmosphere… We take some stuff from hippie music, but a lot is just straight pop songs with a touch or a twist of psychedelic music and lo-fi production.
How came that you’re into lo-fi production? Seems everyone likes perfect productions these days…
It’s half of… After we’ve recorded our first album we didn’t have any money, and then I started recording very intensively. It was maybe also the frustration from working on this first album. And that was just by myself and then I just invited these people along. I didn’t know what to do with the songs, so I just put the songs in a folder that I called Space Junk which I thought it would be like a compilation of a lot of songs that I had lying around. But then I recorded a new one that was better than the ones that were already in there. Then suddenly I had this very precise message in eleven songs.
So, Fredrik, you are also the musical mastermind? Obviously.
Yeah. But, we’re a family. We’re very like singular in the way we approach music and we work very unrestricted together. We’re very focused when we work on music. It’s very intense when I’m doing music. I do a lot like if I get an idea I just hop on my bike and go straight down and record at the same day, because when an idea is fresh that’s what you want to buy? Probably all of those songs were recorded at the same day or the same week as they were written. And then you have this intensity of like we made something, and we have to do this and we have to do fast. So speed is very essential for HALASAN BAZAR. It’s like being on the move.
So you write the songs and the other guys in the band do the interpretation?
Yeah. Basically.
And what about HALASAN BAZAR‘s lyrics? Do you also write them?
Yeah. I’m a modern generation man with instincts for survival and almost no materialistic needs, they are just not there. So I think a lot about the reason for my existence and things like that. So many problems were created in my head because my head needs something to do. So I don’t know… the lyrics are mainly about very existential thoughts in very desperate way.
So you wrote the album and recorded “Space Junk”. Now there is quite a hype going around you, how does this feel for you?
It feels great. Would be strange if we didn’t like it. (laughing)
But you surely didn’t have in mind that so many people will talk about it!?
We always felt, from the start I think, that this is something that we would expect people to want to hear… But actually we are quite surprised about the hype, the attention that it is getting… I’m not surprised because it’s a lot of good songs, and a lot of people think it’s good songs, and that’s exactly the point, because the recordings are very good I think, but this doesn’t really matter sometimes, right? Maybe it’s something about the honesty. When I’m making a song I’m opening my ribs and a let people look in for a while. Because that’s what makes music interesting. Because when I sing I know that people only gonna catch have the lyrics, and only the most keen people really listen to it. So I feel like I’m hidden behind the song. So I can say anything, you know, the deepest and weirdest shit.
What do “hope” and “passion” mean to you?
Well… hope and passion is my life. I always hope that things get better in the future and I think that everything turns out good in the end. On the other end the ultimate end is death, which is not a good thing. So hopefully it turns out good earlier. Passion is music and it’s my life.