As already announced NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION presents the second free Midsommar Festival inside and outside at Berlin’s Party Obsessed People (p.o.p.) on the 21st of June. In order to give you a little taste of what to expect, we interviewed AVES, a finnish electro pop band that recently shared a free download of their song Elise with us and that will also perform at our Midsommar Festival 2013. Conveniently, their debut album will be released one day before on the 20th of June! Perfect time to have a closer look on the band right here.
Your project AVES is pretty unknown for most of our readers by now: please introduce yourself and your musical project.
Birds (class Aves) are feathered, winged, bipedal, warm-blooded, egg-laying, vertebrate animals. AVES uses tropical tones to paint reveries, moments of astonishment, and the mercurial border that separates dream from reality. The sparkling textures, compassionate melodies, and vibrant visions twine together into an elevated state of mystical presence.
Your upcoming debut album “Sun Sky a Floating” has been produced and recorded by yourself. Could you describe how the process of creating your song looks like?
I get easily bored so there’s a lot of ways to make the songs and lot of ways the songs on the album have been created. I write a lot on the piano. I love to play the piano since my first instrument is the drums and piano is sort of a musical rhythm instrument. There’s hammers that hit the strings as loud as you hit the keys, so the dynamics are just something you won’t get on any other instrument.
We also jam a lot with Antti, me on the keyboard and mic, him on the drums. I love the thrill of living in the moment and coming up with chord progressions and melodies just out of nowhere, right there. It’s like channeling higher powers, as if someone else is moving my hands and coming up with all that stuff. And it’s a lot of fun. Another thing is to start sampling something meaningful for me. As a child, my dad was always calling for me to “come and listen to this” and I was never that interested. It wasn’t until recent years that I’ve realized how much the music he always played and listened when I was a child has made an impact to me musically. He passed away two years ago and lot of the album has been affected by me sort of trying to make homage to the musical worlds he opened up for me and trying to create a beautiful place to picture him living in.
The artwork of your records visually reflects your sound. What are your inspirational sources for creating it?
As I’m making the artwork I feel I’m simply channeling the colors and the layers that the songs have. For me making the visuals is usually very quick and intuitive, almost instinctive, there’s a certain nerve that just creates this kind of music and these kind of visuals for the covers.
You’ll join our second Midsommar Festival this year… which pictures cross your mind while thinking about Midsommar and how do you celebrate the longest day of summertime in your home country Finland?
Yes, we are really looking for joining at the midsummer festival! Most of the Finnish people go to cabins by the lake or by the sea to spend time with their family and friends. Of course the sauna and swimming is a big part of Finnish midsummer. But it’s also the day in Finland when the sun never sets so people just stay awake although the night. Actually we have been in Berlin for some reason the past three years so we’re not making exception this year either!
Due to our motto we always want to know what “hope” and “passion” mean to the artists in detail. So what do you associate with these two words?
One of the big themes about Sun Sky a Floating is hope as well as certain mercy for one’s self. Passion, well that’s basically everything needed for a good life. The rest is just fulfilling the passion.
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