The Chairman Interview
The Chairman Interview „I don’t try to be a contemporary artist“
The Chairman exklusives Interview; Fotocredit: Tue Blichfeldt
Im exklusiven Interview spreche ich mit Chairman aus Kopenhagen über neue Album und seine Musik.
Das Soundkartell hat die Ehre das Album „2064“ von The Chairman exklusiv vorab streamen zu lassen. Das könnt ihr morgen hier exklusiv hören.
Soundkartell: Sometimes the sound of your first Album „2064“ seems to be deeply depressed and sad. Even when there some tracks which are a little bit more „delighted“ would you agree that this piece of music is a very literally sad one?
The Chairman: Most of the songs on ‘2064’ were written during a time of my life where I was dealing with a lot of insecurities in my personal life and I had been coping with a depression for a long time, peaking around the recording of this album. So if the vibe is coming off as sad or depressing, I guess that makes sense.
Your whole album is very unconventional. In which way the unpredictability is something your are really keen on when you are writing songs?
The Chairman: I try to write conventional pop songs that give meaning to certain parts of my daily life. But when I take the songs into production and add the beats, I think that I have a lot of technical shortcomings that make for a lot of errors. If you strive towards unpredictability, it usually results your product becoming terribly see-through, so I usually just don’t think about it too much and try to get to where I want to get to without creating any palisades or barriers for myself.
Do you sometimes have the impression that you are overtaxing your listeners with your music?
The Chairman: I hope I don’t do that. I just try to create the best possible environment for the songs to live and prosper in. Sometimes that’s just gonna be a little uncomfortable.
In which way releasing music lives from the moment of „being at the right time at the right place“?
The Chairman: In every way. Unfortunately, even though you can create the most beautiful and honest music, music that could help a lot of different people in a lot of different situations and places, if it isn’t relevant to what the media deems relevant, you just won’t get the help necessary for your music to reach its’ audience. It’s a pest to the industry.
What do you think is the typicall musically danish element in your music?
The Chairman: The Danish elements change so often that I just don’t bother to try and fit into that box anymore. To overuse the palisades metaphor, I think that most of Danish acts try to live up to industry standards that shift sideways every 2 years and they end up being a part of a movement that is quickly forgotten, instead of branching out over what is to be history. I don’t think that the truly great acts ever contemplated fitting into any boxes.
The Chairman exklusives Interview; Fotocredit: Tue Blichfeldt
So now you are releasing your first album in Germany after you’ve released it in Denmark before. What are you concrete hoping for this release? Just only making people aware of your music?
The Chairman: I’m hoping to branch out my audience. Germany is such an enormous country and holds so many different people. I just really hope to get in touch with as many of those people as possible. Also, my dad is from Germany, so I’m sure that he would be over the moon if I could invite him to shows in Germany every once in a while.
When I listened to your Album „2064“ the first time I little bit felt like being relegated in other time. This is nothing negative, but sometimes music transports a special „feeling of being in a special time“ like 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe you were aware of this fact when you’ve said „now the record is done. And it’s perfect.“?
The Chairman: I don’t try to be a contemporary artist; I just try to write songs that are genuine and heartfelt. It’s becoming an increasingly rare find in these times and maybe that’s why you get a sense of another time.
To be honest I’m really in love with your song „Ompahlos“. In this song I really hear that the music comes directly out of your heart. Being authentic, how difficult is it to communicate this part of your character with a neutral audience which listened to your music the first time?
The Chairman: I think that ‘Omphalos’ was the last song written for the album, so it’s one of the few where the process of it is still very clear in memory. I’m not sure if it’s one of the eye-catcher songs of the album, but it certainly is intense and the energy of it is very easily transferred to the live scene. But it can be difficult to voice these kind of emotions in pop music and out of a LOT of songs with the same theme auditioning this album, ‘Omphalos’ was the only one that made the cut, and rightly so.
You will release your second album in September this year. What will different and what will you keep the same for your next record?
The Chairman: My musical ideology and general take on writing songs is still the same, but I’ve really gotten into hip hop and soul over the last year, so it’s heavily influenced by those genres and we’re also working on getting a bunch of features on some of the tracks, which is kind of new for me. But generally it’s turning out to be my best work yet (by far) and I’m really excited to show it to the world.
