Bittersweet nostalgia from Gothenburg
There is something extremely intriguing about Gothenburg, when it comes to music. I experienced that some people in Gothenburg already get bored by the fact how many musicians domicile in Sweden’s second-largest city.
A quite new band from Gothenburg, which is definetly worth checking are ZEIT. Formed in June 2008, ZEIT were influenced by MY BLOODY VALENTINE and THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN. Their new EP is titled “The Glued and Honeydripped” and is dark Shoegaze at it’s best.
Erik Engblom, Erik Jonsson and Björn Alm answered my questions on their influences, ideas and feelings about the music scene in Gothenburg.
One of the characteristics that stands out with your music, is the very simple musical approach. Especially the very few chords that are used in a repetitive way. How did you find your style and how did it evolve?
Erik Engblom: As I remember it, ZEIT took shape in my brother’s sofa while talking to my good friend Erik Jonsson (whom I formed Zeit with in early June 2008). I can recall that we shared some structural ideas about music that involved simplicity and rather then focus on technicalities, such as, variation and changes in the music we wanted to capture atmosphere. And we both grew up listening to bands like THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN and MY BLOODY VALENTINE, in a pure theoretical sense my idea with Zeit was to combine the atmosphere you can find in MY BLOODY VALENTINES sound, but with a more simplified structure that resembles in my opinion THE JESUS AND MARY CHAINS approach to music. A few days after this discussion I went to Erik Jonssons place, he had two chords that he played on his down tuned guitar that eventually became “Happiness in Times of Misery”. It was the proof for us that two chords can be enough, and I remembered thinking that this song materialized the whole concept I had in mind.
What is the song “Happiness in Times of Misery” about?
Erik Engblom: It is my reflection, or paraphrase on the famous Dante quote: “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”. I try to describe such sorrow, and in my opinion, the greatest sorrow is to live your life constantly contemplating over the past, and as a result you will not be able to “inhale” the present. In such state you tend (or maybe it’s just me) to see the world through a lens of a bittersweet nostalgia, you are not dead in any serious sense, but you live as if you were. That’s what I try to capture in the song
What are your feelings about Gothenburg’s music scene?
Erik Jonsson: There is lots of great music being made here and that is inspiring. There is so much good punk, noise and other experimental music coming out of Gothenburg. Stuff like Batalj, Ättestupa, Street Drinkers, Weary Nous, The Black Bug, The Fresh Weather Bomb Attack (shameless self promotion) and so much more. I don’t feel like the Gothenburg scene has alot to do with how we sound though but it’s nice to be in a city that has lots of different things going on.
Björn Alm: The music scene in Gothenburg is better than the one Stockholm. Sure there are maybe bigger bands that come to play there, but my overall feeling is that there are so many more good bands that come from Gothenburg. For example: Silverbullit, Franke, Soundtrack of our lives, The Embassy and Convoj.
http://www.myspace.com/zeittheband
