Schtimm interview – June 2005

By Jim Curtiss

 

It was a humid, overcast afternoon when I met the Norwegian dunkelpop band Schtimm outside Objekt 5 in Halle, the fifth stop of their 2005 German tour. My first impression was how young they looked. From pictures on the internet, I had pegged them for thirtysomethings. Far from it. B (they don't use their first names), the lead vocalist, is at university, and the other three band members are around that age. From Objekt 5, B, Æ and me walked along the Saale River ("We like water," said B.) to a moored boat ("We also like boats," said B.) that serves as a café. In true bohemian style, we ordered a round of Czech beers while Æ, the bassist and male vocalist, kept his fingers busy rolling cigarettes.

 

JC: You've been performing together since 1998. How did Schtimm form and where does the name come from?

Æ: Our history is pretty simple, really, B, K, and me are siblings, and we have such a strong bond with P that it's as good as family. Anyway, back home in Saltdal, we had all been playing together in different constellations and we found out we all wanted to do this more low-key minimalistic thing, kind of remove all things that weren't necessary. Our first album, I think, was a good example of this.

 

JC: What kind of instruments did you work with on that one?

Æ: Standard lineup, really.

B: Bass, guitar, drums, glockenspiel, percussion, glasses filled with water…

 

JC: Does that really work?

B: Yeah! It's just kind of hard to tune them. About our name, "Schtimm" doesn't really mean anything. But the sound, "shh", is a quieting thing, in contrast to the last part of the word, which is louder…

Æ: And "shh" is also how you talk when you've had too much to drink… but don't include that, ok?

 

JC: No problem. So this is your second tour of Germany… why do you dig it here?

Æ: It's coincidental actually. A few years ago we did this live concept show where we gave the audience headphones as the only source of sound. It was really unique for us – in fact both the audience and us were a little unsure of how to do it – especially with the clapping part – they all would move an earpiece to check if others were clapping before starting to clap themselves… but they loosened up after awhile…

 

JC: Did you play around with the stereo aspect of the headphones?

B: Yeah, that was really good for our sound engineer, who had the opportunity to play around with…

B and Æ: (Gasping and pointing) Look at those birds! They're huge…

Æ: (After the hawks flew away) Anyways, We played 10 or 12 dates like that, but we wanted to make it bigger, so we sent the tape out to a lot of booking agencies, and by accident we sent it to a German label – Make My Day Records, who sent us a mail that said-

B: We want you!

Æ: Right, but they said we don't do concerts, we're a record label so we said "Ok, here's some of our work…" and yeah… here we are…

 

JC: That's beautiful. Sometimes the best things in life turn out to be coincidental.

B: Exactly.

 

JC: Are there any differences between the German and Norwegian audiences?

B: I don't think you can split them because they're so diverse within themselves, but the German audiences have been really good to us, because not many people know about us here in Germany, and there have still been very many good crowds.

Æ: It seems like they give bands a chance, you know…

B: And they're also good with buying our CDs, which helps keep us doing what we're doing…

Æ: So yeah, getting here was coincidental, but we really enjoy being here. And Germany is an easy country to get around in.

 

JC: Are you staying in your bus or hotels?

B: Our bus mostly. And we have a driver as well, which is a new thing this tour. It's really great, because now we're able to see the places we go to, play some Playstation…

Æ: Yeah, play the rock star role!

JC: So when you're livin' large on the bus, what kinda music are you listening to?

B: We just got a CD from the Signor Rossi cartoon that's awesome… but there's no one thing we all listen to… we've all got our individual players we can download onto…

 

JC: Any readers among you?

Æ: Yeah, I read a lot. And we're also doing a diary about our tour for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company… but since our bus broke down last night in Berlin, we're a little delayed with it… no electricity, you know.

 

JC: What happened?

Æ: The thing just wouldn't start. Needed a new part or something. Just a part of our big touring adventure.

 

JC: Speaking of your tour, do you prefer playing for larger or smaller audiences?

B: It's more interesting to play close to people. For instance, we once played a festival – the Quart Festival - with hundreds of people and we were so far above the audience that it was hard to connect to them. On the other hand, we once played a gig where all four of us were facing towards each other with the audience all around us…

Æ: Yeah, the crowd was really tight. It was great.

 

JC: How do you describe your music to people? 

B: Actually, we try not to because we're so in it ourselves, we don't think like, "Now we have to make a sound that goes..."

Æ: Yeah, the whole genre thing isn't valid anymore. You know, in 1956, Bill Haley was Rock, and today you have a lot of Rock bands that don't sound anything like that. So it's a bit absurd to try to capture a concept in just one word. What we do is basically to… instead of putting ourselves into an existing genre, we created the words dunkelpop, or alcojazz…

B: And it's been used on other bands as well!

Æ: Yeah, because we run our own label we do all our own press releases and stuff, and so we sit down and call it alcojazz. Later we read a report from the Norwegian Culture Department that they was discussing the pop rock landscape – and they reported the recent emergence of two new genres in Norway, and they mentioned dunkelpop and alcojazz…

B: Yeah, they were accepted by the state…

 

JC: So they must be valid!

Æ and B: Right.

 

(Waitress brings more beers.)

 

Æ: (Leaning in to the microphone) For the record, she's taking another beer.

B: (Also leaning in) He's just kidding.

 

JC: Alcojazz indeed… Hey, are "a-ha" like, gods in Norway? And are they representative of a "Norwegian Sound"?

B: No, not any more. But they are well-respected because they were the first Norwegian band to go abroad, to get big in Japan and other countries… but we don't have a Norwegian sound, though there has been a "Berlin wave" things have been happening with electronica and pop… but Norwegian bands are quite diverse…

Æ: But we live in what used to be known as the Rock Capital of Norway…Tronheim.

B: Yeah, there are a lot of things happening there, a lot of bands, but not in a commercial way, I guess.

 

JC: Is that why you moved there?

B: No, we moved there because of studies I guess. That's where it started.

 

JC: Are you still students?

B: Yeah.

Æ: No. No, thanks.

 

JC: Had enough of that?

Æ: Uh…I … it's an ok thing to do, if you don't have better things to do. To be a student in Norway is a very comfortable situation.

 

JC: It's free there, right?

B: Yeah, but we also have to borrow and pay for books and stuff. Anyways, I'm studying communications.

 

JC: Oh yeah? You cover anything with the internet? Do you use the internet to help the band somehow?

B: We have a really good website done by a friend of ours. (http://www.exposia.no/cgi-bin/schtimm/site)

Æ: Yeah, but Norway is a small country with a small music industry… still, from time to time we get airplay and our reviews have all been really positive, so we'll see… And for an underground band such as ourselves that doesn't do commercial music, it takes awhile… but the really big sellers in Norway all sing in Norwegian, while we sing in English…

 

JC: What was behind your decision to sing in English and not Norwegian?

Æ: That's a complex question.

JC: Now we're getting somewhere.

Æ: We're not native English speakers, and maybe our vocabulary isn't as large, but when you do something in another language, you actually see things from the other side.

 

JC: Does that make you more connected to your audience somehow?

Æ: Maybe. But Norwegian is a little more precise, while English is a more poetic language…

B: Yeah, like we see the metaphors more in English… and it's also more about the sound of the words – they jump out at us more than they do in Norwegian…

Æ: Yeah, the usage of music and language is very connected for us. Like a symbiosis thing.

 

JC: Do you like performing better live or in the studio?

B: I don't know… they're different.

Æ: But we actually do a lot of our albums live. Like in one take and there it is. But the album before – the brown album - we went to the sessions and put up a set of rules – some dogma I guess –

B: First it was analogue – not digital – and not more than two effects, no digital reverb, no equalizers. Some of the songs were in fact live takes.

Æ: But we're confident we're not gonna fuck up a song in the studio in one take, and we don't record layer after layer, cuz that would kinda destroy the core of it… I mean, we have both strings and other choirs involved, and we knew that would be more complex.

 

JC: Tell me a little about the artwork for "featuring". What's up with all the stars?

B: We have a friend who does that, and he does all the aesthetics and we don't put any pressure on him to go in one way or another.

Æ: Yeah, we trust him.

B: But the artwork is inspired from the Tarot cards.

 

JC: What about the stars?

Æ: So many people think it's a political statement, like the communist star or something, but that's not it. It's more a minimalistic artwork kind of thing. But they're really everywhere. I mean, they have a red star on the Heineken label, they have them on the American flag…

 

JC: But not red ones… not yet.

B: Each album has stars on it, but we like to leave the reasons up to the listeners… I mean, we're a difficult band to pin down..

Æ: That's why we don't like to explain to people that this song is about this and this, because if people read the lyrics and listen to the music, you can figure out what it's about… and if we start to explain it, it just gets lost.

B: Like for myself, if I listen to a song, I form a picture of what it's about for myself. Forcing that on others isn't our thing. We make the music and leave it to others to interpret it.