SLEEPYARD: Afternoon Suntrap

SLEEPYARD... LET YOURSELF SAIL AWAY ON DREAM INDUCING SONIC WAVES AS THEY TRANSPORT YOU INTO A WORLD OF ENDLESS SUMMER AND THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD. T HE MOST POWERFUL MUSIC HAS THAT SPECIAL q UALITY THAT LETS YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND DRIFT OFF TO MAGICAL PLACES. AND FOR SLEEPYARD, IT’S ALL ABOUT LIF E ’S LITTLE DE TAILS AND HOW THEY CAN BE TRANSFERRED ONTO THE GROUP ’ S MUSICAL C AN -

VAS. T HIS IS THE SOUNDTRACK TO MEMORIES PAST AND TOMORROW ’ S DREAMS.

I N BETWEEN WORKING ON THE GROUP ’ S NEW ALBUM , FUTURE LINES, OLIVER KERSBERGEN TOOK TIME TO ANSWER OUR q UESTIONS ...

SOLAR ANGELS: Can you give us a brief introduction to Sleepyard, its history, mission and members...

OLIVER: I was playing guitar in a hardcore punk rock band called “Detached” with my brother on bass. We were never the most orthodox punk rockers (as the other two bandmembers were) and we tried to put as many strange influences in the music as possible. Still it was somewhat limited in terms of musical creativity, so i had to do something on my own. I recorded a demo in 1994 called “Velvet sky” under the name, Sleepyard. Here was my dream influenced pop music and i felt much more at home doing this material. So then my brother also joined Sleepyard and “Detached” disbanded. We started to record many songs and learn the craft of constructing new sounds. The studio became a playground and a place for great experimentation. We released our first EP “Intersounds” in 1999 and it did get very good reviews. There was nothing like it released at the time. So then we started a permanent live band and started playing free form versions of our songs. It was always meant to be a separate experience from our records.

We released a our first long player in 2001, “Big monday”. This was a

AFTERNOON

jig-saw puzzle presentation of all our sound dreams. We have also released “The runner” (a compilation on Trust me records) 2003. The release party for that record was a exhibition of photos for each song. It was a nice way of showing the visual aspect of Sleepyard. Our second long player is a mellow affair in sound and mood. Much of that record benefits from having been recorded at home. So you have time to think about the textures in the sound much more than if the studio meter is running.

Our mission has always been to create unique records, like those that would spellbind me. To be creative and playful. For the new album we have brought along new member Tom-Erik Løe.

SOLAR ANGELS: You are cur-rently working on an album you’ve decided to call Future Lines, can you tell me a little bit about the concept behind it? It is a very suggestive title, especially when you hear the music. The Future, of course, is always ahead of us, and in the songs I have heard from the album, there are familiar things, but stripped of their familiar forms and structures they blend beautifully with the whole, alowing the mind a smooth passage into a world where time and space ceases to be (as we know it).

OLIVER: I usually have multiple meanings in our album titles. Like our previous album, ”Easy tensions”, which could mean almost anything, from falling in love to a war plane report. ”Future lines” means just as many things as well. The concept is to make an impressionistic pop record. I very much like to take different musical sounds out of their element and through the looking glass. I like to start with memories, ideas or visions. With Future Lines i am looking towards the future. Central themes are technology and nature. Still rooted in memories, though, as the song ”Hot radio” is about holidays and talk radio.

SOLAR ANGELS: That makes sense. The music is very very dreamy, just as when reviewing past experiences through the lens of one’s memories. A sunset, or a chance meeting... all these things take on a much deeper resonance when seen in retrospect. A gentle sense of separation and longing helps to strengthen this feeling. In the end then, I guess growing older and the passing of time is good for art?

OLIVER: Growing older is definitely a one meaning of the title. ”Easy tensions” was centered around cold war and hot summers of childhood

that seemed to last forever, the last track is a lament called ”Goodbye Hercules”, which is a nice way to end the album. Memories and past experiences are very useful for the musical canvas. One memory is watching the funeral of the General secretary of the Soviet Union Konstantin Chernenko in March of 1985 as a child. The pompous circumstances had a real musical impact on me.

SOLAR ANGELS: It is interesting that you mention the Cold War. I was born in the seventies and grew up with it. But nowadays, when looking at the world, it seems as if most people have forgotten, or at least put this time behind them. There were those summits between Reagan and Gorbachev. That was such a special time. You came out of the sixties and the seventies, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the war in Afghanistan and all this fear and suspicion between people. And then there was this new hope. I don’t see any of that today. Maybe we don’t see it because it’s increasingly difficult to get anything sensible out of mainstream news nowadays. Maybe the masters of the world are too rich, too powerful. Like the saying goes, «power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely». I guess As long as there’s money to be made from oil and war, there will be no real work done to change the world...

OLIVER: It is very important that those of us who grew up during The Cold War don’t forget what we experienced and what we witnessed. I recently watched ”When the wind blows” and I could feel many of those feelings from back then come back to me. A werid feeling, really. It’s such a moving film. It’s naivite is quite humoristic, but it is a wonderful description of the helplessness that many of us felt. As a child I would have nightmares about the atomic bomb that would destroy us all. I still remember some of those dreams; a source of inspiration for sure.

Like you I thought those summits were very good, especially Geneva and Reykjavik. There was a lot of optimism in the air. You could almost feel it. I also remember Ronald Reagan’s speech about ”The Evil Empire”, which made a very strong impression on me. Right now I am reading a book called 1983, where the author is challenging the notion that 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis was he most dramatic period during the Cold War. The invasion of Grenada, the arms race in Western Europe, Afghanistan and last but not least the shooting down of a Korean passanger plane. I would later write a song called ”Grenada”. Probably my only ”political” song. It’s an instrumental, but it’s about the attack on Grenada. I was also quite taken with the Iran/ Contras scandal. I was very much keeping an eye on that trial.

A lot of these images would flash across the TV screen when I was a little boy. The summits really lightened the atmosphere in the world. The optimism they generated had an immense impact on me, and it was a strange feeling seeing the Berlin wall come down. So I have to say that after looking back, what’s happened in the world since the end of the Cold War has been a great disappointment. It hasn’t exactly become a more peaceful world. Like as you say, the world almost made more sense back then. Greed and war rules our world with new enemies popping up all the time.

SOLAR ANGELS: Its interesting that childhood is such a central force in your universe. It´s the same for

me! And when I listen with that in mind, it comes through so clearly, the power of seeing the world through the eyes of a child, unbiased and honest. Apart from the Cold War, what are some of the things from your childhood that still resonate within you and give you inspiration as an artist?

OLIVER: Cartoons, of course. They do stretch our imaginations far at that age. Our animated video for “Sea of love” is an homage to the Czech cartoons from the seventies. We hope to do another soon for the new album. One of my favorite cartoon characters was “The Sandman”.The melancholic theme song was beautiful. The music in those childhood shows was influential. These are sounds and melodies that make you feel safe. So i like to integrate this into our music. We were the first video generation and it definitely had an effect on our musical ideas. We always loved soundtracks of films and i used to teach myself themes from movies on a toy piano. We were given many toy instruments as children. Some were slightly exotic too. I remember one string instrument which generated an incredible sound. I started to record music and noises at quite an early age. It was nice to push the red recording

button. Sometimes just beats played on an oven, i used to love the clang it made. Sometimes some melodies might appear. I also was very much into classical music.

I loved playing in old bunkers from the German occupation of our country. It was very exiting to walk into those dark, watery caves, as you almost expected to find something from the war. Now most of these bunkers are destroyed.

SOLAR ANGELS: Do we really have to leave that childhood feeling behind? You always hear, you gotta grow up, or you gotta keep your feet on the ground! I personally believe that what we experience during childhood is a sustainable state of mind. If you can get that through all the filters our society puts up along the way to adulthood, you can still experience that old magic. OLIVER: I think it`s very important to keep in touch with childhood feelings. It`s the beginning of our emotional spectrums and so it is always important to connect with that.

SOLAR ANGELS: You told me that one of the motivations behind Sleepyard is to explore the evolution of music and how it evolves with the advent of new media. I’d love to hear more about your journey and what unexpected turns and twists it has taken. Technology obviously opens up a whole new array of possibilities for the artist. Still, though, music is music. To me it is still the intent and purpose of a song that gives it its quality.

OLIVER: I like writing songs as much as exploring sonic possibilities and we try our best in creating full aural experience in our records. We like to juxtapose elements from music history and play with it. Our roots as performers are jazz and bossa nova. That is what me and my brother learned when we started to play guitar as kids. So the focus on melody and song writing has always been important as well as improvisation and experimentation in sound. Technology can of course be a distraction for a musician or a producer. Hopefully we have steered clear from the confusion.

I became interested in exploring the evolution of recorded music after hearing some very old recordings from 1915 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They were a group of African American singers who mostly sang spirituals and did incredible harmonies. Their recording of ”Swing low, sweet chariot” was an amazing discovery. I felt that there was so much passion and hope in that performance of this song about slavery. If there ever was a timeless

recording, this was it. The pure soul of man came through.

So I slowly became interested in the evolution of recorded music. I became very interested in the Library of Congress and its vast collections of recordings. At the same time I got the opportunity to compose music that was to be set to an old tape from 1982, where the Grandmother of a relative of mine from Illinois speaks about her young life in America’s depression during the 30s. It was very touching to hear the stories about life on the farm and those primitive times when they drove horse and buggy. So i dug out my old records from the 30s for inspiration.

I began to think of American Gothic by Grant Wood. I wanted to capture the mood of those times in an ambient sound. So i used long drones of sound with bits of suspended melodies recorded on piano, melodica,, xylophone and organ. All to fit a particular part of the story she was telling. It was very exciting to colorize the narration with sounds and melodies. We also recorded the hymn ”I’ll fly away” for the project.

This became a CD called ”Grandma: God, dogs and pies” and was sold at the ”Color it pink” exhibition in Springfield, Illinois. It featured pictures of Grandma with her words of wisdom, belief in God and also a recipe for the Norwegian kringle.

SOLAR ANGELS: How do you feel that music has evolved over the past 70 years, then? What do you think the main difference would be between Sleepyard today and in 1937 - when you wouldn’t have had such a rich catalog of music to draw from (Since a lot of the stuff you have been influenced by wouldn’t even have been created yet)?

q &A

with * OLIVER KERSBERGEN *

from SLEEPYARD

WHAT ARE yOUR THREE FAVE MOVIES AND WHy?

FLASH GORDON (1980) for being my childhood favorite. It transports the cartoon to life in motion picture in a great way. Especially Danilo Donati`s costume design is incredible. He also did costume design on many of Fellini`s movies. BARRY LYNDON (1975) for its sheer beauty. Shot with super-fast lens from Nasa to capture the minimal lighting used to give the film a look of 18th century paintings. A brilliant mediation of a young man`s rise and fall from wealth and power without passing judgement. THE LADYKILLERS (1955) This is an excellent classic post war Ealing comedy wit lots of black humor. Never fails to amuse me. Screenwriter William Rose claimed to have dreamt the entire movie. It has Alec

Guiness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom in great performances.

WHAT IS THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME?

PET SOUNDS- THE BEACH BOYS (1966) or MUSIC FROM THE PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA- THE PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA

(1978).

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS FREE WILL?

Yes. I believe freedom can coexist with determinism of our universe.

WHAT ARE DREAMS?

Reflections of our mindset. The interaction between the conscious and

unconscious.

WHy IS ART IMPORTANT?

It feeds the soul and play with our senses.

DOES EVERyONE HAVE A PRICE?

No, we have no human currency.

IS REVOLUTION A NECESSARy GOOD/EVIL OF EVOLUTION?

No. Revolution are temporary breaks, evolution flows through good and evil.

WHAT IS THE NICEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO yOU TODAy?

I woke up and took a look at the sun.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE AND DESTINy OF HUMANkIND?

OLIVER: I love the idea of Sleepyard playing music in 1937 to calm the tensions in the air. I think I could have composed music 71 years ago, but i think it would mainly be romantic songs or experimental sounds if i had the money for the machines you needed back then. So we would either be playing in dance halls or working at the lab.

SOLAR ANGELS: You also said your Dad used to own a record store. There used to be a time when that must have been fantastic! I can’t say record stores have the same appeal now as they used to. In our town of Stavanger, we used to have Fossen and Platon. Especially Platon was a great place if you were into alternative, metal and harder forms of rock music. Now, I can’t even go into a record store in Norway.

OLIVER: Yes, my dad owned Fossen. That was before Platon was in business. It was indeed fantastic to walk around in the record shop as a kid looking through the racks and stacks of good vinyl records. A little universe. I suppose that I was not exactly in tune with the music of those times in the late 80s, but it was great opportunity to discover lots of interesting music that made sense to me. A record like ”The Idiot” by Iggy Pop was incredible and mesmerizing. Nowadays I prefer second hand shops for finding good records. It really feels busy and unhealthy in most record shops these days. There are DVD’s, video games and all these campaigns for CD’s you MUST have before you croak. Gimme back those old times when you could take a deep breath before you decided to buy an album.

[For our readers, both sleepyard and I come from the rather small town of stavanger on the westcoast of norway – a town with a population the size of a donut, compared to new York, paris or Chicago. but you could actually discover some pretty esoteric music there back then. Record stores were like temples or churches, and now most of them are just like any other fast food chain. — ed.]

SOLAR ANGELS: On Future Lines you have been working with the legendary Mike Garson. Can you tell us more about how this collaboration came about, and the dynamics of your work together. It is as if his piano parts and your wonderful ambient music was born to coexist. OLIVER: Mike is a very strong musical force not only his virtuoso playing but also his artistic soul. He’s in love with music. Erik Satie and Claude Debussey was more or less the pioneers of ambient music. So i wanted to go back to the source. I contacted Mike about playing on a song to try to capture that feeling in our music. He was very much in tune with the idea, so he gave it a shot and it became a great collaboration. As he has such skills and great knowledge of music, it is very nice to pitch ideas. Usually i send him a backing track with a few ideas for the mood i want in the song. Then he plays on the track and return it and we work on it from there.

SOLAR ANGELS: When can we expect Future Lines to be released?

OLIVER: It will be released this year.

SOLAR ANGELS: Any closing words for our readers?

OLIVER: Breathe in, breathe out, Smile, Keep warm, Peace out to you all...

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