Photo: Alise Blandini
by Stina Isabel Gavrilin
Ten years after Trentemøller's first show in Tallinn, the Danish maestro of dark electronic soundscapes and dreamy shoegaze is back on our soil on October 18th. With him and his band of course, also a brand new album - Dreamweaver. We were overjoyed to get the opportunity to make a call to Copenhagen and have a little chat with him beforehand! Read all about the making of the album and the ideas and influences behind it, as well as what he's up to in daily life these days, and why one predominant element in his music is the female voice...
What inspired you to take on the topic of dreams on the new album?
Actually this theme was not something I really planned. It’s always like that when I’m working on a new album. I start somewhere and I don’t know where it all will end. Somehow in the middle of the process, I thought about how I’m always trying to capture not my dreams, but what’s in my subconsciousness, because writing music is something that I don’t have that much control over. I try to be open and not really analyze and think too much about what I’m doing. Most of the time, maybe 90%, is really hard work and then there’s this 10% that is magical, like a dream. Suddenly music comes to you. I cannot really explain it because it’s something that I’m chasing all the time, I’m really hungry for having a little longer transform window, for that magical moment. But it is totally like being in a kind of dream state when I’m inspired and the music comes to me easily. So I felt Dreamweaver was a good way of explaining my universe, my sacred little place that I go to, which is music. I can weave my ideas, dreams and inspirations together and hopefully do some good music out of that.
Thematically, Dreamweaver seems like a very logical continuation from Memoria, moving deeper on to another layer of introspection. You’re exploring both the brighter and darker aspects of dreams. Do you interpret these dreams as a way to escape the harsh reality of the world or rather as an inescapable journey to face it?
On one hand, I can definitely see it as a kind of escape, but I’m using it more to reflect on my own life and my experiences. It sounds like a cliché, but music is a very good way for me to express my feelings. It’s really hard for me to draw a painting or write a poem, but music kind of comes easier to me.
Dreamweaver clearly strikes as an album for the night. During the creation process, do you visualize a specific time of day or year that your albums are taking place in?
Not really. The funny thing is that most of the time, I’m actually in my studio at about 8 o’clock in the morning, because I also have a little son and he has to go to kindergarten. It is often my job to get him there and also pick him up again. So I have time from 8:30 to 3 o’clock and then I have to go to the kindergarten to pick him up.
In the beginning, when we got our son, I was super afraid that this limited time of being creative would just kill it all and I would not be able to do music. But I found out that it’s actually better for me to have a limited time and really use it. At first, it was quite stressful for me because I thought that I should do a LOT of stuff in these six or seven hours. Now I’ve kind of learned to relax and just see it as a positive thing, because in the old days, I could sit up until 3 or 4 o’clock in the night and sometimes overproduce a song and overthink it too much. Now I have this thing that I have to go at 3 o’clock and that helps me stay focused much more.
Dreamweaver has been described as your most psychedelic album to date. Was it your intention to tie together subconscious dreams with altered states of being?
It’s funny, it’s in my own press release, but that was also a journalist writing that after talking to me (laughs), because I don’t really feel it is that psychedelic. I feel more that it’s definitely a very personal album about grief and loss, but also love and hope. It’s also about letting go and very much about a transition in your life from one place to another. That was something that I just felt, without having anything specific to say. It wasn’t a certain situation that kickstarted the whole album, it was just a feeling in me that I wanted to express in the music. Maybe it is a bit psychedelic in a way that there’s a lot of expressions and I try a lot of different genres, more focused on songwriting that’s a little bit electronic, and then there’s some shoegazey, dreampoppy stuff. I try to weave all those things together to still be a Trentemøller album, even though I’m pretty sure everyone can hear my inspirations, The Cure and Joy Division and all that. But I still try to make it personal and make it my own.
I know you’re a fan of David Lynch’s storytelling and the way he uses sound and music. This kind of Twin Peaks-esque narrative construction and atmosphere, to me, is especially evident on this new album. Do you consciously channel Lynch’s stories in your music?
Yeah, maybe not one to one, but what I love about David Lynch’s movies is that they’ve got a lot of layers. I’ve seen Mulholland Drive maybe nine times and I still don’t get it, but I really love to be lost in it and just enjoy the atmosphere. Every time I see a new thing, and that’s also what I’m trying to do with my music. To have those layers and different stories being told at the same time. And hopefully people listen to the album maybe two or three or five times and discover new details, especially when you’re listening with headphones. I really like to work with melodies and the bassline and all the instruments, and also to have something in the sounds that is very plain, like guitar, but underneath there’s a lot of ambiance and weird stuff going on that’s not so in your face. It’s much more subtle. It’s the subconscious idea again of having something that is not really easy to point out, but you can feel it if it’s not there.
How did the visual identity of this album come together? Did you have a clear idea of how it had to be or do you usually leave the visual side to someone else?
No, I always do my artwork and design myself because it’s also very important. I actually always end up doing that at the very last minute, same with this album. My label said, “now we need a cover, we need a visual thing too”. I was so deep into the music. But then I started to just Google. There’s this really cool Danish band Mew, and their singer is called Jonas Bjerre. I heard he started doing some visual stuff, so I Googled him and this guy Jonas Bjerre came up, but it was not the guy from the band, it was a totally different guy also living here in Copenhagen, who does these fantastic photos of flowers and wires. I really liked the idea of a flower that’s held by wires, something that’s so beautiful, and you’re still trying to grab it but it’s not possible. I felt that those photos really fit the music and the whole idea of the album, also lyrically. So I just wrote to him on Instagram because I didn’t know him, and he was like, “yeah, of course you can use my photos, I’m really honoured you want to do that!” so that was very easy. I found out that normally, he’s actually quite a big architect in Denmark. He’s only doing his photos as a hobby, a side project, but I think they’re really cool and they really capture the atmosphere of the album. But then I also just like black and white photos. The aesthetic fits quite well to the music.
The vocal side on this album is done entirely by Disa Jakobs from Iceland, who was also with you on the Memoria tour. How was this collaboration born, how did you meet?
I actually met her through my drummer, he’s also the guy playing all the guitar on my album. I needed a singer for my live tour, he knew this cool girl from Iceland and said she has a voice that would fit my music very well. Then we met and hooked up. We really had a good vibe going on and she actually ended up playing with me for the whole Memoria tour. She sang all of my new songs and also some old songs but really made them her own, so to speak. I was very happy about the way that she was performing and the way that her voice is, so I was totally sure that I wanted to use her for this album. I also wrote all the songs with her voice in mind, because I know her voice now. It made it quite easy for me because we had just finished our world tour.
Normally, I’m super scared about starting up a new album because I always feel that now I have lost it, I’m not inspired anymore, this was my last album, and stuff like that (laughs). So I always wait five or six months before daring to start a little bit on new stuff. But this time I was super inspired, I don’t know why. This album also came quite close to the last one compared to other times. There’s three or four years between each album, and only two years this time. It really felt natural because we just had such a good tour. I think that made it much easier.
So many different vocalists have added their own touch to your music, how do you decide who to invite? Do you find that a female vocal complements your sound better than a male vocal would?
Yeah, that’s a good question. Somehow it has ended up so that most of the vocalists I’ve worked with are female. It’s more like a coincidence because I also really listen to a lot of male vocalists. I think maybe it fits my music a little bit better. I don’t know why, but it’s something about the sound in a female voice. That being said, I’m now talking to a guy in L.A. called Rosie, he’s doing some fantastic shoegazey stuff. But he also has a voice that is quite high-pitched... Maybe I just relate more to some female vocalists. It’s weird because I’m not female, but I somehow relate more to their vocals. I’m a huge fan of Hope Sandoval and Grouper, and I do actually just listen to a lot of female vocalists, so that’s maybe also why. It just feels natural. But for my next album, I think it could be fun to do something different. I’ll see.
How much do you intentionally emphasize nostalgia in your music? You’ve often brought up the connection with specific smells taking people back in time, is that something you try to do sonically?
I’m actually not a big fan of pure nostalgia because I think it’s a bit boring. I like to be in the moment, but also use myself – that is of course my memories and my background, and I’m definitely not trying to hide that because it makes up the human that I am today. But I’m not trying to do a rip-off only of old bands that I have listened to. I’m also very sure that my music definitely is inspired by a lot of those bands. I try sometimes not to sound like that but it's not possible for me because I just think that it’s so deep in my DNA and the way that I like music.
In the beginning, when I started doing my first album, I was much more inspired by some electronic stuff, but even back then I also listened a lot to more indie, post-rock and shoegaze. Now it has just taken over more and more and the electronic thing has faded away, because I never really felt much at home in that kind of music. I still use elements from it, and I’m trying to use elements from all the music that I love. I also love classical, folk, and jazz music. Maybe it’s hard to hear something jazzy in my music but I still listen to it quite a lot and I think you can still be inspired by different genres without it always that easy to hear.
The first song on this album, A Different Light, was inspired by Nick Drake. I really love the sound of him finger playing the nylon guitar. So I’m inspired by a lot of different music, maybe it’s just my background, I don’t know. But I still also listen to a lot of new music.
Your tour really takes off this month, but you already played one show in Hamburg, right? How’s the feeling, all set up for the weeks ahead?
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it and also a bit nervous, because we’re playing a lot of new songs from the album. We had this one gig in Hamburg three weeks ago and we tried some of the new songs, but we’re going to play even more of them, and also some old songs that I haven’t played for twelve years. It’s a bit nerve-racking, but I’m also really looking forward. I’m really happy to go out and play all over Europe again. Now we also have an Australian tour and we’re going to Japan. So it’s fantastic!
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