Interview: Danish Rock Band Vinyl Floor Discuss Their New Album "Funhouse Mirror"
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“During the demo process I brought in the song ‘Funhouse Mirror’ and it kind of seemed to wrap up the entire feel of the album in just three verses. We´ve always tried to come up with album titles which weren´t the title of one of the tracks but this time it seemed to fit.”
Congratulations on the completion and release of your new album "Funhouse Mirror"; tell us about your creative process for the development of its ten songs, and how long it took to complete the project.
Thomas Charlie Pedersen: Thank you! I think we started out demoing songs for ‘Funhouse Mirror’ during 2019. When we did the demos for our ‘Apogee’ album way back in 2015/2016 we quickly discovered that we had one batch of rock songs and a different batch of songs & ideas for a somewhat more mellow and melodic album but also material which was a bit more dramatic in texture and which perhaps demanded bigger arrangements.
Thus, we decided to do the first batch for ‘Apogee’ and save the rest for later. I seem to recall songs like ‘Between Lines Undone’, ‘Dear Apollon’ & ‘Death of a Poet’ were already in the 2015 batch. At least as instrumentals. The work on ‘Funhouse Mirror’ intensified and really took off during lockdown in 2020. We don´t do a lot of talking, we kind of instinctively know what to do.
I wrote a lot during that time, mainly as a way for me to stay sane and focused. We also did some writing together and demoed the songs in different versions.
Songs like ‘Death of a Poet’ and especially ‘Pretty Predictable’ have been through many stages and different versions. So, yeah, it actually started out as a left-over project and we always spend a lot of time on the demos.
The album preparations took years but once we hit the studio we knew exactly what we wanted to do and it was recorded fairly quick.
What inspired the title of the album, "Funhouse Mirror", and would you say that there is an overarching concept or theme throughout the songs?
During the demo process I brought in the song ‘Funhouse Mirror’ and it kind of seemed to wrap up the entire feel of the album in just three verses. We´ve always tried to come up with album titles which weren´t the title of one of the tracks but this time it seemed to fit.
The album had quite a few working titles until Daniel got the idea of making a funhouse mirror the theme for the artwork. During lockdown it felt as if we were living in some kind of parallel world and everything just felt so uncertain. I wouldn´t say we decidedly aimed for an album concept since we did talk about our desires to avoid just that, but again, it seemed to fit. Daniel suggested that we put ourselves on the front cover for once and that we presented some sort of distorted image of ourselves.
The album deals a lot with communication and some of the lyrics deal with how easy it has become to be misunderstood on social media platforms. Humans are generally quick to judge one another and you will set foot on not very solid ground if you don´t tread carefully. I would say there´s a certain theme running through the album – especially during the second half.
At what point when you both were younger did you first discover your love of music and that you were talented enough to make it your career?
Being brothers and being raised in a musical family with instruments laying around everywhere it was something that perhaps was just supposed to happen. I think I started drumming at the age of five and Daniel likewise so.
When I was three and before Daniel was even born, our father took me to a show in Copenhagen to see the Swedish singer Björn Afzelius. That was my first concert and something I still remember vividly. I discovered I wanted to play myself. I spent years just noodling around with instruments, curious, self-taught. It wasn´t until I became a teenager that I found out that songwriting could be the thing for me, the one thing I should try and figure out.
Already in high school I played with people who were much better musicians than me, so I decided that writing songs might make a difference. I´m sure Daniel has felt much the same way. And we still love doing it. Though the band is still pretty much underground, I might add. And by the way, I fricking still love Björn Afzelius.
What does the band name, Vinyl Floor, represent and how did it originate?
It doesn´t really mean anything and some days I think it´s a silly name haha but you’ve got to call it something, right? It probably does represent our love for vinyl records though and if I remember correctly I came up with the name when I visited Daniel one day and he was sorting some records lying on the floor. He lives in an apartment on the first floor so we both thought, well that´s it. We do opt for a vintage sound when we write and record so maybe we could have done worse with it.
With the album now released, what can we expect next musically from Vinyl Floor? Also, with the world opening back up now, are you planning to tour a lot in 2023?
Because we take our time with the preparations for a record we´re always ahead songwriting-wise which means that we already have new songs in the can as we speak. We´re in the very early stages of discovering what exactly we´ve got so I don´t know which direction we will go from here.
The variety of ‘Funhouse Mirror’ can take us down many paths, I believe. I could envision us doing a more low-key, folky record. Or maybe a weird record in which we do some more experimenting. I´d love for that to happen. Either way, I do think we have some wonderful stuff waiting around. And we might go out and perform acoustically as a duo. We´ve talked about that so we´ll see. Come 2023 I´m sure we also will be recording new demos once again.