Tuesday 6 May 2014

Lauge & Baba Gnohm Interview

1) Could you tell us a little about yourselves and your musical backgrounds before Lauge & Baba Gnohm was formed?
The project of Lauge & Baba Gnohm started out as an experiment in spring 2008 – When two strangers Kalle Christensen and Henrik Laugesen decided to meet up and exchange remix files for Henrik’s track “Verbed Shower” from the album “Lauge - Sundays”. As revealed in our biography we first met in Christiania (Copenhagen, DK), and after a brief chat and a cup of coffee we headed back to the studio. We started working on what would later become our very first collaboration track “The Perfect Stranger” - Which was released on the German record label “Blue Tunes Recordings”. This very track has now been our most released and re-licensed track so far.
 Before teaming up we both had our own solo-projects going on - Kalle was mainly into psychedelic trance with his project ”GnOhm”, but started out as a guitarist playing rock music in the 90s early 00s. Since an early age and before Henrik was focusing on chill-out and ambient music under the alias “Lauge” or as part of the group “Orbital Peace” – He was part of projects making hard-trance, uplifting-trance and goa-trance. Despite having two different musical backgrounds, and often with very different ideas about sounds and composition more tracks were created.
In 2009 we released our first EP on “Soundmute recordings” called “Daybreak”. This EP carried the sound that would later become our signature sound, not only to us but also to numerous people around the globe. Later in 2010 our EP “Monolith” followed. This EP still carried bits of our sound from the “Daybreak” EP, but with a more dark and psychedelic feel to it. In 2011 our first and so far only full-length album “Langbortistan” was released on the Canadian label “Altar Records”. This album really explored a more psychedelic side of us, and laid the ground for what Lauge & Baba Gnohm sounds like today.


2) Which artists influenced your sound?
We have had lots of different sources for inspiration, but to name a few and more significant to us as a project – We must definitely mention artists such as Pink Floyd, Jean-Michel Jarre and Solar Fields. But not only musicians have been influencing our sound, we have also used TV documentaries like Planet Earth as a source for inspiration and of course the beautiful nature of Scandinavia has also had an impact on our sound.


3) Could you tell us about your studio set-up?
For the moment we live quite far from each other, and have split the studio into two different ones. We aim to have almost similar studios to be able to compose tracks, and send them back and forth through the internet. Right now we are running with different DAW’s, Henrik is using Ableton Live while Kalle is using Studio One. We are both big fans of software from Native Instruments, Audio Damage, Spectrasonics and Waves. Almost every track we do contains stuff from these developers. Besides running with software we also like using our synthesizers and hardware effects from Clavia, Access, Lexicon and Yamaha to name a few.


4) When creating a track how much emphasis is placed on live performance?
When we first started out this was not part of our ideas, but as the years have gone by we’ve made more and more emphasis on creating tracks for live-performance. The latest track we have made called “Drømmesyn” (Dream Vision) was recorded as a “live” take, and we have been discussing whether to or not to create an album this way.


5) Of the events you've performed at, which did you enjoy most?
We have had many great experiences with our project, but there is one event that stands out from the rest. The “Dreaming – Awakening / Shared Light” party in Kiev, Ukraine 2011. Everything lived up to expectation with high standards all the way from the organizers to the lovely audience at the party.


6) Do you have any live gigs planned for this year?
For the moment we haven’t got anything scheduled, but we are working on visiting the US and Russia during 2014 before taking a break from gigs and focusing on another album.


7) Do you see your music sticking to the same formats or do you see yourselves branching out into new directions and genres?
Our tracks do carry some kind of similarity from one track to the next. More recently we have gone in different directions on our own and have re-established our solo projects, and also established new collaborations – Kalle went on making a glitch psystep EP with Danish producer Messy Mass, while Henrik has been doing Minimal Techno tracks and gigs with Danish techno DJ Christian Rütz. Once in a while we still do get back together as Lauge & Baba Gnohm and continue working on a second album and various compilation tracks.
Links:

No comments: