Miike Snow are currently on their first trek of the US as promotion for the bands self titled debut album, which was released last year to critical acclaim.
Our resident gig-goer Taylor Farnsworth caught up with the trio at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia, shot some great pictures (which you can see more of here) and managed to grab an exclusive interview with the band.
Taylor Farnsworth: When word got out about your music you kept a mysterious image. Did you want to keep people guessing as to who exactly you were?
Pontus Winnberg: “We didn’t set out to hide or be mysterious in any way.”
Christian Karlsson: “We had our names out from the beginning on MySpace and had one picture. I think people thought we were hiding behind the jackalope or something.”
TF: Why the jackalope for your album cover?
PS: “It was Christian’s tattoo artist. We played her a song and told her we want something with antlers. She is also from Sweden and for some reason she designed a rabbit with antlers without knowing anything about a jackalope.”
CK: “She was pissed off when it already existed.”
PS: “But then on a tour of Germany we found out that there’s an old Bavarian mythical creature called the Wolpertinger. It looks the same but the Wolpertinger sometimes has the tail of a bird.”
TF: Seeing that Andrew is from New York and Christian and Pontus are from Sweden, how did Miike Snow come together?
CK: “I met Andrew, what was it, 2004 or something like that in the studio in New York. I’d finished my session and he had his session after me so we met there. I heard some of his music, he heard some of ours and we kept in contact. A couple years later we actually tried to hook up and write songs and I think that we realised we had something more special than just writing songs.”
TF: How did you choose the name Miike Snow?
CK: “It’s actually a guy that we know. His name is Mike Snow. We just took the spelling from the Japanese director, Takashi Miike.”
TF: Why did you choose to name it after your friend Mike Snow?
CK: “He’s a young engineer and we had known him for some time. I think Pontus got an email from him when we were trying to find a name.”
PS: “It was super random.”
CK: “We’d only met him like twice.”
PS: “I got an email from Mike Snow, so we thought, we’ll just name it Miike Snow.”
CK: “He’s coming to the show in Montreal. He lives in Montreal and he’s going to come see us.”
TF: When you released your self titled debut album what were your expectations?
PS: “We didn’t have that many expectations at all. We didn’t make the album for any other purpose other than to make an album. Whatever happened just happened. It’s still kind of like that. The whole live side is so different, we don’t have any expectations.”
CK: “We just know that we’re going to do Miike Snow for a while.”
TF: After releasing the album and touring for it, are you going to change your approach to the next album?
PS: “The whole live aspect of it will probably have a huge effect on how the next album will sound. It’s hard to say now but we have some idea of what we want to do, we’ll see once we get into the studio.””
TF: What are your plans for the second album? Any idea when you’ll hit the studio and start recording?
PS: “As soon as possible I guess.”
CK: “Yeah. It’s hard because we’re touring all of the time. As soon as we get any time off from touring we’ll get into the studio.”
TF: How extensively have you been touring over the past year or so since ‘Miike Snow’ was released?
CK: “We’ve been touring since May last year, pretty much all of the time. We had some weeks off here and there.”
PS: “Pretty much the whole world.”
PS: “I think we’re planning on stepping up the live thing after the summer. Something will happen on our tour here in the US.”
CK: “We’ve got two more tours this year, one in June and one in October or September.”
Be sure to check out the pictures from the show by clicking here.
