[dropcap]S[/dropcap]wedish music group Dirty Loops has an eclectic sound with elements of jazz, fusion, pop and soul. The Pit had a chance to speak with bassist Henrik Linder about the band’s work and what’s next for the group.
Stephanie: So h0w did Dirty Loops get started?
Henrik: Me and Joe, singer, met as children he was 9 and I was 11. Then we hung out occasionally until forming the band. Went to 2 other schools together. Met the drummer later in school. We played together in various projects. Formed Dirty Loops in 2008 to have something as a hobby project where nobody told us what we had to do; it was a lot of freedom.
All of us studied music — theory, jazz — at a music school. We had been studying it for a long time, and it was nice that we actually got to use the music theory. In the classes you’re supposed to play the song exactly as it’s written, but we wanted to put twists on them and play whatever we heard. So that was really what the band was about.
S: What’s your writing process like?
H: When we write the music, we want to write really simple pop songs from the beginning, more focused on the melody— we don’t want to write complicated things. All of the songs on the album started as simple versions that sound like normal pop production. We came from the covers where re-did songs, so we wanted to keep it the same concept because we wanted the melody to be in focus. if we start to add a lot of weird stuff, then the melody will be according to the weird chords instead of to the melody itself. So we started with writing pop songs, arraigned it after. it’s like writing two songs for every song.
S: So, you had some success with song covers on Youtube. Can you tell me about how that got started, and what the response was like?
H: We put up our first cover and it got many views. We didn’t think anyone would listen to our music — that was not the goal of it in the beginning. We put one up to have a looking reference in case we wanted to get a gig, and then that link spread by itself and we were like yeah we should put up another one. When we put up the Justin Bieber cover, we woke up the next morning and it had 125k views the next day. I remember that time and we were like, yeah we’ve got some more fans now and maybe this will have a few views after the first day. When we woke up, it went viral, so it was a very nice moment for us, and very funny. We were calling each other at 6 a.m. about it— that’s how excited we were.
Our favorite cover was “Wake Me Up,” our most recent cover, because we’ve developed so much since we started. With most of the stuff we do, it’s always the latest that is our favorite thing, because it’s always some new element in there that we didn’t do before, it’s still fresh to us.
S: What is the meaning behind ‘Hit Me’?
H: Hit Me is when you call someone and want them to call you. When you meet someone and you act all normal, then get obsessive and foolish because you just want them to call you back. even though you know it’s kind of doomed, it’s when you’re in the state where you act like a crazy person.
I think everyone can relate to the song in their own way. Some might listen for the music, some might find lyrics inspiring or anything, like whatever way they inspire people is very good. It’s up to everyone to take their own things out of the songs.
S: How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before.
H: It’s really a big mashup from a lot of genres. We try to mash everything we have ever listened to: jazz, fusion, a lot of pop songs, classical music, we try to have small parts from everything into one to blend together. It’s a big mashup between a lot of genres.
We never discussed the way we wanted to sound. Everything happened just because that’s how it happened. Anything could happen. that’s why we started the project and i think that has been important to us all the time to keep it that way so there won’t be restrictions to it. it’s the same thing theory-wise, we never would think bout theory when we write songs. just want to come up with stuff we can do to keep developing.
S: What’s next?
H: We’re going to tour for two months to promote the new album. We’ve started already in Europe, and then we will go to North America and Canada for a month, then to Japan and South Korea.
S: What would you like to tell your fans?
H: We want to thank every one of you. It’s all because of the fans that this ever got somewhere — the people that shared our videos were the reasons we could do this at all. They were the reason we could even do this in the first place, so I want to dedicate a huge thank you to them.
