In this interview, Sweden based band Elder Flower give us a few moments of their time to answer questions about their influences, the great smell of vinyl, and the magic of live music.

Be sure to visit the links below to show your support.

We’ve featured you before but let’s dive a little deeper into the artist and the music. What attracted you to this genre or style of music?

Most of all, a longing to play music that conveys hands-on emotions and that makes stages shake. All of us are university jazz students and we love that music to death, but Jazz is abstract emotions and thoughts. Everything that you’ll want to express musically can’t be abstract and thus the need for Elder Flower. When something hurts it should hurt.

How long have you been creating and sharing your music with the public?

We’ve been sharing our music since 2014. Releasing one demo and two singles which maybe is quite few tracks, but since Lovisa (our new singer) joined the band, we’ve been able to focus more. There’s an album in the making and we’re so stoked to share it with the world when it’s finished.

Who or what influences your playing and/or writing? Also, what motivates you to keep going?

We get inspired by a lot of things: Musically we’ve got a wide range of influences that goes from old swindie like Bad Cash Quartet to more recent bands like Bosnian Rainbows or Mew. It takes a detour via electronic acts like The Knife, Robyn and Little Dragon and ends up in a jazz club listening to Brian Blade and Tigram Hamasyam. Oh, and there’s maybe a bit of Helen Schneider in there too. Other than that we get inspired by art in general, feminism and geeky stuff like old anime series about robots that turn into airplanes or airplanes that turn into robots (Robotech!!).

Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?

We’ve been leaning more and more towards a mix of acoustic and electronic elements in the music and i believe we nailed it with our latest release ‘Capital Letters’. Next up is maybe to bring in visual art into our live sets – syncing video with backtracks or using drum triggers to trigger clips. When i think of what i’d like to convey in terms of our live sets, it’s a mix of powerful music and good visual arts. The direction towards more electronic aspects is really inviting us to take advantage of the possibilities that modern technology brings. Oh, and i received a scholarship to work with electronics in an improvisational context, so i’m pretty much in that mindset now.

What was the last song you listened to?

John Scofield – Holiday. Just beautiful how three musicians can make all those sounds. Melancholy and hopeful.

Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?

If it’s available: Vinyl. Not trying to be a music snob or anything, but music sounds better on vinyl. And it smells better too.

How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?

We prefer music alive and breathing, but in the digital domain i suppose Soundcloud since it’s so easy to upload music there, and find new music too.

Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what are one or two of the biggest challenges you face when trying to attract listeners to your music?

I think one of our biggest problem is living in Arvika with a population of ca 14.000 people. There’s a thriving cultural scene but it doesn’t bring that much to the table for us. We don’t get to meet that much new people or get to go to larger gigs: it’s usually our friends that’ll play smaller venues. It’s good for maintaining focus on writing and producing but not for getting out there. Other than that, i believe that the live scene in Sweden is not that great. The interest in new music is low and you general seldom get out to see a band you haven’t heard before..

Do you gig, tour or perform? Do you ever live stream? Where can music lovers see you perform?

Yeah! When we (Kalle & Daniel) wrote this, we’re heading out to play down south in Sweden. Ystad at ungdomens hus and Lund at Café & le. This winter we’ll be heading to Denmark to play at Fairbar in Aarhus. Maybe some other venues too, you should sign up to the newsletter at our label’s page, they’ll send out info as we get all the shows booked for the winter tour! www.tickticktick.se

Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more of your music?

i’d say tickticktick.se or elderflowerofficial.com, but we’re still updating the new homepage since the first one looked like crap. Soundcloud.com is a great way to hear us too, and facebook.com/elderflowerofficial brings you a lot of news too.

Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?

If you’ve never seen the northern lights you should come to Sweden and visit us. We’ll show you a good time. And the northern light ofc.