The Danish band Silent People plays progressive rock somewhere in between Animal Collectives’ synth-madness, The Flaming Lips’ neo-psychedelica and Radiohead’s ballads. A classic rock setup consisting of guitar, drums and vocals combined with synthesizers and samples creates a rich and deep soundscape.
On the 23rd of march Silent People released their debut album “Yours Truly”. They throw a party for the lonely hosts, golden babes, drunken weirdos and the sunrise on a Sunday: A cocktail of bliss and hangovers.
In this spotlight feature, we speak with Silent People to discuss influences, the new project, and more.
Full Q&A, links and streams can be found below.
What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
Generally we’re attracted to music because it has a wide range of possibilities of expression. The most important of these is to change the duration of time. A song can be based on an experience which in real life only lasts a split second. In the song you can make that feeling grow and last several minutes. To us that is some kind of magic. On a more practical level we love synthesizers and samplers and the spectrum of sounds they provide but we also love the energy of drums and electric guitars so we combine those things and some vocals because we like singing.
What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?
We started making music because we had a desire to discover and explore different sounds. We wanted to find new sounds and explore different solutions to the problems we faced during the exploration. Our ambition has always been to make music that was truly our own. With our first album “Yours Truly” we think we made something that could possibly be rewarding for someone else. It’s a pretty difficult question because basically it’s up to everybody else to judge for themselves if the music we’re making is worth spending time listening to. Still we recommend that you do it because we think it’s really something.
Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?
Our taste in music constantly changes. In the sense that we’re listening to new music all the time and discovering things we didn’t know before. Some influences stay the same though. We listen to Animal Collective, Battles, Holy Fuck, Suuns, Aphex Twin, Radiohead, Air, Brian Eno, Efterklang and The Flaming Lips.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
Our debut-album “Yours Truly” have a pretty specific objective which is to portray 10 different scenes or situations from a party. We wanted to make each song an emotional snapshot of what somebody at a party might be feeling in a certain situation. On our album you can acquaint yourself with lonely hosts, golden babes, drunkards, weirdos, lovers and sunrise on a Sunday. As if you weren’t already..
What was the last song you listened to?
Bodysnatchers – Radiohead
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
All of them. And what about cassettes?
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Bandcamp and Soundcloud because they give a lot of control to the artists themselves.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?
We couldn’t possibly say. If we knew we would definitely do something about it.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?
Facebook is the place where we’re most activate. You can catch all kinds of stuff from the rehearsal room, write us a message or whatever you’d like to that’s within the confinements of the platform. You can also join our newsletter through our website.
Anything else you’d like to add before signing off?
Starve the ego and feed the soul. Stop showering so much: We’ve got to get the funk back! And you can’t fake the funk.
That’s all the clichés we can do in one day.
