Interview with Anders Find Axelsen and Christian Lignell Bækholm from The Fasion

Interview originally was made for the Playboard Snow Magazine . Issue 50 [click] . interviewer: Hendrik Jansen . 2/28/07 . Dortmund

The Fashion - tour diary #3

Punk76: Hello you guys and welcome to Dortmund and Germany. Maybe in the begining a few comments about the tour so far?
Christian Lignell Bækholm: It has been quiet awesome. It is a kind of similar, playing shows in Denkmark. It seems that people down here are much more into different genres that are put into our music. That is something that the daily audience takes a bit more time to understand. It seems that the german audience get this quiet well. We had some really good sold-out shows. When we got down here to the clubs in Germany, we were not sure what to exspect, but it is great, we love to come here.

Punk76: I told many people about your band, and they asked me: What kind of music are they playing? And it was hard for me to describe. What would you answer them?
Christian Lignell Bækholm: Haha, well, that’s not easy. We are often compared to a lot of Bands from different Genres, like The Rapture, Interpol, The Cure, The Clash. It is hard to put us in acertain box. If you like Rock and Roll Bands with a dark exspression, you will probably like us. For some it fires up instantly and others have to take some time to listen to the album. We had extremly good reviews for our Album. Maybe you can call it Dark Dance-Punk. The fact that peolple listen to our music says to me, that there is something interesting in our music. But at least we do not really know what kind of music we play.

Punk76:So lets talk about the new self-titled Album. What’s your personal favourite song and why?
Anders Find Axelsen:Hu, tough question. My favorite is Untitled and it is basically because it is the first song I wrote for this album. It has this kind of melloncollie in the lyrics and it has the melody and this Hip hop beats and it set the standart for the rest of the album. It gavce me the spotlight to be able to combine Hip hop and Melloncollie and Rock and Pop into a Song. And it is called Untitled because it was hard to find a title, haha. You know for us it took about 3 years to write the album. We could not really find a term to label it.

Punk76: So, lets talk about the new self-titled Album. What’s your personal favourite song and why?
Anders Find Axelsen: Hu, tough question. My favorite is Untitled and it is basically because it is the first song I wrote for this album. It has this kind of melloncollie in the lyrics and it has the melody and this Hip hop beats and it set the standart for the rest of the album. It gavce me the spotlight to be able to combine Hip hop and Melloncollie and Rock and Pop into a Song. And it is called Untitled because it was hard to find a title, haha. You know for us it took about 3 years to write the album. We could not really find a term to label it. Christian Lignell Bækholm: For me it is maybe Dead Boys. It was the first song that I heard that Anders wrote and that combined that really heavy Hip Hop beats with that Indie-Guitar. It is the opener and it was a good lighthouse for the rest of the album. When you listen to that song, you can exspect what the other songs on the album sound like. When you hear it loud it is even more awesome!

Punk76: Who writes the songs for The Fashion?
Anders Find Axelsen: I provide the main structure of the songs and the I sit together with the other guys and we discuss in which direction, we can do it. Jakob provides the Lyrics and the other Jacob provides the beats. So it is a sort of collaboration. But it always has to stop somewhere. Christian Lignell Bækholm: When we wrote our first album, we were in the classic way as a band, standing in the rehearse-room, looking at each other and trying what sounds good and trying to write songs. We wasted too much time on that. So Anders set up a home studio in his bedroom and we put together what ever we wanted. So when we rehearsed we had the pieces to do what we wanted to do. And it was much better for us to do it that way.

Punk76: All the songs are pretty danceable. You even had on song on your first LP called ,Lets go dancing, What means dancing for you?
Anders Find Axelsen: That song is dramatic for me in the sense that it is really not about dancing. It is about doing whatever you like and going with the feeling you have inside. The first album was not really about that, is was manly that song. But the new album is about dancing, doing whatever you like, not considering the barriers in music, just mixing it all up.

Punk76: All the songs are pretty danceable. You even had on song on your first LP called ,Lets go dancing, What means dancing for you?
Anders Find Axelsen: That song is dramatic for me in the sense that it is really not about dancing. It is about doing whatever you like and going with the feeling you have inside. The first album was not really about that, is was manly that song. But the new album is about dancing, doing whatever you like, not considering the barriers in music, just mixing it all up.

Punk76: You had a release in 2003 called ‘Rock Rock Kiss Kiss Combo’. Only a few people noticed the record. What has changed from yesterday till tomorrow?
Christian Lignell Bækholm: One big difference is that we are older, because between the two albums are almost 4 years. That is a very long time for a debut band, launching their second album. What we did after the first album. We pulled the Plug. We fired booking agency, manager and everybody around us and took a timeout. So the main thing that has changed is that we are much more sure about what we want to do and I think you can hear that on the album, that we are not thumbeling around. We are extremly sure of where we want to go. Also our patience has changed. When we were young and people talked about our album we really cared about that. But know we do not care anymore. We can feel more relaxness in what we are doing.

Punk76: Do you think that younger bands too often hear on what the people say and not too much on what they really want to do?
Anders Find Axelsen: I do not know, maybe. We always just wanted to play music and toured for about 6 years. That was the time where we got our record label deal, which gave us the opportunity to get more live jobs. We never really had a focus on getting a record deal or getting exposed. We just wanted to perfom live. Thats what makes us successful. It seems that today people are more focussed on press releases, pictures and their web-page. Today, if a band is formed, they usually have a page before they have songs. That says a lot about the industry.

Punk76: Would you say that your band was very lucky to get major label deal pretty early in band history.
Christian Lignell Bækholm: You good thing about a major label is that they have money to promote you. They have power in the music industry. But you have to realize that it is all about the songs. If you have the music then they have the power to promote you. If you have not the music, they probably also have the power to do something for a short while. But we do not what to be a One-Hit-wonder. So we are really careful, that our major-label does not sell us like that and the know that. But in fact there is a financial foundation that you can use. There are many Indie-people that think, when you are on a major label, you must be an complete asshole. But I think we proof that this is not true. We had a lot of record deal offers the time we toured germany. But if we would not have pulled the plug, like I said before, we probably would not sit here today. It would have killed the band. Of course you have to believe in yourself and have to have a lot of courage to say no to a great record deal. Anders Find Axelsen: You just have to lay down the rules, before you sign the contract and be sure that they are on the same level as you are. The term of do-it-yourself is pretty old, so I will not get into this, but we really took an honor in making our own music videos, own t-shirts, own covers, own photos, our own webpage and we brought that into the contract with the record label as well. Even Though we are on an major label, the videos are directed by our leadsinger jakob and the photos are taking by the probably cheapest camera you can get on the market. Even cover and press releases are done by ourselves. As long as you lay down the rules it is not a problem to be on any label.

Punk76: When I read your lyrics, I found it hard to find out, what you are singing about or what you mean, can you help me?
Anders Find Axelsen: One of the songs that has been discussed a lot is Like knives. It has a lot of great reviews and it is basically not about knives and violence. It is about cutting to the bone and making specifically clear what we are about as a band. We were so worried, when me made this record that somebody would missinterpret us. Christian Lignell Bækholm: Many lyrics are about the band itself. At certain points we were not sure if we were a band or not. Much is about the fashion being torn apart and coming together again. Letter from the ambulance is a good example for that. It is a brief history of the band in fact.

Punk76: I think many lyrics are very personal. Isn’t that a strange feeling, telling everybody whats going on inside of you? Aren’t you very vulnarable?
Anders Find Axelsen: Yes, I was very vulnarable, when we wrote the first album. I took it very personally when some critics did not like our music. It took me a lot of time to pick up the guitar again and start writing songs again. I did not really believed it, when people said they liked it but believed it when they said they do not. But on the new record I said, we just have to do what we like. And if we like it there is a pretty good chance that some people out there also like it. Now we are way more self-confident and believed it more when people said the liked the record.

Punk76: As you said before, you are doing all the videos by yourself. How important is a music-video for a song?
Christian Lignell Bækholm: Today it has a different place, compared to the early 90’s. Now you watch videos on youtube. It has to be simple enough to be viewed on youtube by demand and good enough to be picked up by MTV. It is extremly important for us to have videos. Videos are at least as important as songs for us. When The Fashion is doing something, we deliver a package. You get music, video, pictures and so on. We like watching videos ourselfs and I hope our videos are interesting. Anders Find Axelsen: That is an interesting question because you have to ask youself, what is helping a band these days? Is it radio airplay, blogging, myspace or videos on youtube? I do not know but recently I saw that the ‘Like knives’ video has reached 200,000 views. That blowed me away. I thought of maybe 5,000. People love visuals ontop of music and videos are a great tool for doing so. Best example is the Ok Go video for ‘Here it goes again’ on Youtube, which has about 31 million views.

Punk76: The first time I read your band name, I thought that fashion is something fastmoving, and nothing permanent. How does that name fit?
Christian Lignell Bækholm: Yeah, probably we should have thought about that, haha! Well actually we wanted to represent big citys that show the light sites and the dark sites of many people living together. Then it is something that we wanted to do our way. The Fashion is a way to express ourselfs. The fashion means for us, our way of doing things. But I understand the connotation that is is fastmoving and easily forgotton, gone next season. But we proofed that we are not gone next season.

Punk76: Does Fashion play a role in your daily life?
Anders Find Axelsen: In the way of clothing it does not. People will be really surprised, seeing us playing life, because we play in jeans and t-shirt. We have not any sponsorships in clothes, so if anybody is reading this and wants to give us great clothes.. haha! But we played at an WESC showcase in Norway. But it has nothing to do with the clothing line. They catched us basically which the fact that we are all doing skatboarding and snowboarding all our lifes and the told us, that we could be the next soundtrack for one of the greatest snowboard videos in scandinavia. And we thought this would be awesome! I love snowboard videos and considering one with my music as the soundtrack, thats great!

Punk76: Last question: I have 4 things here, and you tell me which is the most important to become sucessful as a band? 1) Professionality, 2) Connections, 3) Friendship, 4) Luck
Anders Find Axelsen: For us it is Friendship, definitely. We have been together for 13 years. Not many bands survived 13 years. That is the key issue for us. I think you can use all four, but the only one that does not matter is ‘Connections’. When we started we had really no connections. Our only connection was: Our demo was played by one of Christians friends in a cafe. And the day they played it the executive from BMG was having his regular cup of coffee. And he went to the waiter and asked, ‘What is this, playing here?’ And the he called us the next day. But that is more luck that connection.

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