"YOU START WITH GOOD ENERGY AND YOU END WITH GOOD ENERGY!"

Die Jungs von CARPARK NORTH sind auf "HOPE" Tour. Ihr aktuelles Album erschien Mitte August. Im Nürnberger Z-Bau haben wir Lau (Gesang und Gitarre), Morten (Drums) und Søren (Bass, Synthesizer) zum Interview getroffen.

Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo
Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo

Hi guys! I wanna start out with something fun! I would like you to draw what comes to your mind when you think of your home country Denmark!

Morten: That's a great idea! We never tried that!

Lau: Hmmm.. Denmark....

Zeichnung von Morten.
Zeichnung von Morten.

Morten: So I drew the sea and some really green hills!

Søren: I don't think we have a hill that high! (laughs)

Morten: It is not that high! It's maybe a hundred meters high, we have that!!! (laughs)

Lau: I drew the apple tree mountain where I grew up! You can see the sea from that hill! It reminds me of home and what Denmark is.

Søren: That's what I think people think of Denmark! (laughs)

Zeichnung von Lau.
Zeichnung von Lau.
Zeichnung von Søren.
Zeichnung von Søren.

So you're on tour, how has it been so far?

Lau: It's been great! We are just coming from a huge festival tour in Denmark and in Denmark we're playing like.. one of the last shows we did was like 20,000 – 30,000 people! And then to go directly from that to a club tour – that's just so insane to do and it's so much fun to have that contrast! In a club you can see people's eyes and you can feel their energy really easily, so it's a completely different beast to play clubs!

 

How do you feel about touring and being in Germany?

Lau: I feel like Germans are better music people than Danish people. (laughs) At least the people who come to see us here are so nice and so behaved, when they do a line at the merch table.. They stand very nice in line. In Denmark people are always completey drunk (laughs) and can't really stand in line. And people are listening and going crazy! It's just such a nice country and such a big country. We love to come here!

Morten: Yeah it's huge!

Compared to Denmark...

Lau: Yes, everything compared to Denmark is huge! (laughs)

 

Do you remember the first time you actually played shows in Germany?

Lau: Yeah, we remember the first tour we ever did. It was back in 2006 I think. We had three or four shows in the very nothern part of Germany where they don't really know if it's Denmark or Germany (laughs). It's always a journey. You start with real good energy and you end with good energy. And in the middle everything is always a little bit tough.

Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo
Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo

Do you recognize a difference in the music industry back when you started compared to now?

Lau & Morten: It's very different!

Søren: I think it's easier for us to feel the change in Denmark because that's our home country. When we started out there we physically sold a ot of albums and that's kind of gone now in Denmark and with that, the whole music scene has shifted. The music genres they play are all based on Spotify lists. We're luckily still successful in Denmark, we still do a lot of shows but the whole media scene, the radio and what they're talking about has changed very much. For us it's kinda funny to see the posters for the festivals we're playing because in Denmark we're headlining and you could actually just turn the poster up side down and then you have the hitlist from Spotify. The more mature music has still the biggest live shows and that's a strange difference that live and recorded music are totally different things.

 

You released your new album „HOPE“ - how has the feedback been so far?

Morten: Great! Especially in Denmark! (laughs) We just released it a month ago in Germany so we haven't heard that much from here so far.

Lau: And all the reviews are in German so it's a a bit difficult to understand if people like it or not. (laughs) It's a different album in the sense that we have two Danish songs on the album and we never planned to do that. We always figured we would be international but then big things happened in my life; there were a lot of words that pressed on. I wrote a couple of songs and played it to the guys and didn't realy expect what would happen, like if we should put them in the sound of CARPARK NORTH or not. But we actually tried it out on a small tour we did in Denmark and the feedback was great and it felt right so we put it on the album. It's funny to play it here in Germany; the German fans obviously don't know that much Danish but their feedback is that they get the emotion when we play, they get the vibe of the song and maybe they know the theme of the song but they don't know the exact words. The first night was weird, singing Danish to all the German people but I kinda got used to it. (laughs) And it seems like they like it!

 

Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo
Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo

What are your musical influences?

Lau: That's a good question. It was so easy to find music to be influenced by five years ago and back. Because there was new music all the time. But now it's actually a little bit difficult. Because, where do you get the new interesting music if the public decides what's on the hitlist and hitlists decide what's on the radio? And who decides actually new groundbreaking music?

Søren: For me there's a lot of new interesting music out there but the way it's done has changed so much. It's just one song here and one song there that is interesting. And it's not even the band that made it themselves, it's a songwriter and a producer and a rapper. I'm not fans of anybody new at the moment but there's a lot of good music out there.

Morten: What I find the most inspiring is musicians and artists that are true and honest because there's so much bullshit (laughs), like really commercial stuff where you can almost see the record label sitting in the studio and telling them what to do. I really like it when I hear an honest voice, an honest band. When you feel like they haven't calculated any record sales.

Lau: The latest band I've been inspired by must be Biffy Clyro. They've been on my radar for some years now.

 

So, if you could host your own festival – which bands would you choose as the three headliners?

Lau: Can we decide dead bands as well?

Morten: Nahhh...

Lau: Does it have to be living bands?

Søren: That would be a creepy festival...

Lau: (laughs out loud)

I mean, you could host one with living bands and one with... bands who aren't here anymore?

Søren: Okay, fine!

Morten: I think it's creepy! (laughs)

Lau: I'd choose Foo Fighters first, they're always fun!

Morten: Yeah. I would like to see Bon Iver again. 

Søren: And then... Kanye West! That's gonna be a strange set-up!

Lau & Morten: (laughing)

Søren: I don't know who's gonna buy tickets for all three... (laughs)

Lau: Okay, if we had to choose between dead artists I would definitely have Michael Jackson on the roster. 

Søren: I'd choose The Beatles... and Beethoven!! 

Lau: The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Beethoven!

Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo
Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo

What are your must-haves on tour? What's always with you?

Lau: Well, computers are always part of our tour, because we always have to do some work too. 

Søren: We also record every soundcheck we have, because we're jammin' a lot.

Lau: Computers have always been part of our music anyways. We gave our band computer a name in the old days! (laughs)

Morten: What was that name?

Lau: Amy!

Morten: Amy, yeah, right!

Lau: We had an idea of her – or it – being on stage and being part of the show because it was kind of our thing that we wanted to combine real people with machines. 

Søren: Artificial intelligent music equipment! (laughs)

And is there something like -

Lau: Beer? Yes! (laughs)

No like, weird or funny things?

Søren: Did you have a teddy bear on this tour?

Lau: I do, I was thinking about saying it but i didn't! (laughs) – I brought a teddy bear for this tour.

Morten: Why?

Lau: My children gave it to me and they wanted me to be safe. The first night on the tourbus I took it up because I needed pictures of it with me – (whispers) and it was actually nice. (laughs)

 

If you had a time travel machine and you couldn't go to the future – only to the past – which year or century would you travel back to and why?

Morten: I would go back to the 60s. I think people had so much fun!

Søren: I would say 2000, the 00s.

Morten: What about the 80s?

Søren: No, the 00s.

Lau: Why?

Morten: We've just been there! (laughs)

Søren: Well, that was when our kind of music was still popular!

(Everybody laughs out loud!)

Søren: That was a good decade.

Lau: Or back to the 1890s or the middle ages. Real time travel!

Morten: I would go back to the dinosaurs!

Søren: You would go back to the dinosaurs. (laughs)

Morten: AH!!!! T-REX!! 

Søren: Get a selfie! Ahhh! (laughs)

Morten: San Francisco in 1968...

Lau: Being a Hippie! (laughs)

Lau: It's difficult to choose because there's so much interesting history.

Morten: I would go back to yesterday and remember that..

Lau: And have that burger again!

(everybody laughs)

Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo
Foto: Sarah Whoever Photo

What would be your dream city or dream country to play in/at?

Søren: I would love the play Australia!

Lau: I would say Brazil, Rio De Janeiro.

Morten: I'd like to play Wembley in London! (laughs) That'd be fun.

Søren: Or just in London at a shithole venue!

(Everybody laughs)

 

The last question is a bit tricky – which records would you take with you if you were on a desert island?

Lau: Beyond The Missouri Sky from Pat Metheny and a record with Leonard Cohen!

Morten: Peter Gabriel – So, the second Bon Iver album and some sort of movie soundtrack just for the scenery. Maybe something like Gladiator.

Søren: Radiohead's 'Kid A', Roxettes 'Tourism' and 'The White Album' by The Beatles.

 


 

 

(c) Sarah, September 2018