Messed!Up
It’s time to turn your ears towards Denmark if haven’t already done it because a lot is bubbling in the music scene. For us Scandinavians (yes, I’m a Scandinavian expat), the Danish music wonder isn’t new but we have yet to see more Danish bands reach their full potential and get widespread international attention.
However, the recent years have seen a wave of bands proving that Denmark is a hotbed of exciting new talent. A new generation of bands and artists are blowing up bassbins with music indebted to the UK sounds of indie pop, post punk, electropop, and rock, and one of brightest shining stars is sister duo Prisma. Sirid and Frida Møl Kristensen have released banger EP’s and singles since 2020, been awarded a Danish Grammy for Best New Live Act and a Carl Prisen Award for Best Rock Composers, and finally released their debut album Something To Respond To earlier this year. And we’ve been to heaps of their gigs just to confirm they’re one of best live acts out there right now.
When Prisma popped by Hamburg to play double shows at Reeperbahn Festival, we sat down with Siri and Frida and talked about their four-year long journey to their debut album, recording a ‘short story’ album, and starting on the next step to make a name for themselves outside Denmark. And they also tell us why they won’t add any new permanent band members, not even their brother.
A four-year explorative music journey
It’s great to finally get to meet you. I’ve been to so many of your shows the last two years and wanted to have you for an interview for a long time. In 2022, I was at four of your gigs – that was the year I discovered your music.
It’s a few months ago by now but anyway, congratulations to your debut album Something To Respond To. Have you been super busy since you released the album in April?
“Thanks! It has been a lot and we’ve been kind of busy since we released it. Well, it has been pretty intense since 2020, but the last months has been more than usual, but we’ve had lots of fun doing it, even though it’s [recording the album] been in the middle of everything else. But we’re trying to find a balance between playing live and recording music and having some time off as well”.
“We played lots of shows after it was released and are just done with the summer tour, and now our autumn tour starts. So yeah, we’re playing lots of shows right now to support the album”.
Four years after you started Prisma you have finally released your debut album. If you reflect on it, has it been a long and tough journey since your first releases in 2020 until you finally recorded the album?
“Yeah, but we actually pushed it for some years because we wasn’t ready to write a full album, like we didn’t really any idea of concepts and things like that. So we released EP’s and singles to experiment before writing a full album. And it felt right doing it now even though we probably would have changed everything if we spent more time on it (laugh). But we couldn’t wait any longer, it seemed to be the right time for it now. Today, when it’s done, it doesn’t feels scary or frustrating anymore”.
I don’t think I’ve seen so many different ways to label your music. It’s everything from synth rock, post punk, shoegaze, dreampop and genres I can’t even pronounce. What is Prisma about?
“It’s about all that and everything (laugh). We see it as an energy and that energy can form into anything [any genre] we want to. What’s more important is how we feel in the moment we write our music, the atmosphere that surrounds us in that moment. Being sisters makes it possible to write almost any kind of music and still come out like Prisma. It’s hard to label us and put us into a genre because it changes all the time”.
“We were kind of scared in the beginning and wanted to sound like an indie band and be guided by all the rules coming with that. But it changed and we changed direction, a rock direction, and added more energy to our sound. Today, everything goes as long as we’re having fun, there’s no rules anymore. If someone thinks we’re pop, then we’re pop but tomorrow we can be a rock band and that’s fine for us. It doesn’t matter. But we were afraid of being too much of a pop band when we started and didn’t allow a sound that would take us in a pop direction”.
“Prisma is like a playground where we can do whatever we want to, that’s what makes it fun and inspiring. It’s kind of our strategy that we can do anything we like in the spur of the moment. If people expect a certain sound we just do something completely different because it motivates us to not be labelled, not being boxed in. We don’t want to be what other people want us to be. Right now, some people, mostly middle-aged men (laugh), miss our rock sound. We get that a lot, but it’s fine for us that they like what we did at the beginning while we have moved on to something different and more electronic. Again, it’s important than we have fun when we write music, not to please people”.
A collection of short stories
It was with some expectations we received their debut album a few months ago, with an announcement stating that ‘Through alternating soundscapes and tempos every song became a small intimate short story’.
With eleven songs written during a two-year long period of time the band went into the studio with rough demos and came out with a strong album exhibiting great songwriting skills and a sonically diverse album kept together by their unique musical trademark. But they needed four long years to get ready for a full album.
About the album; I read the press release just before you released it where you say that it’s an album of ‘small intimate short story’. What does it mean?
“Yeah, you can see the album as reading stories, like a novel, but they’re all from the same author who wrote different short stories, you can feel that they belong together. All songs were written during a period of two years which makes up for variety when written over time. That way they sound a bit different but since it’s us doing them they’re also the same. They’re also produced in the same studio and we used the same sounds which created sort of a concept for the album. That gave the songs a similar character”.
“It’s beautiful to have different short stories on the album, like postcards from different places, and put together they create a concept or an album story although it’s not a story from A to B. The point is that we wrote the songs and just put them in a Dropbox and when we had something like 30 songs we just thought ‘Let’s record them all at the same place’ and then we went to this old studio and did it. But we didn’t have any finished songs ready, just very rough demos that we brought into the studio and finished onsite, or at least the final versions of the songs. When listening to them today, it feels like ‘That was those amazing two weeks in that studio’ (laugh), although they’re written over a much longer period of time. That’s a weird feeling”.
The album also contains collaborations on three songs. Tell me a bit about how they came about and why you brought in other bands and musicians on the album.
“It was really fun to open the door this time to see what would happen. Until now, it has only been the two of us and our producer Birk, we never wanted anyone else to be part of the process or in any other way have anything to do with our songs, that’s for us only. But the music business is a cool place and there’s so many great artists out there that we wanted to work with and it would have been a shame if we didn’t took the chance to collaborate with some of them”.
“It’s inspiring to invite people to the writing process and get a whole other feeling when you create music together, like you’re in another band with other people. We also have been doing this long enough to be ready for collaborations because we know who we are and what we want, that’s a good ground to stand on for inviting people to our creative process. And we needed some inspiration as well because we got stuck in our own thoughts on how to make music. When things like that happens, it can be good to invite someone to your own territory who has another take on music or see things differently than us, and it turned out really great to get some new energy into the [creative] process”.
But with the debut album out comes new pressure, right?
Yeah, and that’s why we released these two new singles, to avoid all that pressure that comes after a debut album. You know, after you released it you’re like ‘Oh, what’s going to happen now?’, but this is us saying ‘Here are more songs and we’re still working on stuff. Don’t have all these expectations on the second album already’. And it’s more fun for us doing it this way, just release music when you feel for it and take it from there. Then you can make some sort of strategy for the next album when you feel like ‘Now it’s time and we feel ready’. It’s us trying not to focus too much on the music industry and just do what we want, that’s what’s best for us. Just ignore everybody who tells any different”.
You always have to answer questions on how it is to work together as sisters and there are just so many times you can answer that question so I’m not going do it. But I was thinking about the dynamic of being a sister duo and writing music together, and then work with session musicians live, on stage.
How much do you have to compromise with your ideas and your music when you bring other musicians to play the songs live with you? Does it mean that you have to let go of the control?
(laugh) No! We’re very organized people and keep a strict control over our music”. (laugh)
“But no, we’re good at saying, ‘That’s a great idea, we should do it like that’ or ‘That’s not what we want’; we allow our live musicians to suggest new ideas about the music. It’s just healthy to let go at times and not be in complete control of the process. They [the live members] also play with other bands and know how to work with the audience and getting them in a good mood. Simply put, they’re just great people to work with and it’s really nice having those guys with us live”.
“In the end we make the final calls and if it’s something we don’t like on stage we have to step in and say how we want it. That’s our way of keeping control”.
You never considered to bring in new permanent band members?
“No, we haven’t but it has been suggested that we should bring our brother into the band, but that may be a bit too much for us (laugh) and the dynamics of the band. He’s a drummer and also plays trumpet. And bass and guitar. The dynamics may change for the worse if he joins us and that can be tough and end up in one big fight – no doubt (laugh)! It’s harder than just being the two of us, and he’s also much younger than us. But maybe we can do a feature with him in the future. Prisma featuring the brother (laugh)”.
The start of a new journey
Since 2020, Prisma’s rise to the stars has been an intense journey of touring and playing some major festival shows, especially their memorable gigs at the Roskilde Festival in 2022 and 2023. After joining the mandatory showcase festival circuit for a few years the band is ready to widen their horizons and take on their next challenge – put their name in the international music scene. And it seems like Germany is a good start.
The last four years have established you as a band, especially in Denmark after all festival shows and you being awarded for best live act in 2022 and best rock composers in 2023. Is it time to take the next step, with your debut album out, and find a fanbase outside Denmark by touring Europe?
“Yeah, Denmark is a tough country because there’s not many places to play. What do we have? Three radio stations and twelve cities – something like that, right? And only one of them counts [Copenhagen]”. (laugh)
“Denmark is a small place with lots of artists, but very few places and venues are available for bands. We’ve done as much as we can at home and now we’re trying out Germany. It’s a much bigger country, has more radio stations, and people are very nice and seem to like our music. You know, when we play here, people at our shows buy all our merchandise and want to talk with us after the show. They just like music a lot more than anywhere else. Maybe they grew up with more different types of music?”
When you’re celebrating on New Year’s and look back at Prisma’s debut album year, where do you want to be as a band?
“Oh, that’s tough, I [Sirid] tend to forget that we have released an album (laugh)”.
“Maybe seeing it as the year when Prisma grew up and matured, like the year the band became an adult. That and that we’ve found our musical identity or music personalities and just figured out who and what we want to be. We’ve played many showcase festivals over the years and it feels like we’re done with that part, especially in Denmark and Norway, and now we’re ready to try something new. But at the same time it’s kind of weird knowing that you’re about to take the next step and can’t go back to what we’re used to, it wasn’t that many years this project started”.
If your goal is Europe I guess you plan to get support slots for bigger bands. What bands are you looking for?
“Oasis, their reunion tour? That would be great (laugh)!”
“We don’t know yet. It could be fun to tour with a band in the US to see what that’s like. But it’s really not about the band. We have toured with bands that are very different from us, like The Ark which was kind of a weird match, but it gave us the chance to meet new people so it doesn’t really matter. For us it’s more about the places we play and the people we meet, but if we have the freedom to decide why not Sweden, Germany, the US – and Tokyo!”. (laugh)
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Photographer, interview: Sophie Dobschall
Photographer, live (RBF 2022): Julia Schwendner
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Prisma pages
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