Blind Terry

Blind Terry

You probably hear that quite often: you got an ep out on Cloudberry records, so how did you get in touch with this guy?
Henrik: I think he heard us on Myspace and then he just wrote to us. We made up a deal and released our record on Cloudberry. It was very simple, we never met him actually and just had these email coversations with him.
Did you have the songs already recorded or did you go to the studio in order to record for the Cloudberry release?
Kristina: We had already recorded the songs and were wondering what we wanted to do with them. Then he contacted us and so it was very convenient to release them on his label.
So how old are the songs actually?
Henrik: Well, they are ... like from the 60s.
Kristina: (laughing) Good question. Fresh. No, but i think we recorded them in november 2006. Yeah, that's the truth. they are pretty old, but we are about to record new stuff right now.
Henrik: But it took quite a long time to mix them.
Kristina: Yeah, i think we recorded them in november and had the final mix in march 2007.
So are you going to play some new songs tonight?
Kristina: Yeah, some new songs and the old songs as well. There are even older songs (laughing).
The a-side of the Cloudberry EP is "when prefab sprout wrecked my mind". I read in an interview some months ago that it is meant quite positively, a kind of hommage to Prefab Sprout. Are there other bands who influenced you and got you into making music?
Kristina: Of course there are other bands. We both like the Go-Betweens ...
Henrik: ... and Aztec Camera is another great band from the 80s ...
Kristina: ... yeah, Aztec Camera is really great. And i like China Crisis. What else? I mean, there are a lot of great bands.
The name Blind Terry is taken from a Bruce Springsteen song. Is Springsteen an influence on your music?
Kristina: Yeah, definitely. Maybe it was more obvious in the beginning when we started to play. But we were discussing springsteen just today and talked about what a brillant album "born to run" is. This is really a masterpiece!
Since you released the EP there is for sure more recognition towards your band. So what are your plans now?
Henrik: We are in the studio right now recording new songs. We really want to release a full length album, maybe in the beginning of next year or in autumn. It depends on how fast we are working, we think much and work really slow, we process our songs, not just release them. That is quite important for us.
This is what you hear on the released songs, too. Just to make sure that it is not only in Leipzig where you are a kind of hit, did the feedback that you get change during the last months?
Kristina: There are probably more people in Germany who know us than in Sweden, but slowly there is a slight change in sweden as well. People get in contact with us on Myspace. but on the other hand we played maybe more in Germany then in Sweden. We were to more cities in Germany. This is the second tour in Germany.
Henrik: But we are playing Emmaboda festival in Sweden this year and this is great for us. We really want to release a record in sweden, in Germany as well of course; but we need a swedish label. it is the same thing again, we work very slowly and we want to play everywhere.
Where do you actually record? It sounds a bit like your studio is set in the woods of sweden...
Kristina: (laughing): That's great, that's a good style. No, it is more like in the middle of Stockholm where we really record. But the studio is three floors underground, so that's maybe the reason for the solitary song sound.
Your sound was currently often described as a blueprint for swedish contemporary pop, for example by german magazine Spex. Would you agree or do you think that you are different from other swedish indie pop bands?
Kristina: It is an honour when somebody says that our music sounds like a blueprint. But i don't think about this stuff when we play. We don't think about being different from anything or anyone.
Henrik: Yeah, we can't get away, we are from Sweden. There is a really good scene at the moment and has been for many many years. The pop scene is really good, people are working very hard and doing their own stuff. I think we've got our own Blind Terry sound that you can recognize. That's important. and it's nothing we really work on. But we got Kristina's songs and her voice, we arranged our music together and it worked really well.
Kristina: We played together for such a long time. Now it is like a mix between the things we prefer and the things that create the sound of Blind Terry.
Your music sounds a bit like chamber indie or chamber pop. Especially when seeing you performing live, there is an almost jazzy approach. Do you have classical education?
Kristina: I learned classic piano when i was a child, but i play in a complete different manner when i play with Blind Terry. I like indie pop a lot, but i also like music that is more elaborated, in that sense. So maybe there also are influences from that kind of music.
Henrik: In the tour bus we listen to all different kinds of music now, we are listening to old school Hip Hop, Traveling Wilburys and Tom Petty, The Go-Betweens of course and Prefab Sprout. We think that it is important to listen to all these kinds of music and get to know different styles.
Have you been to the UK already?
Henrik: No, but we would love to go there! Kristina: Nothing is really planned, but we hope to go there soon. We just played in Germany and Sweden.
Are there any requests from labels?
Henrik: We are still discussing it and we hope to find a good label to release our songs.
So let's hope that it will be a good show tonight...
Kristina: It will be. Thank you.

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Das Interview wurde zur Verfügung gestellt vom Blog One Step Beyond Show.