Peter Bjorn & John. Lykke Li. Robyn. The Sounds.
The only place an enterprising A&R person (are those still around?) needs to scour (besides Australia) is Sweden.
Case in point: Stockholm. 2001. Some cute Swedish kids doing their thing at their high school talent show. This was the birthplace of Lo-Fi Fnk, the excellent indie-electronica group made up of Leo Droussage and August Hellsing.
“We met in high school and started hanging out,” Leo tells me over Skype. “I’d been doing music for a long time – I played guitar and keyboards and drums. We started a band. And we played some of the talent shows at school. When we did the second of those shows I think that’s when we really found our groove.”
Lo Fi Fnk (it’s pronounced ‘FUNK’ – it’s not spelled out, lest anyone get the impression they’re a “James Brown-kind of breakbeat group”), took a year and recorded an EP, We Is, from their house. They used a synthesizer, drum machine and a computer (“a really SLOW computer,” Leo adds). Then they released another EP, …And The JFG.
“Things started taking off in Sweden after that second EP,” Leo says. “We had songs on the radio and we played shows all over Sweden and stuff, so everything was asking when the album was gonna come out.”
One year later, their album, Boy Life, was released. It’s one long, electro-pop, roof party. There’s lots of beats, lots of synth, lots of melodies. It’s like a simpler Daft Punk record; giddy robot-rock.
When I tell Leo it sounds like a feel-good ode to being young, he agrees – sort of. Leo is pretty vague when it comes to being probed about the deeper meaning and influences behind the music.
“‘Steppin’ Out‘ is about a friend of ours and it’s also about being young,” he says. “It’s really hard because we didn’t listen to a lot of other music while making the album. I didn’t have the Internet and I didn’t download anything. We were listening to practically nothing.” He chalks the whole thing up to wanting to capture being young at the moment (2005, when they wrote and recorded it).
A particular stand-out song is ‘City.’ Leo says it is their favorite from the album.
“We had moved to Malmo,” he says, referring to a small city in southern Sweden that’s a 15-minute ferry ride from Copenhagen. “It was kind of awful. And we moved back [to Stockholm] after a bit less than a year. When we came back it was such a relief. It was around that time we wrote the song. It was about going to the city again and thinking it’s really awesome.” (French band The Teenagers, it should be noted, did a beautiful remix of ‘City.’ )
Happily back in Stockholm now, Lo-Fi Fnk’s at work on a new album. They’re mum on the release date, or how it’ll even sound. “We’re laying low with any info,” Leo says. “We’re not going to talk about the theme. But it’s not about being young.”
The guys are 26 now – four years older than they were when they recorded Boy Life, so this makes sense. One song that’s going to be on their new album, ‘Want U,’ was released on volume 6 of French compilation series Kitsune Maison. While Leo says it’s not indicative of the tone of the new album, the song is more mature. It’s a dance track flavored with robo-synth, but the song structure is little more evolved and nuanced. There’s even a breakdown in the middle.
I ask him what his friends in Sweden, the ones who saw that talent show back in the day, think about them now. “I have no idea,” he says. “We don’t know so many people. I think a lot of people are kinda impressed, maybe. I dunno. It’s not so cool to be a musician in Stockholm. Its cooler being a DJ or working at a bank or as a physician. It’s cool to be rich.”
Well, Leo, listen up: when Lo-Fi Fnk’s second album is done, take an flight from Stockholm to New York. It’s cooler here to be a musician than a banker.