Casiokids: What’s Happening In The Playground
Posted 20th Oct 2009 in Interviews, Casiokids | Written by Martin Davies | 0 comments
We spoke to Ketil of Casiokids to talk about the origins of the Norwegian band, how their music workshops with kids inspire new tracks, and their decision to turn down the support slot for Doves. I saw you play Bestival a few weeks ago - did you catch any other bands while you were there?
Ah, yeah, Kraftwerk, they were quite amazing. That was, I guess, the only thing I saw properly. I was really glad I got to see those guys, because they have such an amazing live show. I'm a big fan.
See anyone else?
Actually no. I just met up with some friends, and Kraftwerk was the only thing that I saw. But we were there for two days so we had a look around the island. We went to have Sunday roast in a little village there. It sounds like a really nice place, I would love to go back. We said, among the band, that we would really like to go back for a holiday, it's really nice. The weather was good as well during Bestival - we just got a really good impression of the place.
I'll warn you, it's not always that good.
No, I guess not, I heard that last year there was so much rain and one of the stages actually started to disappear in the mud [laughs]. We've been to a lot of UK festivals this summer, and I must say that Bestival is one of the better ones, together with, maybe, Latitude and Lounge On The Farm. The line up of all those festivals were good. I should mention also, Standon Calling, that was good.
Can you tell me about the musical experiments that you've been doing in schools?
Yeah, we've arranged workshops and concerts in kindergartens in the Bergen area. We've also had a sort of playground sound installation at a festival in Paris last year, called Sous La Plage and we did the same thing at the Alo, Alo festival in Bergen last year where we set up our instruments inside a playground and mic'd up the different apparatuses around the playground and we sort of just had an ongoing... I guess you could call it... it wasn't a concert. The kids and passers by just joined in by playing with the different apparatuses and we made them into different kind of instruments. So, we just sampled whatever the kids were doing and took it into the music we were doing. Everything is build up around our own sounds, but still we sort of include what's happening around us in the playground. It is a sort of concert where people can participate.
Did these workshops inspire any new material?
For new songs we've used things that we made together with the kids at those workshops, but maybe we just used them as a base for a new song. It's a snippet of a rhythm, or a couple of sounds from an apparatus on the playground. We just use that as a starting point for a new song. So, the workshops that we've done in the playground have only been done for installation or new ideas. But we've also made particular new songs, together with children in kindergarten; we've done that a couple of times as well. So after doing some recordings with the children, we take everything back to the studio and edit it, and then we print up CDs for everyone in the kindergarten to take home.
Playing live, I noticed that you each kept swapping instruments. Are you like that in the studio, too?
Yeah, everyone plays the drums, everyone plays the casios and we have two vocalists. It's just been like that ever since the start really - whenever someone has an idea they just try it out. And even though I'm personally not too good at playing the drums maybe, but we can loop bits. So if I play for ten minutes, maybe ten seconds of that will be any good. [laughs]
How did you all meet and start to play music together?
Casiokids started out with me and Fredrik, the other singer. We just made edits of songs that we liked to play at parties. So, everything from Beck to Daft Punk and Queen and things like that. We sort of made our own edits out of it - we were using casios and singing on top of the songs. It started out as a project for me and him to make songs to bring to parties, but then after a while we got Omar and the other Ketil. It then turned into something slightly different; we started playing together as a band, still using mostly electronic rhythms as a base for the songs, but we started to make our own songs after a while. In the beginning it was more improvised, but then it turned into being more song structured, but we always try to keep the sort of danceable elements to it.
What have been the biggest influences in developing your sound?
Well, in the beginning it was more techno and dance music, but after a while we included more... I listened to a lot of Nigerian music and music from Mali and we were inspired by the vocal harmonies, so we started doing more vocals. And we all listen to pop music like Abba and all kinds of things. It has turned into a mix of that, a little bit African, a little bit pop, a little bit of the techno in there.
I know that your band has just had its fifth birthday. How did you celebrate that?
We had a big birthday party last week in Bergen where we arranged a whole night, we didn't only play a show. The whole night was sort of arranged how we remember our own birthdays in the 80s, so that was the inspiration for the evening. So we started out with Police Academy 1, then we had different party games - we played musical chairs and put the tail on the pig, like blindfolded.
Ah, in the UK we've got pin the tail on the donkey.
In Norway it's more of a pig. I don't know why, but... and people could come in for free if they'd baked their own cake, we had ninety people there with cakes. Obviously when the evening stopped there was cake everywhere at the venue, and it was sold out as well, so it was just packed with people. It was just a really legendary night - we had prizes for best cake and everyone came in costumes and it was sort of a nostalgia trip for us, remembering our birthday parties from when we were five years old. It was a really special evening.
I came across your video for 'Bagamoyo' with its shadow puppetry and your story telling, but I can't understand it because I don't speak Norwiegian. Could you translate it for me?
We've taken samples from different audio books that we found at the library, stories about explorers in East Africa, so that's sort of the setting for the song. Later on the shadow puppets have sort of developed the story to include these hungry African robots that you can see on the video. But the samples are from a quite well known correspondent from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. He had a lot of travels around Africa and he did this book about the explorer Stanley, which explored the area around where Bagamoyo is situated, so that's the setting for the song. Yeah, that was one of the first songs we made as Casiokids. We still play that song live, so.
There was another song that you played at Bestival, 'Finn Bikkjen', which was interesting because maybe your lyrics were getting lost in translation, but your main chorus line sounds like "I love Bestival". It was really firing everybody up.
Well, we love Bestival, but that particular song is about a small kid and he loses his friend, which is his pet, which happens to be a dog. And it's just a story about him trying to search for this lost dog. We released that song in Norway two months ago, and it's the first time in Norway that we have a hit song. I was just in the car, and I turned on the radio and they played the song on the national radio, and they play it many many times every day. So, the last show was the last couple of weeks because it has been a long time since we played in Norway, suddenly everyone knows the lyrics and they go crazy when we play that song. It's a really special feeling for us to come back again to Norway and have a massive hit, because everyone seems to know it. It's a really special feeling because nothing like that has ever happened before. So it's number 10 in the charts in Norway, it's really crazy. It was a complete surprise for us.
You've received huge acclaim in the UK by NME, The Guardian and the BBC - tell me about the journey from Norway to the UK and why you decided to start touring and promoting over here.
In 2005, we had only been in the band for a year then, our first shows abroad were in France and we always played a lot of shows in France. That was the first place we even had our own booking agent. But then, I think it was early last year, that Moshi Moshi Records picked us up at a festival in Norway and decided to release our records in the UK. So, after that we started to play mostly in the UK. So, it has been mostly about Moshi Moshi, and all of our collaborators are now in the UK because of that.
It's a bit strange the way that through Moshi Moshi in the UK, it helped you to become big in your home country, Norway. Is that right to say?
I'm not sure that that is the reason, but certainly there was a lot of attention around us after releasing our songs in the UK, because we sang in Norwegian, and that was the first time anyone has ever done that, so. It certainly grew a lot of attention around the band in Norway. It might have helped us get more attention around that song but I'm not sure.
'Fot I Hose' is very different to your other material, it's got a grimy clubby bass line and it is void of vocals, how did you create this song?
I'm not sure what to say about that really, it just sort of happened quite quickly. We made that song in a couple of hours and we sort of built it around a much slower rhythm, then we decided to speed it up and make it more danceable. Then everything just fell really easily in place after coming up with that synth line. Its really worked well when we've played it live in the UK, as well. The response to that has been amazing.
You've toured a few times in the UK - do you find you are attracting a more knowledgeable crowd now?
Yeah, we've been working hard and playing shows in the UK this year, so definitely. We even played Canterbury for the third time this year, each time we've played there the reaction has just been amazing, just packed with people. So, you never know where you can get a crowd.
I read that Doves asked you to support them on their tour?
There was some talk about going on their warm-up tour, but then we already had a tour planned in that period. I guess, hopefully we'll play with them at some point, because it would be nice to meet them. We did a warm-up tour in January with American group, Of Montreal, and we certainly felt the benefit after that tour because it was just so many people at the shows, and their crowd just seems like a Casiokids kinda crowd as well. So, hopefully we can play with Doves and their fans can enjoy our music as well, but I'm not sure if there's any plans at this point to do it. But it's nice of them to mention us anyway because I know how big of a following they have in the UK.
New single 'Finn Bikkjen'/'Gomur Mamma' is out now.
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