There was a time where “Turn it Down” played in just about every car, house and club in the world. Obviously this Swedish duo experienced tremendous success with their collab with Kaskade, but they’ve also made a name for themselves with plenty of other songs over the past few years.
Rebecca and Fiona recently came to the Mile High City to play at the legendary Beta Nightclub. Before their set, we stole a quick 20 minutes to talk to them. Check out what they had to say about growing up in musical households, opening for Robyn, and how they find their new music.
TMN: Hello ladies. Thank you so much for sitting down with us tonight. Let’s start off by talking about about being in Denver playing at Beta Nightclub. Are you guys excited to play for this crowd?
R: Really excited! We’ve never been to Denver before, so we’re excited.
F: We’ve heard a lot of great stuff about the club (Beta). We’ve been wanting to go here for a long time.
TMN: Have you been through Colorado before?
F: I’ve been here because I have relatives here, but it was a long time ago.
TMN: Let’s talk about the beginnings. You two met in the mid 2000s, and then started making music in 2010. How did you guys come to this decision?
R: Yeah, exactly
F: It came kind of naturally. We knew we wanted to work together and we were really into finding new music. We just wanted to be able to make money off of doing something together.
R: Something that was fun!
TMN: Let’s go even further back. What are your musical roots? Were you both in piano lessons as little girls? Did your passion for music come as a teenager?
R: My father is a classical pianist, so I grew up with a lot of classical ways of learning music. I was in a high level choir school, then I went to music school, but I really didn’t enjoy the classical ways of learning music. I just wanted to make music from my own creativity, not from the rules of making music. So, I kind of took a stand from that when I graduated. Then we met (Fiona) and she grew up with a father that’s really into producing. He actually brought the synthesizer into Sweden to sell to Swedish musicians. She grew up with a synth-pop producer Dad and I had the classical background.
F: In Sweden you get to study music for free, as well. So, both of us got to try out the flute, the piano, the violin…
TMN: What was your favorite instrument?
R: I really enjoyed playing the violin as a kid. I enjoyed piano as well, but I kind figured I would never be as good as my dad, so I was like “whatever.” It’s hard to compete with that.
TMN: Your first release, “Luminary Ones” landed you an opening spot with Robyn on her European tour. What was that experience like for you guys, being so new to the music scene?
F: Everything was so exciting! Traveling to a new city we would go nuts because it was so cool and exciting. We didn’t know what was going on, we just went with the flow. We released that single and got rotation on the biggest channel just by luck. Everything came with it. Then they started filming a show with us.
R: It was pretty weird with her (Robyn), because she’s a proper pop act with a band. We just DJed and played noncommercial music and our tracks. We opened up for her, and it was an audience that was prepared to hear a live act. So, it wasn’t really the right crowd for us, but we totally enjoyed it and made the best of it. We had so much fun. We really saw the way we wanted to perform. Because we enjoy a live act, but we found ourselves loving nightclub environments more. That was a good exercise for us to try it out.
F: And she has been totally great to us. Like a big sister. It was such a great trial for us. We had to make our sets work with her music, so we learned how to be a warm up act, which is important even now when we’re touring. Sometimes we play with bigger DJs and we have to make a different act.
TMN: Fast forward a year to your debut album, I Love You, Man. We have to ask this question – are you guys really big Jason Segall fans?
R: What?
F: (Laughs) The film.
R: No, the thing was that…I saw the movie before we released the album. It was a good movie, but it didn’t have anything to do with it. We were deciding the name of the album and we were totally stressed. We had a couple of magazines in front of us, and it was a title of an article. We were like, “that’s so much fun. That’s us.” We’re always hi-fiving. We just decided that it was a great name. The day after, it was still good. So, it was super random.
It’s just us being ourselves, making music. It’s like, “I love you, man.”
TMN: As the years have gone on, the online music community has grown larger and larger. Can you talk to us about your thoughts on the blogosphere, hype machine, and streaming music services in general?
F: We used to be on Hype Machine every day, and then we also had our own music blog in Sweden. Nowadays, we have so little time to keep track…we miss that. We knew everything that came out.
R: At that point, all the new music programs weren’t really out, like Spotify. Now, it’s super easy to put out whatever you want. At that point though, you had to be really eager, online all the time finding blogs. We would find all the tracks we loved and hyped them on our blog. But now we’re playing so much, and we have to play our own music, so the time that we have is terrible. We’d love to have more time to listen to other music.
TMN: Side note: If you guys ever want to guest blog for us, you’re more than welcome.
R: Thank you! It’s great to find an artist that you really believe in and hype them up. We love that.
TMN: How do you go about finding new music? Do you read blogs? Use Spotify radio?
F: At this point, we find that there’s very little good music being produced. We feel that it’s very similar and one sided. We really like some producers, and there are very few.
R: We have like three favorite producers. Carli, Lips of Fury and Sleepy Tom.
F: This is just what we play. We listen to a lot of other stuff privately.
R: We could like one part of a song, like the melody, and the drop can completely ruin it for us. So we try to make a lot of edits of stuff we like. Now if you go out to Beatport, everything sounds exactly the same. It’s a dead end for everyone.
F: Now we feel like going old school and dropping retro stuff.
R: Our set now is a mix between old edits, old school stuff, and a lot of unreleased new stuff from people that nobody knows. We don’t like the Beatport top 100 right now.
TMN: Speaking of new music, we’re always interested in knowing what other types of music people are into. Who are your top three non-edm artists at the moment?
F: We listen to Planningtorock, The Soft Moon, Young Fathers, I Break Horses…We used to like Miike Snow, but they split.
R: We listen to a lot of Swedish music.
F: We like Little Dragon.
R: We like organ stuff.
TMN: Like the state in America?
F: No! (laughs)
TMN: Like from a church?
R: Yeah! We like different kind of music. It’s very broad.
TMN: Alright, on the flip side, if we asked 16 year old Rebecca and Fiona who their top three favorite musicians were, who would they say?
F: When I was 16 I was a little punk girl.
R: A lot of techno, a lot of early dance music. Dance music was more aware in Sweden at that point. We also listen R & B, and Reggaeton
TMN: Alright, before we get into some random questions, tell us a little bit more about Beauty is Pain. What can listeners expect from this album?
F: We wanted to make dance music, but we wanted to show a deeper, depressing way of expressing yourself. It has a lot of influence from 80’s and 90’s dance music. It’s a wide spectrum, not just 128, drop, kick. In one way it’s broader than our last album, and in one way it’s more indie.
