Lindstrom

It’s hard to believe that Oslo’s Hans-Peter Lindstrom has only been releasing music since 2003. In that time, he’s turned out a formidable array of singles, produced dozens of remixes for everyone from LCD Soundsystem to the Boredoms and released four studio albums, including two joint efforts with his frequent partner-in-crime Prins Thomas. Throughout it all, his name has become virtually synonymous with the outer-limits disco revival. Drawing not just from Italo and space disco but also progressive rock, psychedelia and other forms of Balearic eclecticism, Lindstrom’s music has campaigned heavily in favor of melody and diverse instrumentation, offering a welcome antidote to the minimalism and digitalism that defined so much of the decade’s dance music.

His most recent album, Real Life Is No Cool, is a collaboration with the Norwegian singer Christabelle (Isabelle Sandoo, aka Solale), and it marks a significant change of direction. Where Lindstrom’s previous outing, Where You Go I Go Too, aimed to turn time inside out, plying rippling synthesizer repetitions across tracks running to 10, 15 and even 29 minutes long, Real Life Is No Cool is, for all intents and purposes, an all-out pop record: an unabashedly glossy, glittery interpretation early ’80s synth-pop and R&B, with Christabelle’s cool, sultry delivery playing against Lindstrom’s bright, major-key melodies.

To begin, how did the album come about? It includes one track, “Let’s Practise,” that goes back several years, and I guess you were already at work on it before you did Where You Go I Go Too.

I met Christabelle around 2001, and the first track we did was released in 2003, “Music in My Mind.” I’ve been working on the album for almost 10 years. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing! [Laughs] We didn’t really decide to do an album until maybe three years ago. Three or four tracks were actually made in the early ’00s. But I’ve been reworking them and trying to make everything sound like one album instead of just a selection of tracks that spans 10 years.

That’s crazy! I wouldn’t have guessed that it was a collection of tracks made over a decade — it sounds much more coherent.

If you hear the original tracks, I guess it’s more or less only the vocals that are left from the original versions from eight years ago. But I guess that’s why it’s taken such a long time. A few of the tracks, I probably have 10 completely different versions from over the years. Because the album didn’t happen in 2005 or 2007, I had to change it again to make it fit my own quality control. I mean, it would be weird for me to release something I made five years ago and say that it’s a new track. So I just had to make everything again.

It’s interesting to hear you working in comparatively short form, for a change. How did it feel to be working with more “pop” structures, after Where You Go I Go You and the last record with Prins Thomas?

I guess I would turn it the other way around. I started working on Where You Go because I wasn’t getting anywhere with the Christabelle album. I had to take a break from the short pop songs. I didn’t actually plan for Where You Go to be an album, but I played it to Joakim from Smalltown Supersound and he was like, “This is your album!” I was like, “Oh really?” [Nervous laughter]

What I think is really interesting is to do different things all the time. If I do the same thing day after day, year after year, I get really bored. But to work on shorter tracks and then on longer tracks, maybe with [Prins] Thomas, and then something with vocals with Christabelle, and then something on my own again, that kind of variation makes it a privilege to be able to work with music like I am.

I’m very concerned that this shouldn’t be like a regular day job. There’s got to be a fun element in what I’m doing. If not it gets boring, for me and for everybody else who’s listening.

Do you prefer collaborating to working alone? It seems like over the past few years, so many of your projects have been collaborations.

I guess it depends when you ask me. Since you’re asking me now, I would definitely say that I really like working alone. [Laughs] It’s probably because I’ve been involved with this album, and after a collaboration like this I always have to do something alone again. It’s really all about getting the right balance. It’s very interesting to work with someone else, because you get impulses from other people, and it’s not possible to get everything the way you initially wanted it to be. You have to compromise.

But I really like working all alone, doing everything by myself, even the mixing. Like on the latest two albums I’ve done, I’ve had help: I mix everything when I make it in the studio, but I thought I needed some help getting the final levels right. But I’m thinking of doing that part alone as well, even if the sound suffers. It’s just better to do everything alone, I guess. I used to play in bands, but I think I was just so tired of dealing with a lot of other people, and it was such a relief to start working alone when I got a sampler and a computer 10 years ago. I’m also sharing a studio with Thomas and Todd Terje, but we have separate rooms, and I know for sure that they like to work alone. I wouldn’t say I’m a DJ, but Thomas and Terje are, and it’s kind of a lonely thing to do. You’re traveling away alone, you play alone, there’s not that much collaboration with other people on stage. Maybe it’s just some kind of mood you get into after all these years of doing everything alone.

How did you hook up with Christabelle?

Isabelle is her real name. I think Christina is a middle name, so it’s some kind of mixture of her two names. Ten years ago I used to share a studio with her older brother. I think at the time she was working with more straight-up popular producers. She told me that she was getting tired of it, that they wanted to shape her like a pop star or something, but she rebelled against that. The thing is, she has this kind of pop sensibility when it comes to vocals. She didn’t know anything about club culture or house music or anything, but we both shared a love of ’80s soul music, like early Prince and Vanity Six and that kind of stuff, Grace Jones… For me it was nice to start working with her because she represented something different from what I used to do, which was more like the regular deep house that everybody was doing in the early ’00s.

That’s interesting, because I get a really strong R&B vibe off the record — not just the songwriting but also the production, all those sparkly, shimmery synthesizers.

My first experience with pop was listening to the radio in ’83 or ’84, and I’m sure all those early impulses are extremely important for what you do later on. It’s like, almost everything from the hit lists in ’83 or ’84 sounds 100 percent perfect to me. If I listen to chart music from ’87, ’88, ’89, ’93, it sounds horrible. [Laughs] It’s interesting that many of the people that have been positive to the album are around the same age as me. For them, if you’re between 35 and 40, your interest in ’80s pop music will probably be as strong as mine.

That’s me — I’m 38, and probably started listening to pop radio in ’81 or ’82.

When I ask someone what they think of Nik Kershaw or Cyndi Lauper, they just tell me it’s really horrible. For me it makes perfect sense, I guess because it was my first music.

Unlike many electronic-music producers, you don’t seem to be too afraid of major keys.

No, I’m not afraid of them. I know some friends of mine who never touch them. They couldn’t possibly make anything in a major key. It’s impossible for them. I don’t know, I mean, why should I be afraid of that? There’s so much good music that you miss if you can’t listen to music in major keys.

Apparently “Let It Happen” is a Vangelis cover, which I had no idea about. What made you choose it?

When I did the mix series for Late Night Tales, part of the deal was to make a cover version of any track I wanted. Because the mix was a lot of mostly vocal stuff, everything from Carly Simon to Sly Stone, I just wanted to make a cover version of a song with vocals. I heard the original track from Vangelis from one of his earliest albums after Aphrodites ‘Child — have you heard the original?

Yeah, I YouTubed it after I read the credits on your album.

Lots of Vangelis stuff I don’t like, like Chariots of Fire. The funny thing I just read a few days ago, as far as I could understand from Wikipedia, is that it’s actually F.R. David that sings on it. You know, the guy who had a million-seller with “Words”? I really liked the track, and I just asked Christabelle if she wanted to do it for the mix CD. And then I thought Ok, this is one step further towards an album in the future. I really like doing cover versions; there’s so much good music already written. If you’re not getting anywhere on original material, it’s a good thing just to do a cover version of any track, and it will sound interesting.

When you’re working on a big project like this, are you listening to other music for inspiration, or do you wall yourself off from distractions?

I think when I’m working on music, sooner or later in the process there’s always some kind of reference that pops into my head. “Oh, these drums and this bass together,” or, “Maybe if I include a guitar it’ll sound like this or this…” I get carried away with working like that. I guess it’s like with “Baby Can’t Stop,” when I worked on it, suddenly it sounded a little like something from a Michael Jackson track. But I’m not going to ripoff of the track or anything.

Also with “Contemporary Fix,” which is more like a house-instrumental-disco sort of thing, while I was working on it, it suddenly made sense to include some melodies from a track from Lucio Battisti, an Italian guy who made a really good disco track in the late ’70s. I think I work a lot like that, all the time. Sooner or later while working on the music I’ll get some inspiration, like all the music I’ve been listening to in my life just boils back in my head and suddenly a track jumps up and makes sense in a way, like, “Oh, this is something similar to Lil ‘Louis, or, “This is cool, if I combine that with something from Barbara Streisand…” [Laughs] I don’t know how to explain it, I guess it’s some kind of creative stealing or something.

Somewhere I read that you had wanted to cover a Boney M Christmas song, but decided it was too cheesy. How do you feel about “cheese” in general? In some of your sounds — like the glassy, DX-7 synths — it sounds like an attempt to legitimize sounds that have been declared uncool, off limits.

I really don’t care what people regard as cheesy. When I tell people that the music from Chess — you know, with the ABBA guys — that some of those songs are amazing, everyone laughs at me. But it makes sense for me. A lot of people still regard ABBA as cheesy, but it isn’t for me… It’s the same with Boney M, and all those sounds from ’80s synthesizers that have been used and overused and sound really bad for a lot of people. I think if you use it in the right way, it can be really interesting and even inventive. Some people might say that I’m doing it for fun, that it’s just some kind of sarcasm, but it’s not, it’s really because I like that kind of cheese.

I don’t hear anything sarcastic or ironic about your music.

I hope people get it. I’m really lucky that some people are interested in listening to what I’m making. I’m really interested to see how people react if I go a little further to the left or right. I really like to challenge the listener and do something they thought wasn’t acceptable, but now think is cool after all. It’s really interesting, the position I’m in now, because I know people expect me to do this or that, or are waiting to hear the next thing I’m doing, and there’s probably some people who get disappointed or think the stuff in the beginning was better, and some people who think the new stuff is the best I’ve ever done. I’m trying to balance everything. It’s an interesting puzzle.

Even though I’m saying that I’m making music for myself, I’m also really happy when people listen to my music and give feedback. If it’s a review or a comment on MySpace, it’s interesting to see how people react. I think it’s maybe more important than ever just to develop musically and try to do something different all the time. There’s so many people that want attention and so many bands and so much good music, but I mean now, like post-Animal Collective, there’s probably going to be one thousand bands like Animal Collective — the same as happened after LCD Soundsystem. It’s really important to be inventive and try to do something different. I can’t stress the importance of that enough. Let’s say everybody’s doing disco edits — it’s like the easy way out, in a way. It can be a good introduction to making music or producing, but it will always be important to make something new, something your own, something original.

Why do you think that disco has had such an impact in Norway?

I really don’t know. I was inspired by listening to everything from early Röyksopp and Bjorn Torske and the Bergen scene. I know that the Idjut Boys were playing here a lot in the late ’90s, so I guess that kind of music goes down really well here. As far as I know, a lot of the DJs who were invited to play in Oslo when the club scene was healthy here, they really enjoyed playing here and in Sweden. They said that they could play all kinds of music and people would love it, but that in Italy or Spain they had to play a certain style, that people weren’t that interested. For a DJ, it’s always enjoyable when they can freestyle and do something different that people don’t expect. It’s the same with producing music, it’s really fun to do something unexpected and to see how hell it goes, what the reaction from the people is.

But I can’t really explain why, there’s nothing in the water or anything. I don’t know! I think that maybe, because we are not a music capital, there aren’t that many electronic music traditions. We don’t have people to look up to. There wasn’t anything happening here in the ’80s, while I guess in the UK and the US, there are some really important names that can be your heroes.

These days, because of the internet, if someone makes music in Brazil you can hear it instantly here in Norway. So the world is getting smaller. I really think that makes it interesting for music scenes that develop in countries outside of the center, outside the big cities.

Are you still working on dance-floor 12″s?

I’m definitely going to do something that isn’t pop music. That’s the way I work, I guess. Now I’ve done the pop approach to my music, and I will definitely do something different this time. A few years ago, I got so bored of DJing and clubs and 120 BPM, but after working with something different, it’s really interesting to see what happens if I try to make dance music again. I’m sure it’ll be very different from what I’ve done before. I’m looking forward to revisiting the genre again.

By the way, I wanted to ask you about something: you wrote about musicians ‘manifestos a few years ago, right?

Yes, for Pitchfork.

I’ve been reading them in my bathroom! It’s really interesting to read. Inspirational.

That’s hilarious. Do you have any rules in the studio?

The thing is, when I read all those manifestos, I thought, “Oh shit, if he asked me, I really don’t know what I’d say…” I guess there are some rules, but mainly, as I’ve said already, it’s just important not to do the same thing over and over again. It’s important to challenge people. All those people who answered you said such wise words, I’m not sure I have anything to add…

That’s ok, your answers are like a manifesto in themselves.

I’m not so sure about that!