Interview: Casiokids - "Pop you can shout hurray to..."

Norway's Casiokids are aptly named. The band's floaty, contemplative pop sound has at its core a rich bedrock of synth sounds and tones, while a technical hitch during a recent Japanese tour led to an eleventh-hour dash across Tokyo in search of vintage Korgs. But the Bergen quartet are no mere synth fetishists, as recent third LP Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen ably demonstrates. The album's welcoming tapestry of upbeat melodies, multi-instrumental flourishes and understated vocals – "pop you can shout hurray to", as they put it themselves – sees the Moshi Moshi-signed outfit confidently getting into its stride.

Just before the Scandinavians took to the stage of London's Cargo for a recent sold-out show, Ragged Words' jack of all trades Richard Gray caught up with multi-instrumental founding member Fredrik Øgreid Vogsborg (second from right above). Freddie (as he prefers to be called) had been busy signing CDs for fans, but was more than happy to talk to us about his band's love of festival fancy dress, mixing things up live and why they'll forever be grateful to a-ha.

RW: So where have Casiokids been to on this tour so far?

FØV: We’ve already played in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Newcastle, and we were on Xfm last night with John Kennedy. We signed to a British label, Moshi Moshi, back in 2008, and since then we’ve toured a lot throughout The UK. We really enjoy London whenever we're here, and we also thought Bath and Canterbury were beautiful.

You recently won in excess of £100,000 in a competition organised by your famous compatriots, a-ha. How would you say winning the prize has affected you?

Well, first of all it was a fantastic thing for a-ha to do. There are maybe a few companies doing this sort of thing, but for a band to do it is really great. It was more than just a reality TV programme as well - it was actually more like a Norwegian Mercury Prize, to be honest. It was 1 million kroner (approx. £108,000) to each of the four winners... Before we won the money, we had been wanting to begin recording our new album, but hadn't really been able to afford it. So the prize allowed us to take three whole months to work on it uninterrupted. We finished off building our own studio in Bergen, and also managed to buy some new equipment. It gave us total freedom to write and record, so there was no real pressure on us. We found ourselves in a really nice situation, and I think the album has a more relaxed feel to it as a result.

That album, Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen, has just been released here in The UK. You mentioned building your own studio... Tell us a little more about the recording process.

Well, we’ve always recorded and produced all our music ourselves, and perhaps when we started out in 2005 we weren't entirely sure of what we were doing a lot of the time. But we definitely know our way around our equipment a lot better now, and I think that has really shaped the way Aabenbaringen... sounds. We really do have full control: we do everything ourselves, from mixing and recording to adding and removing layers. It’s a very interesting process. The only thing we don’t do is the mastering - we have a friend one floor upstairs from our studio who does that for us.

What does the title of the album mean?

It translates literally as 'Revelation Over The Mountain'. The title is actually in Old Norwegian, and this is a reference to one of the album's central themes, which is nostalgia or times past. One of the nostalgic inspirations for some of the songs is a story (that we made up!) of an explorer who flew his biplane over a mountain and found a hidden rainforest. The explorer’s name is Tarzan Monsoon, and the character is based on our cellist friend (and former bandmate) Matias Monsen, whose dream as a kid was to be called Tarzan.

What are some of the British influences that can be heard in your music?

I’m a big Radiohead fan myself. But also New Order, Joy Division, Blur... I love pretty much all of Damon Albarn’s stuff, and Gorillaz of course. Someone in Norway mentioned that our new album sounded like Gorillaz on a budget. We also share a love of African music. Our singer Ketil and percussionist Geir were in Nigeria a couple of years ago, and they both picked up an African influence. They did a radio documentary on Fela Kuti, and got to interview Damon Albarn and Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were also down there at the time. At the moment we all really love Hot Chip; we were lucky enough to support them back in 2010, and we had a lot of fun.

The title (and also opening) track of the new album uses quite traditional instruments. How did that come about?

Well, that one actually started out as an electronic track, believe it or not. But then we decided we wanted to give the opening of the album a more atmospheric, orchestral feel, so we went back and redid it using real instruments. Matias – who I mentioned provided much of the inspiration for the album – is a classically-trained musician, so he helped us arrange it. There are a couple of synthesizers on there, but there’s also a real flute, as well as some accordion and cello. As a result, we feel that track serves as a nice opener to the album.

In terms of the record as a whole, although it does certainly have a recurrent theme running through it, I wouldn’t describe it as a concept album per se. It probably has that feel to it, though, because it was the first album where we had a clear block of time to concentrate on recording. Whereas both our first two LPs were more collections of unrelated songs.

I noticed during this evening's gig that you guys tend to do a lot of instrument-swapping onstage. How does that work?

There are three of us who write most of the songs – myself, Ketil and Omar – and we tend to swap around instruments a fair bit. We all play the guitar and synthesizers as well as singing, so we don’t really have fixed positions... We like to mix it up, which does make for quite a lot of action onstage sometimes!

Any plans yet for this summer's festivals?

No firm plans, but we’ll definitely be back at some point over the summer. We’ve really enjoyed doing UK festivals such as Bestival, Standon Calling and Lounge On The Farm in the past. We love all the dressing-up that goes on at festivals over here, and now that we’ve started to make a bit of a name for ourselves we’re really keen to gain exposure to new audiences.

But we also love the smaller gigs like this one, because our fans know us well. We’ve even started getting fans who can sing along to some of the songs in Norwegian. We were in Japan recently, and we met two fans who were learning Norwegian... They knew absolutely everything about us, it was amazing! You might think Japan and Norway don’t have a lot in common, but we went down really well over there for some reason. This time in The UK most of our gigs have been sold out, so the natural progression will be to play bigger venues on our next visit. We’re already planning to come back some time in March.

Finally, have you any plans to start writing songs in English? Do you think singing in Norwegian might be a disadvantage in terms of gaining added exposure like you mentioned?

Well, we started out as an instrumental act, so we weren’t singing at all to begin with. Then, when we did decide to start singing, it just felt more natural to write in Norwegian. But Ketil & I were both in bands before this one who wrote and sang in English; so it’s not a protest thing or anything, and I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. To be honest, the lyrics in our songs aren’t all that important to us at the moment.

If we were suddenly to move in a more acoustic direction, then the lyrics might become more prominent, and so we might want to start doing them in English. Having said that, other bands – like Sigur Rós, for instance – have managed to succeed in their own language, so we’re not really that worried about it for the time being. But then again, plenty of others – like Ane Brun, who's also from Norway and whose music we really like – have chosen to sing in English. So I guess we'll see. But for now we're perfectly happy singing in Norwegian!

Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen is out now via Moshi Moshi.

Go here to view a gallery of Richard's photos from Casiokids' recent London show.