With „IIII“, the Danes SOLBRUD present an album that is special in many respects: Not only is it the last with singer Ole Pedersen Luk, who is now focusing on his solo project Afsky, but it is also a concept album in four parts and with four individual composers. In this interview, guitarist Adrian Utzon Dietz explains what this concept is based on, what has characterised „IIII“ and what Ole’s departure has meant for SOLBRUD.
Seven years have now passed since your last studio album – but you recorded the new album in spring 2021. How come it’s only being released now?
Well, for starters, writing and recording a double album proved to be a very big undertaking for us. Even more so than expected. Everything is just doubled up in terms of songwriting, recording, overdubs, mixing, designing artwork and so on. And apart from the big workload all around and us being very ambitious when it comes to songwriting and production, we’ve also faced a lot of time consuming challenges along the way, which were out of our control, basically every major challenge you can imagine has been at play down the line. About a half year went by with delays from the first producer we had booked to mix the album, which only resulted in a few useless mixes until we instead decided to use Marcus Ferreira Larsen again to great results. We also found it particularly hard to agree and move forward with our previous record label which must have delayed us about a year more.
Ole Pedersen Luk, your previous singer, left in 2021 – do we nevertheless hear him on the album?
Yes, it’s still Ole’s razor sharp vocals on ‚IIII‘ and he’s contributed with the fourth chapter, the Fire element, on the album.
In the meantime, he has really taken off with his solo project Afsky. Was that the reason for his departure?
Yes, it’s probably the main reason that he’s doing very well with Afsky and finds it easier to do the things he really wants to in his own name, without having to wrestle with the three of us like he used to.
Did his departure take you by surprise or was it foreseeable – and how did you deal with it?
It had been a long time coming where his interest and energy with Solbrud seemed to have faded gradually, so no, not a big surprise for us. Still hard to cope with replacing your vocalist and stage center guitarist. He’s been with us for 10 years so although it’s probably best for the future of both bands, it’s been quite a loss personally, and each of us have dealt with it differently. We’re on pretty good terms still and it’s all been fairly undramatic so we remain friends with him and are happy he’s doing so well with Afsky.
How did you approach the search for a replacement and how did you finally come across David Hernan?
We announced it publicly through our social media and a couple of musicians‘ contact groups. David showed up at our rehearsal space two years ago as the first candidate and we very quickly agreed that he’s the right man for the job and we’re very happy with his commitment still.
Your new album is simply entitled „IIII“ – obvious, because it’s your fourth album, but the cover suggests that it’s not (only) about the fact that it’s the fourth album – but also about the four elements. Am I right, or what is the concept behind „IIII“?
That’s exactly right. It’s the fourth album, we’re four band members and it’s made in four parts corresponding to each of the four classical elements. We initially chose an element each to serve as the inspirational energy for the part each of us would write – corresponding to what you can fit on one vinyl side, around 22 minutes.
I have the feeling that people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, many people only listen to playlists and no longer listen to full albums – you’re countering this with a double album with a total playing time of around 90 minutes. What was your intention behind this ambitious project?
Yes there seems to be a tendency towards lower attention spans as a result of everything being readily available at the touch of your phone. Not much you can do about that overall than try to limit your own use of these things to minimal necessities, but yes we think there are rewards to be found in patience and immersion – in music and with many other things in life. However, the album also contains shorter and more simple songs that we’ve put out as singles in their own right, and I think that is an advantage to have some more hit song on an album of this magnitude – as much as we’re able to make a 7 min. „hit“ song anyway. (laughs)
Every album creation process has high and low points – was there a moment when you were particularly enthusiastic about the project, but also one that presented you with a particular challenge and was frustrating?
For me the actual recording phase, finally allowing ourselves to nail the tracks one by one over the course of a couple months, was particularly satisfying, but also energy consuming. Also a year later having Marcus mix all the tracks nicely was great. A large part of the initial work with the album took place during corona lockdowns, meaning massive show and tour cancellations, those were absolute bummer times for a band. Not getting to play live you understand how absolutely necessary it is for you personally and also to keep the band economy above ground. So the lockdown part was particularly hard, but it also meant that we could direct even more focus on making the album the way we wanted it to be, so in that sense maybe not all bad.
When did you start working on this mammoth project and how did you approach this concept album? Is it four self-contained works, or do you see „IIII“ as one long album that had to be split into four LPs or two CDs for the physical release?
We settled on the idea of the conceptual double album around 2018 after completing ‚Vemod‘, where working altogether on composing all the stuff had gotten slightly tiresome in some ways, and we wanted to work on the trust that each of us had matured sufficiently as composers to evoke Solbrud material individually, where the others would follow the vision and direction of the composer in question. Now in fact ‚IIII‘ is more like four individual elemental parts that make up the whole. So the album should be viewed as a coherent piece, but one that ventures to quite different places and stories within an expanded Solbrud soundscape.
Stylistically, you’ve also explored completely different areas than anything you’ve ever done before. How did that come about, was that your declared aim, or did it come about during the songwriting process?
The expansion of the soundscape and style is mostly a natural consequence of us not filtering the music collectively, meaning a much more free space to compose and arrange things the way each of us envisioned, quite a liberating thing to do after ten years of writing stuff all together and having to agree on basically everything.
With so much new material, you are probably also facing a problem for upcoming concerts – how do you represent such an extensive album? Will you only play new songs in future?
At the release concert we will play the album in its entirety, but that will probably be the only time we do that. For succeeding shows we will probably try to include a good bit of everything old and new, with an emphasis on presenting highlights of the new album and some classics from earlier discography.
Are there any shows coming up, or is there any chance of seeing you live in Germany?
Yes, quite a few. We have the unique opportunity of presenting ‚IIII‘ at a release concert of the prestigious DR Concert hall in Copenhagen on February 10th. In March we tour the remaining major cities of Denmark – Aarhus, Aalborg and Odense and in late March we play at Culthe Fest in Münster. Hopefully more good shows will tick in in the wake of releasing ‚IIII‘.
Thank you very much for your time and answers. Finally, a quick brainstorming session – what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the following terms?
Black Metal: Storm, trance of darkness
Wayfarer: The Wanderer
Queen Margrethe II: Former Queen regent
Streaming: A useful way of spreading music that hopefully someday will benefit artists more, sooner rather than later.
Vinyl: Black joy of infinity
SOLBRUD in 10 years: At the top of our game, good friends above all, with a handful more good albums on the shelf.
6. Februar 2024 Moritz Grütz
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