WHITE WILLOW aren’t just a usual prog rock band, but rather a loose cooperation of different musicians around multi-instrumentalist Jacob Holm-Lupo, which now has released its seventh album „Future Hopes“. In this interview with mastermind Jacob, who’s behind the eccentric compositions, you’ll learn more about the theme of the record, his connection to metal and why an 18-minute epic sometimes is easier to arrange than a three minute track.
Your band WHITE WILLOW isn’t that widely known yet, so please introduce your band and yourself to get started.
WHITE WILLOW is a prog rock/art rock band from Norway. We started out in the mid-90s and released our first album in 1995. We were part of the new Scandinavian scene of prog rock in the 90s along with bands like Änglagård and Anekdoten. „Future Hopes“ is our seventh album.
What do you associate with the name WHITE WILLOW? In which way does it reflect your music?
Our first flautist came up with the name. In Celtic and Norse mythology the white willow symbolizes the mysteries of the night and the moon, and we thought that was appropriate. There’s probably a bit less of that nature mysticism in our more recent albums than in the first ones, but we still sound pretty darn mysterious, I think…
By which musicians and bands have you been influenced?
In the beginning we were influenced by 70s Genesis, King Crimson and folk rock like Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. The Italian scene, with bands like PFM, Banco and Le Orme has also been important. But there’s always a strong element of pop in our music too, bands like Abba and The Police have been influences. And of course some hard rock, especially Blue Öyster Cult, The Scorpions and Rainbow.
Are you also somehow connected to metal?
I was a big metalhead growing up, with a big collection of both classic hard rock like Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult as well as NWOBHM stuff. In the 90s, around the same time that we started WHITE WILLOW, I also got very much into both the Norwegian black metal scene and the British melodic death metal stuff, so we listened to a lot of stuff like Darkthrone, Mayhem, early Anathema and My Dying Bride, even if that doesn’t come out so much in WHITE WILLOW’s music. I also had a doom metal band for a while called Sariel, we played a few gigs locally. And I’ve been involved with WHITE WILLOW keyboardist Lars Fredrik Frøislie’s black metal band In Lingua Mortua.
In the description of your new album „Future Hopes“ it says that you are a loose collaboration of musicians rather than a band. Is that true and if so, how exactly is your constellation different from a band and why?
We stopped playing live and rehearsing in a traditional way back in 2007. Since then the band has been mostly me writing the music and using some regular and some different musicians to make the albums. Drummer Mattias Olsson, keyboardist Lars Fredrik Frøislie and flautist Ketil Einarsen are pretty much always involved but otherwise it’s a revolving door policy, so I don’t feel like I can call it a band. It’s a studio project.
There have been some member changes since your last record. How did this happen and how did you decide who will be the new members?
I really just look for the right musicians for whatever songs I am working on. Venke, our new singer, has a voice that I felt would be perfect for the material, a bit of a cool, restrained voice that leaves room for the rest of the music. And I was looking for a guitarist that could play leads over harmonically complex progressions but still make it sound like rock, and so I asked Hedvig Mollestad to play lead guitar on some of the songs. Whoever is right for the job gets it!
Please tell us about your songwriting process. What’s the basic element?
I’m always looking to describe an atmosphere, so it often starts there – a particular atmosphere or emotion can be an inspiration to start writing. I write either on a piano or a guitar, and I usually start with a chord progression, then a melody to go on top of it, and then I embellish with instrumental sections and things like that if it feels right. In the end I work on lyrics.
What, in your opinion, is your biggest strength and weakness as a musician?
My biggest strength is probably that I have a pretty good understanding of many different genres. My weakness is that I am a very lazy musician who hates practicing!
As already mentioned „Future Hopes“ is your new album. Because of the title it seems quite clear what the lyrics are about. Still, I’d like to ask you to give us some deeper insight.
The title is halfway ironic, a bit of a commentary on the world we live in, which can seem pretty hopeless these days. But still, without hope, where are we? It’s a bit of a sci-fi concept album, which very loosely follows a young couple in love that are fleeing some sort of catastrophe and are trying to find a „safe haven“, a place to be where they can maybe build a future. Pretty dystopian stuff, but the positive message is that you can get through almost anything if you have love – and hope.
Contrary to the album’s title, some tracks seem quite dark grater than hopeful, for example „In Dim Days“. What’s the reason behind that?
As I said, the album conveys a bit of both. The hopelessness of a world that seems to be falling apart, and a universe that does not care about the destiny of mankind. But then in contrast to that you have the warmth and meaningfulness of human relationships, friendship and love.
With „A Scarred View“ you even got a track that’s 18 minutes long on the record. Why did you choose this song to be that long and was it somehow challenging for you to do it?
It really just ended up that way. Sometimes a song feels complete after three minutes, and sometimes a song feels more like a novel that needs many chapters. „A Scarred View“ was a bit of a musical novel. It was actually one of the easier songs to write on the album. It’s often harder to write a good, short song because you need to condense a lot into a short space of time.
Additionally, you covered „Animal Magnetism“ by the scorpions. What do you like about this particular song so that you decided to do a cover of it and what did you want to accomplish by that?
It’s one of my favorite The Scorpions songs along with „Sails Of Charon“ and „China White“ – I love those doomy, Oriental-sounding songs they did back then. My idea was to combine The Scorpions with another kraut rock legend, Tangerine Dream. So I took some of the guitar elements of the song and „translated“ them into synth language, to get a bit of that Tangerine Dream sequencer feel. On top of all that I wanted a human element, so I got David Krakauer to play a klezmer clarinet solo, which really fit with the Oriental tonality. So I guess I wanted to do something very different with it!
Which track on the album would be your favorite and why?
That’s almost impossible to say. But I think the band plays really well on „In Dim Days“, while „A Scarred View“ has some real goosebump moments.
The artwork somehow looks as if it belongs to a retro videogame. Was this intended and if so, why? What else can you tell us about it?
The artwork is by legendary artist Roger Dean, who designed all the classic covers for Yes, Uriah Heep and Asia. He is my favorite cover artist and it’s been my dream since I was a kid to have him to a cover for my band. We met him at a gig in the US, and finally now we managed to use him.
What are your next plans for WHITE WILLOW? Will we have to wait long for the next album once more?
I really don’t know. In between WHITE WILLOW I have another band called The Opium Cartel, and I run a label called Termo Records as well as a mixing studio where I mix albums for other bands. But I have all the material ready for a new WHITE WILLOW album so it definitely won’t be six years until the next one.
We are reaching the end of our interview. Let’s finish it with our traditional Metal1.info-Brainstorming:
Techno: Yuck.
Concept album: Love it. „The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway“ (editor’s note: 1974s album by Genesis).
Guitar – Keyboard: A balance between the two.
Terrorism: Fuck it!
Norway: Home, goat cheese.
WHITE WILLOW in ten years: If the world still stands, we will too.
Alright, thanks again for your answers. Is there still something you want to tell our readers?
Thanks for your time, and check out other Norwegian bands like Wobbler and Weserbergland!
21. Juni 2017 Stephan Rajchl