photo by Joanna Wróbel

When we were preparing for this year’s SPOT Festival, their song charmed us like no other. Before the interview, we didn’t even know if Kentaur was a one-man project, a band, a collective of random people who created the beautiful song “Matter & Stone”. We didn’t know what kind of music they will perform during a show.

Luckily the first released single was just a little piece of the great, heavenly wonderful music that these three guys (as it turned out) – Søren, Marc and Mikkel – presented along with their live band on stage. We got a chance to chat a bit with the band after their concert at SPOT: about electronic music and music played on “real” instruments, about the times we live in and what it means for artists, about Kentaur’s plans for the future and the Danish music scene. Read a small part of this sweet and really interesting conversation below!

Good because Danish: The first single that Kentaur released, “Matter & Stone”, has a very strong James Blake vibe, but at the same time there is this electronic element in the music. But then we saw you live yesterday and the music is actually very organic and very clean. This was quite a surprise for us. Can you tell a bit more about your philosophy of making music?

Søren: I think we just tried to find the best solutions to express ourselves in music. And it’s just easier when you have a guitar and a keyboard and vocals, than having sampled vocals or sampled drums. The dynamic expression is kind of lost. That’s really why we are right now using these more classic instruments and tools to better express ourselves.

Mikkel: That has also been a process from doing a lot of electronic stuff at home. Marc, Søren and me have been doing a lot of stuff on computers, so we’ve gradually been incorporating real instruments. Both on the upcoming EP and in our live performance, to have a better flow.

Søren: To create a musical conversation with each other. And that’s just easier with real instruments. With computers it’s a bit like with a microwave. You put it in and you get a backtrack out – it “tastes” okay, but it’s always the same. Whereas if we put ourselves into the music, it’s more safe – like raw food.

Marc: It’s more of a concentrated meal, yes. So, it’s also for the sake of ourselves to be more present in the expression of the live music. We very much like electronic music – but live it becomes a larger “now” in a way, real instruments create a larger moment, also for ourselves.

Søren: And there is a more spiritual element in it as well. We can put some energy into the music that’s not as easy to put in if we are kind of “pinned” down by the instruments.

Marc: It’s like machines that are always 0’s and 1’s. There’s not a lot of spiral motion in 0’s and 1’s.

Søren: But it’s been a process, because a year ago we produced everything on computers and we were kind of dissatisfied by it, because we were doing it for a looooot of time, but slowly we started being interested in the old-school way of making music. Like the Joe Cocker vibe, where you have a whole band. And it’s really refreshing and we feel really free with it.

You had a great violinist supporting you on stage last night. We noticed that it’s very common in Denmark that bands join forces with classical musicians. Do you think it’s more of a Scandinavian thing or more of a general trend in music right now?

Marc: I think it’s more a matter of the time. Because it feels like we’ve came to a place that everything is almost invented: we have the whole rainbow, every colour is there. So all the true colours are already experienced. And that’s why now is like a hybrid time. It’s about a lot of different syntheses and how you put all the existing colours together.

Mikkel: It’s also a lot about coming back to traditions. Because all the things that we and other bands are doing now, like using violins and cellos and stuff like that – it all comes from the disco music from the 70’s and R’n’B. It just has come full circle now, that the “laptop” musicians have found out that the violins actually sound really nice. And that it is pretty nice when real people play violins. It’s a whole other game than when you just press the button on your computer.

Søren: And we’ve been doing that a lot before, recording more of primal material. So now I would say we know our time in this project very well and we try to integrate some more traditional aspects of music into our time.

Marc: It’s also because we have a lot of great musicians around us. It’s just really nice to create music when you can invite really great people and see them flourish and also get nourished back. It’s a really, really awesome thing in life.

But the core of the project is the three of you. What is the story behind creating this project? Why did you decide to start Kentaur?

Søren: Life decided for us to become a band. I’m sorry, but that’s really how it happened. We are really like… well – you have a flower there and another one there and suddenly you have three flowers joining forces. We’re very different flowers, but we kind of bloom together.

Mikkel: We also went to the same school together, that’s where we’ve met each other. But creating Kentaur was a gradually made process of learning each other.

We have a question that we ask many bands this year at SPOT Festival, we’d like to also ask you about it: if you would have to paint a picture called “Kentaur”, what would it look like? Which colours would you use? 

Marc: I think we would definitely have some purple in it.

Søren: I’m seeing it like Marc riding on the horse and Mikkel is picking up cotton behind. It would be like one of these crazy Renaissance paintings where a lot is happening on the painting, but it’s still really simple to look at.

The show at SPOT Festival was not your first one as Kentaur. You supported Turboweekend in Denmark, for example. But just one song was released so far. We would love to hear more from you soon. What are your plans for the nearest future?

Mikkel: I think we’re going to release a video clip to a new single after SPOT Festival (you can watch it below) and then hopefully we’ll have a music video ready in the middle or end of May. Then we will release the EP in June and once again – hopefully, we will be playing a lot of shows in the summer.

Søren: We are working on the album, too. The EP is ready since a couple of months now and we are now really into writing new music and just following the flow.

Mikkel: When someone says “do you want to do this or that?”, we just go with the flow.

Each year at SPOT Festival you can somehow see the whole spectrum of what’s going on in Danish music and what kind of music is on top. This year it seems like there is a comeback to electronic music. Then, Kentaur shows up and catches the attention – and you don’t really fit into this electronic music hype. Do you think that people need something new?

Mikkel: I think that people enjoy live music by… well, live musicians. It sounds harsh, but it’s not meant to be like that. We enjoy electronic music a lot.

Søren: And that’s what we’ve been making the last five or six years.

Marc: We haven’t played in a band, we’ve been sitting in front of the computer, doing electronic stuff ourselves.

Søren: But that’s why this project is so nice for us. It’s such a natural way of making and playing music. And doing it with other people – six people on stage is a lot of people. There’s some kind of a community forming around this project and that’s really great. I think maybe that should be the direction that music should go to in Denmark.

Marc: Live, really live played music, yes!

Søren: And we really try to integrate electronic music into our performance. But we want to do it in a way that the electronic instruments don’t dictate how we play.

Marc: And that is hard. It requires different technology. We don’t want the electronic beat to kind of pin down the drummer and then – the rest of the musicians.

Søren: We would like to turn this around, so the machinery kind of depends on us. So that there is more of a human flow in the music.

What amazed us while listening to your live performance was that you manage to create sort of electronic sound by playing on “regular” instruments, not by using so many “classic electronic” tools. Can you hear it in your music? Do you make it on purpose or does it just come up that way?

Marc: A lot of people say that. I think we owe it to the great live band members. We have amazing musicians on stage with us. Especially the drummer – Matias – he really controls the drums. So he creates the sound which is both, electronic and very organic at the same time.

Søren: And the bass player as well, he’s great. He sets the foundation for all the tracks. Maybe you don’t notice him, but he makes sure that everything is grounded. So, everybody in the live band plays an important role and was somehow casted not by us, but by life, I would say. That’s just great. And it shows once again that we don’t have like a master plan, we just flow the stream of events and try to do it as best as we can.

We have summer ahead of us with a lot of great events happening in Denmark. Do you have any Danish band or artists that you can recommend for us to check out?

Mikkel: Go see Cancer, they are really great.

Marc: They are really great musicians and great guys. Is there anything else? AV AV AV is playing SPOT Festival.

Søren: I love Blaue Blume, I saw them last night at SPOT. I think they are really gifted musicians. And even though we have different paths, they try to do what we do – being real musicians. There’s a craft behind it which you can hear. The audience can really enjoy – even if you don’t like the song, it’s okay, because the drummer is kind of flirting with you the way he plays and I love that. There’s something inviting about it.

SPOT Festival 2015 INTERVIEW - KENTAUR 2

Photos by Joanna Wróbel


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