Press2Play interview

Like some of you already might know Press2Play made a videointerview with Alexander, Martin and Marina.
Here is the link:
http://www.press2play.tv/Musik/ValtKlipp.aspx?clipId=663

And here you have the translation in English ( A for Alexander, MS for Marina and M for Martin). Enjoy ! I did.

-Hey, my name is Marina.
-And my name is Martin.
-And my name is Alexander...Bard. And we 3 together are BWO. And you look at Press2Play.

-BWO is back with their 5th album Big Science. Can you tell us about the album ?

M:- Yes, it's our 4th full length album. We can easily say that we are very proud of this album.It is about 2 years since we released a studio album last time. You can notice that we have had time to make this album really good.

A:- We have become real perfectionists. For us the search after the perfect popsong is the big deal. We wrote about 40 ideas for Big Science. Then we took that down and made 12 songs for the album in the end. So we are very pleased.

-How would you describe that it's different then earlier albums ?

MS:-Among others it's different cause Martin has become more of a man in some way. I think your voicelevel and everything has lowered. It is one thing that is different. And so much..this is not new for us, but it's very prominent in the soundimage with live strings.

A:- We have been influenced on the whole where the electronic music has been on the way the last year. This is an album where you clearly can see the influence of The Killers, whose album came last Autumn. That gives something in between rock and electronic pop music.
That influence is fairly clear. Very thick pads together with the strings. A lot of choirs and a lot of soul choirs have we used this time also. We have matched Martin's hard voice that he has with very soft female voices. It becomes a very neat sound that I believe we in BWO will continue work with. Then we have all the classical preferences and I would like to state that ELO and BeeGees are two big classical name in the pophistory that we have many preferences from on this album. And above all (can't hear the name for sure).

-In principle all your albums has been really successful, sold well and sold platina and gold. What is BWO's successreciepe ?

M:- I think that a lot of other bands spend some weeks or months in the studio and then tries to get out and make as much gigs as possible. We are maybe the opposite. I think you can notice that on the album. We spend a year or maybe like now 2 years to make this album and music is a handicraft and it takes a long time to make it real good. So I think a lot is about that we spend a lot of time to make it as perfect as possible.

A:- I would like to state that it's of neglecting when it comes to song writing. It's often the recordcompanies chasing the artists to get the albums out and then the band should go on tour. Then one song is enough. Then you fill up the album with a lot of garbage. We don't like that. I hate when you buy an album and discover that the half of the album is only filling up songs. We demand ourselves to write a lot of ideas from begnning and do a proper clean up to find the best ideas. And then be very high on the "lowest-level". The weakest song on the album should be one that every ordinary band should have a hit with. It's the challenge we have. We love of all this. We plunder pophistory. We are real popnerds all three of us in the band. We use that as a thing in BWO that the songwriting is a so important part of BWO's work.

-What has Melodifestivalen meant for you ?

A:- A curse. We felt it was really fun to make Temple Of Love in Melodifestivalen 2006 and Lay Your Love on Me 2008 and that went very well. Both songs almost won the whole competition and became great hits after. But all became a bit of a curse, cause then you have big Summer tours after when you have a big hit in Melodifestivalen. And then suddenly should every ordinary person start to like the band and stand there digging and try to learn the music and stuff like that. And that wasn't what BWO should do. It is not our thought. That is not how this works abroad, where we are have a very hard niche as a band. So the reason that BWO is listened to all over the world is that our music goes home in countries like Japan, England and in Eastern Europe is because we reach out to a specific public in those countries. It is the public that like synthpop in the 80ies and like electronic popmusic today. They like BWO.
And we want to stay in that niche. We are totally right there. That public we want to be loyal to. We like it there. And therefor ironically this year when we had the opportunity to be in Melodifestivalen again so wasn't that automatically with an uptempo hit like we use to. It had only been an reccurence from us. Instead we participated with You're Not Alone that maybe is the most complex song at the album, cause we wanted to make a statement. That this is what BWO is about. And in that way Melodifestivalen is unbeatable cause that is Sweden's most biggest platform. You can't communicate anything between February and August in entertainment Sweden unless you do that in Melodifestivalen.

-You are a very stylish band. How important is that for you ?

MS:- That is A and O. It is also a way mediate what we have in our heads. It's a tool for what we want to express and we are from those roots especially Alexander and I that are some years older then Martin. Especially the scenery that was in the 80ies, with new romantic and there you also made sweeps with the exterior and we enjoy that.

A:- Then it's also a very fun with fashion and fashion is good for the web. It's a perfect media to use the web. Before, a TV program that should be about fashion was very simple and had so few viewers that there was no space for the programs in the TV chart at all. However fashion is something that's suitable on the web. It's also very convenient if you are a band. If you disagree abou the look you should have next day, you can take a photo with the cellphone and send that to the other two and then they know how to style. Then you have a measurement to use. I agree with Marina that pophistroy for me is a combination of music and fashion.

-We talked a bit about the name, Bodies Without Organs, that is from a French philosopher ?

A:-I happened to mention for Marina on a dinner that we had in beginning of 2000, before we started BWO that I had read a book by a French philosopher that had that name was Gilles Deleuze. And he talked about a very fuzzy conception" bodies without organs" in English and then Marina said, that is one of the best bandnames I have ever heard. We are sold on old synthnames.
If you should rabble old synthnames and shortcuts.

MS:- Orchestral Manoveours in the Dark, A Flock of Seagulls, Electric Light Orchestra before that, Men without Hats etc.

A:- Don't forget KLF.

MS:- And don't forget Yellow Magic Orchestra. I can go on for long.