“It’s a place where human beings don’t belong,” says Efterklang’s Rasmus Stolberg. “It’s a very inspiring place, but a very sad place”. The Danish band’s new album, Piramida, is built around sounds they recorded in Pyramiden, a former Russian mining settlement on the island of Spitsbergen, north of Norway, close to the North Pole. It was abandoned in 1998. The climate means nothing decays.
“Hollow Mountain” opens Piramida, and Efterlkang have chosen to premier the film for the track on theartsdesk. “We don’t consider this a video, more a visual piece that follows the song,” explains Stolberg. “We wanted to use all our still photos from Pyramiden”. The piece was specially comissioned from Christoffer Frandsen and Jakob Steen, who work as Oodls.
“For this album,” continues Stolberg. “We had the idea to connect with a specific location, where songs could live with the connection. When we were introduced to this place, we connected. Pyramiden is a strange place. We had worked on it for a year to get there. For the first three days, we ran around and banged everything we could found”. They found abandoned oil tanks – one of which they dubbed Miss Piggy (pictured right) – and the world’s most northerly grand piano, sitting forlornly in Pyramiden’s concert hall. Now, there are more polar bears there than people.
Following the release of Piramida, Efterklang will perform the album live with their new collaborator, former Siouxsie and the Banshees drummer Budgie, who they first met while completing the album in Berlin. “If you think of his work with The Creatures,” says Stolberg. “It’s not too far from our music”. Pyramiden itself though, as the film for “Hollow Mountain” confirms, is very far from the familiar.
- Efterklang's Piramida is released on 24 September
Efterklang play The Piramida Concerts with the Northern Sinfonia: 23 October: The Sage, Gateshead; 24 October: Usher Hall, Edinburgh; 27 October: Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry; 28 October: Dome, Brighton; 29 October: Bridgewater Hall, Manchester; 30 October: Barbican, London
Watch the film for Efterklang's "Hollow Mountain"
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