the AU interview: Ketil of Casiokids (Norway)

After a busy few months of touring the US and more to come, Ketil from Casiokids was kind enough to have a chat with James Hull about their upcoming tour in Australia over the festive season (most questions courtesy of Amanda Picman, held up by unstoppable forces at the last minute).

Hi Ketil. How’s things?

Good, good, thank you.

Sorry I’m calling a bit late, there was a mix up. This might be a bit weird as I’m filling in for my friend Amanda, so I’m going to ask you questions that she has written up. So professional.

OK. That’s OK.

Alright, here goes… You guys have been super busy touring over the last few months. Have you been to Australia before and are you looking forward to anything in particular?

We’ll all be very excited to come down there, it will be our first time in Australia. We were recently in the US for most of August and then October after our album came out there and the next coming weeks we are going to be in Denmark and France. But we’ll have some rest and the Christmas holidays before we come to Australia and I’m sure we will be in top form.

Refreshed and ready to go…

Yes.

What did you get up to last year for New Year’s Eve?

We all had a dinner at Fredrik’s place. He cooked a lot of food, it was good, very nice. We didn’t do crazy stuff just relaxed and had some fun.

You are going to be rushing from Falls Festival on New Year’s Eve to Sydney for Field Day on the 1st of January… are you looking forward to that?

Yes. None of us have been to Australia before and we are very much looking forward to seeing lots and driving around.

Have you had a chance to check out the line up for Falls Festival and Field Day? Is there anyone you’re keen to check out?

Um… I have not really had a chance to look at who else is playing….

That’s ok… How about Australian bands. Do you like any?

The Presets… they are great… Um…

Haha, we were literally just listening to them in the car rushing home to make this call.

OK… um… I’m sorry, I don’t really know any more bands from Australia…

I guess Australian bands haven’t infiltrated Scandinavia yet. What determined the type of music you create? Did you all have the same ideas from the start or did it all just happen?

We started by doing edits of songs to bring to parties with the addition of more Casio tunes to it. And one of the first edits of songs we did was for New Kids On The Block, ‘The Right Stuff’. It was basically songs that we made just for fun to bring to friends’ parties and then later on when we met up with the others in the band and Omar, we started making songs together and we all had quite different musical backgrounds. Like Omar was playing in a prog rock band and um Kjetil was like a noise experimental electronic musician on other projects

I think that’s the reasons why our songs are very varied as well, because we all bring a difference and we found this kind of meeting point together.

A lot of your songs are in your native tongue. Do you have any reserves about the audience not understanding the lyrics?

Well ever since we started making songs with singing on them we played outside of Norway quite a lot and we’ve been like… I guess the times when we started playing outside of Scandinavia which would be the territory that would understand our lyrics, we were continuously amazed that the reactions were so overwhelming when no one could understand the lyrics. But I guess after a while we discovered how much of the energy we could turn down and still catch the audience attention with both the melody and the rhythm. The music is so upbeat and dancey in many ways so when we have travelled around to territories outside of Scandinavia the reaction can still be very good and actually in many cases be very similar except when we play in Scandinavia people tend to sing along.

Yeah I think that the melody feels like more of an instrument. I personally like to listen to music that I don’t understand the lyrics like or other west African and in some cases Sigur Ros… I can just relate to the music.

Sounds like you’ve answered Amanda’s next question there… She also likes foreign music ‘cause she can focus on the melody and just enjoy the music.

OK, forgive my poor pronunciation here… The songs ‘Finn Bikkjen’ and ‘En Vill Hest’ are translated to mean ‘Find Dogs’ and ‘A Wild Horse’…  according to Amanda there are strong recurring animal motifs… Do you guys just like animals or is there some sort of higher meaning there?

Haha. I think it’s sort of a coincidence mostly I guess. Because it’s just for a couple of the songs. I guess personally, haha, I like the use of them in lyrics and the imagery and mostly it’s a coincidence.

Amanda was really fascinated by the ‘Finn Bikkjen’ video clip. I like it too. You had some interesting creatures and characters in there, who came up with the design?

It was Greg Taylor, director. It was him and his crew basically that made it.

Was the process much different to when you worked with Kristoffer Borgli?

In both cases it was very much the music video director who did a lot of the travelling and story line. I would say that over all of the communication I had with them beforehand was mostly to give them an idea of the themes of the lyrics and the feel of the lyrics and I just trusted them to come up with something suited to the style and tastes. So there was really not too much input from us in the process. Both of them had come up with a really nice interpretation from the lyrics and the feel of the song, so we were very happy with them.

What do you think is the most important aspect of a live performance?

I would say that good performances manage to relax the audience and kind of create an atmosphere of a sort of unity between the performer and the audience so they can feel part of the same unit and moment

And I would say that this feeling that we strive after in our live show comes down to the sort of feel from I guess… my personally ideal setting for one of our live shows would be in someone’s home in someone’s living room where people can be relaxed and just feel that they can act how they want to and not worry about what other people think and I think to manage to create that sort of atmosphere will always be the goal for us.

Maybe we can make some requests to put some couches around the festivals so people can sit down like they’re in their living room…



 Haha, yeah maybe. We also actually have a lot of shows in people’s homes when we are travelling. So maybe someone will be interested in having us visit them in their living room.


I’m sure you’ll have lots of people interested. Finally, this is a question Amanda and I like to end all our interviews on… if your music was a food or flavour, what would it taste like?

Oh, hahaha.

It’s time to get deep and powerful with your thoughts.

Hahah, ya. I guess our music would be quite… I guess the main flavour… I feel that it would be very sweet on one hand and quite spicy on the other. Sweet and spicy. I have to think about it…. it would be something closer to a cookie but sort of like some kind of Mexican spice in there as well.

So like a Mexican spice choc chip cookie?

Exactly! More like a Mexican sweet basically. Like a sugar burrito.

Brilliant! Thank you for talking with us today. Is there anything you’d like to say to the people before we go?

Well I would hope that people would like to come and check out our music and visit us at our webpage which is basically just www.casiokids.com. And we’re all very much looking forward to coming to Australia and having a fun time. Can’t wait to get down to the warmth.

We’ll keep a nice spot free for you on the beach.

Haha, thanks.

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TOURING AUSTRALIA THIS DECEMBER/JANUARY

Neon Indian and Casiokids (supported by Strange Talk) are co-headlining their only non-festival side show at Revolver in Melbourne on December 29th. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix! Of course, you can also catch both bands at Falls Festival, Southbound Festival and Field Day!

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Field Day Tickets can be purchased here: http://bit.ly/eS4VNe
New Years Day, Sydney Domain, Midday – 11pm
More information about Field Day can be found here: http://www.fuzzy.com.au/