ITV : GENTLE KNIFE

“When the band came together, we treated it like our baby.”

Gentle Knife’s ‘Clock Unwound’ is quite the excellent album, and should be on your radar right now. The Norwegian combo – eleven members, no less! – is currently prepping a summer tour, and founding member Eivind Lorentzen is a semi-resident of Brussels, Belgium. An ideal opportunity for a chat, then.

photo credit: Thomas Hysvær Rockshots.no

photo credit: Irmina Lunnøy Photography

Julian De Backer: ‘Music is your hobby and passion, or is it actually all in a day’s work?’

Eivind Lorentzen: ‘Robert Fripp of King Crimson was once asked that question, ‘Is music a hobby or a job?’ and his answer was something along the lines of: ‘Are those my only two options? Is it a dichotomy?’ To some extent, for me, music is something that I do and that is done because it has a purpose. That purpose can be different depending on context; it can be very local or global, it depends on the purpose. The framework condition varies as well. Some things I do would be definitely, completely unprofessional. When you play guitar at a local fair as part of your contribution to the community, for example. When you look at our band Gentle Knife, it’s organized as a limited company and the structures are all professional. There’s never a lot of money involved though, unless you’re one of the very very few. I would imagine to be similar in your case, Julian. You’re a professional listener, you use your experience to analyze and you go along in that role, and other times you will not be listening professionally. The motivation can be different. For me, I studied musicology at the university, so it was a choice a number of years ago: ‘Do I want to have all my income from music?’ My decision was quite clear: no, why should I do that. First: it would have been quite tough, and second: I don’t see the purpose. But for some people it’s absolutely necessary, and I’m always impressed when they manage.’

Julian: ‘But you’re not a full-time musician, that’s what I meant.’

Eivind: ‘No, not at all. Now we’re focusing on recording and touring. But in general, we don’t make music for profit. We work with professional structures, but not for profit. It wouldn’t be a prog collective with eleven members, then (laughs).’

Julian: ‘I was quite happy to see you come from Norway. It’s my number-one ‘to visit’-country.’

Eivind: ‘Welcome!’

Julian: ‘It has always fascinated me. You guys are – geographically, at least – part of the European Union, but you’re not a part of it. You’re independent and financially very well-off, because of natural resources. I wanted to do my Erasmus in Norway, but ten years ago, there was no program, so I opted for Sweden. There’s something about Norway, and Scandinavia as a whole, that just seems to work. Scandinavian countries have their act together.’

Eivind: ‘Some structures obviously work. There’s a high income level and fair income distribution, those kinds of things. Bureaucracy mostly works, so you definitely have got a point there. We seem to go through a phase now where Scandinavia is popular. Those things go in waves. My girlfriend is French. The first time she spent quite some time in Oslo, she hated it. Nothing like a foreigner to make you discover things that aren’t working, and that are different. What you have, is high participation in the labour force, and a consensus on a sort of basic welfare system. We have the resources, and we know how to use them in an ecologically good way. The politicians from both sides have jointly avoided falling in the usual pitfalls of having natural resources. Sweden is very similar in many ways; we copied a lot from them (laughs). Where did you study in Sweden?’

Julian: ‘Sundsvall, a charming little town in the middle of Sweden. The university was even called ‘Mid Sweden University’. If I’m not mistaken, Norwegian is quite similar to Swedish. It’s like Dutch versus Flemish.’

Eivind: ‘Yes. Sixteen hundred years ago, there were some people sitting around a Frisian campfire, and they all went in different directions and became Dutch, Flemish, Norwegian and Swedish. Semantics are different, but the languages are very close.’

Julian: ‘I listened to your band’s most recent album, ‘Clock Unwound’, and I’m very fond of the song ‘Resignation’. It combines a lot of different styles. I heard some scary fairytale sounds, some ‘Castlevania’-esque video game bleeps, some ‘Stairway to Heaven’ echoes, some Wagner influences that would have pleased Jim Steinman, etcetera. All these, combined into an epic song.’

Eivind: ‘When you write this kind of song, especially as a group effort, you will have all sorts of influences coming to you. We have been writing for years, and we don’t always know where our songs come from. I know of some influences, but I’m sure other band members will have others, and even listeners will hear different origins. And yes, you’re right when you mention Jim Steinman and Wagner. For me, any take is fine. The beginning of the song is clearly the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by Bach, which has a bassline going. It works very well with an orchestra. Stokowski made a beautiful orchestration of this piece. Also, there’s the influence of the California Guitar Trio that’s played with the Robert Fripp String Quartet in the early 90’s. The idea is to have a bassline with a lot of variation on top, this comes from the Baroque era and onwards, and you can find it in many kinds of modern music.

‘Resignation’ is obviously based on a requiem. The lyric is a combination of a number of sources, some obvious like Yeats, some obscure like Jorge Manrique, a Spanish author from the 14th century who wrote a poem for his father’s death. There’s a Latin tradition called ‘Ubi sunt’, which means ‘Where are they?’ with a carpe diem modus. Brian M. Talgo, Astraea Antal and I worked on the lyrics to sort of generate a concept lyric with a number of influences. Other band members then worked on the melodies, which came through via improvisations. We found out that ‘Resignation’ works best when Brian just reads the words out loud. And that’s what we ended up with. Brian is our main lyricist by the way.’

Julian: ‘It’s Brian’s normal voice we hear on ‘Resignation’? He has quite the commanding presence, very Christopher Lee-esque.’

Eivind: ‘It is! It comes out of him, out of nowhere. We’re glad Brian ran with the idea it, and glad you like it.’

Julian: ‘You could call it ‘progressive rock music’, even though that may be shortchanging it. Is it a big thing in Norway, prog rock? Are you guys trailblazers?’

Eivind: ‘Like in Sweden, like in the woods arounds Sundsvall, if you look very carefully, there will be rock bands in Norway. What is prog, and what is not? We sort of embrace the moniker, because our influences come from that field. In line with prog traditions: ff we think we have a good idea, we don’t cut it short to fit the format. Sometimes, that’s a good thing, and sometimes, it’s definitely a bad thing. There were some Norwegian prog bands in the 70’s, like everywhere else, and there was a revival going on from the mid-90’s, more or less parallel with the growth of Scandinavian metal. Pioneers in that field would be bands like White Willow, Panzerpappa, Gazpacho and Wobbler. We do slightly different things, but we are not trailblazers. There is a scene, and some musicians play in several bandsSome festivals are organized together, with joint-bill sessions.’

Julian: ‘How has the response to Gentle Knife been in your home country?’

Eivind: ‘We work in a global prog niche. Right now our biggest market is Japan, followed by Germany and the US. We don’t seem to appeal to the mainstream media, which is fine. Occasionally, a journalist will mention us, but we’re not a household name. If you book us, there will be just a small mention in the press. There’s a Norwegian audience for prog, which is quite knowledgeable. Music happens in the interplay between musicians and audience. Quite often, one ends up doing things that are not necessarily expected, if you allow it to happen. The Norwegian prog audience is small, but very dedicated, and big enough to fill small festivals. They’re very important in making things happen. They’ll debate on what works, and what doesn’t.’

Julian: ‘The title track, ‘The Clock Unwound’, is the longest at almost sixteen minutes. A real epic, all over the place. Was it a deliberate choice to have it be the centerpiece of the album? Should the title track be the most epic, or is it a coincidence?’

Eivind: ‘‘The Clock Unwound’ has the unrelenting passage of time as the basic theme, and once it became the title track, it got more focus and once previous ideas merged into it. It also became the focus of our improvisations and writings, so that’s why it expanded. After a while, we knew what kind of record we were making, and this piece got a lot of importance. That’s what happens when you have eleven persons in a musical collective, working on ideas and developing them.’

Julian: ‘Everyone is a co-writer, to some extent?’

Eivind: ‘Oh yeah. We all contribute something. We have collective rights, on principle, for lyrics and compositions. For example, the swinging jazz feel on Resignation that contrast with the bass, was the drummer’s idea. I saw something quite different, but he took it in another direction. Not having collective credits would be wrong. It makes for a creative playing field. What is your experience?’

Julian: ‘About the song?’

Eivind: ‘About credits. You do play yourself, right?’

Julian: ‘Oh, no, I’m not a musician. I’d say your situation is a healthy one. People like to co-write, for both creative and financial benefits.’

Eivind: ‘Indeed, we’ve done all kinds of reflections, and that’s how we’ve ended up in our situation.’

Julian: ‘Have you ever been to Japan?’

Eivind: ‘Never. We could organize a small tour. One of our guitarists, Ove Christian Owe, has studied at the University of Tokyo and his wife is Japanese, so he goes over there every now and then. There’s a lot of good music bars, apparently. He’s the guy to ask. We have been thinking about it, there have been some ideas. This summer, we’ll be playing in Germany – ‘Night of the Prog’. That’s our current focus. We have some possible dates in the US and South America for 2019. If something happens in Asia, and we can manage to coordinate it, why not? That’s the drawback of having eleven members; it’s a logistical nightmare.’

Julian: ‘Going into the song ‘Fade Away’, I was half expecting a sort of answer song/sequel to ‘Not Fade Away’ by The Rolling Stones …’

Eivind: ‘Ha, no, it’s not. ‘Fade Away’ talks about life disappearing between your fingers. The first chords came from our singer Håkon Kavli. I thought he was inspired by the film ‘Baghdad Café’ and its music, because some notes are similar. But that wasn’t the case; he built it around the vocal of our singer Veronika Hørven Jensen. What you hear in the middle, was originally an impro based on a 7/8 pattern. The keyboard plays it as it would play the ‘Super Mario Bros’ theme for the 8-bit Nintendo. ‘Duggu-duggu-duggu’. I think we ended up with a mid-section that came out of a jam, in which we were playing something very ethereal and downbeat with Beatles-esque melodies, half-and-half with Super Mario Bros and King Crimson. That grew into ‘Fade Away’. It became a journey between the two parts. As far as the rest of the influences, I have no clue.’

Julian: ‘Quite cool to have video game influences. A sixties band could never have that, because the medium is still young.

There’s a song called ‘The Gentle Knife’ on your first album. What came first, the song or the band name?’

Eivind: ‘Ehm … well. That’s a bit complex. We’re not really sure. We had a number of band names circulating. When the concept gelled, when the band came together, we treated it like our baby. And a baby needs a name. You go through a list. ‘Gentle Knife’ kept reappearing, and eventually, we decided upon it. Was the lyric written first? I’m really not sure. It might be. It happened at the same time. Perhaps we decided upon the band name the same day Brian presented us the lyric, or perhaps he wrote the lyric a couple of days after the band name was suggested? I don’t know. Anyway, we knew it was the right band name. You know the Japanese concept ‘hikikomori’? People who take a break from their hectic life and become recluses? It’s a cultural phenomenon, a way to handle the pressure of society. Becoming invisible, living an internal life. That was a band name we kept kicking around for a while, and then we found out it didn’t really fit our project.’

Julian: ‘So what’s the next step for Gentle Knife?’

Eivind: ‘What we’re doing now is basically rehearse quite a bit, to do live shows. We’re trying to do different things, depending on whether we play indoors (with a light show and visuals) or outdoors. Gesamtkunstwerk, you know? When we play an outdoor festival in the day, we put on a different kind of show with another kind of energy. It’s not Zappa, who would write down a new setlist every day, though. We’re in a place now where lots of ideas come from lots of places, and that’s a pleasant experience. We’re working on new songs with folk influences, quite heavy, 6/8. What can the concept be? What is meaningful? We’re trying not to be dependent on the record coming out. We will always wait until something has meaning, until it is something we want to release.’

Julian: ‘Every artist has a Prince-esque vault.’

Eivind: ‘What about your vault? You have a writer’s vault?’

Julian: ‘Mostly a cartoon vault, with unreleased drawings. Do you guys ever consider singing in Norwegian, or is that out of the question?’

Eivind: ‘That’s a good question. Hmm. Sometimes, lyrics precede the song, and sometimes, the song precedes the lyrics. Some songs have temporary lyrics, and yes, some have been in Norwegian. We haven’t recorded any Norwegian songs, but maybe we should. Yeah. Some Norwegian prog bands do that. We’re in a different situation, because our chief lyricist is a native English speaker. We like to have Brian as our main lyricist (laughs), he’s also a published author in English. But still, good idea.’

Julian: ‘During our Erasmus, we had an American teacher giving a course on media. She once quipped: ‘There’s 375 newspapers in Germany, but that’s only 5 newspapers per 1 million people. Norway, on the other hand, has 19,1 newspapers per 1 million people. But, of course, there’s only 3 people living in Norway!’’

Eivind: ‘Hahaha! Yeah! There quite some distance between two cities. Driving two hours to get to a party is not unheard of. Playing a gig in the next village can take three hours, so you take a small plane.’

Julian: ‘Like in Australia.’

Eivind: ‘Yeah. Some areas will have a lot of people, others will be deserted. I take my French girlfriend as an example. The first time we went to my vacation cottage in the mountain – which is just a shack with wood on the fire, and no electricity – she was quite quiet. She enjoyed it, but she thought it was scary she didn’t see one living person after an hour and a half in my car driving to the cottage.’

Julian: ‘Quite scary indeed. I heard stories about a Norwegian place called ‘Finse’, where they shot the Hoth scenes for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.’

Eivind: ‘Indeed!’

Julian: ‘A lot of nerds go there, and check out the shooting locations where the big ground battle took place in the snow.’

Eivind: ‘Yes, it’s quite easy to go there. If you’re in Oslo, just take the train to Finse. It’s midway between Oslo and Bergen. It’s recommended. If you go, give us a call. We’d be happy to guide you around.’

Julian: ‘Well, thank you for your time.’

Eivind: ‘Thank you for yours.’

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