Interview with Krakow: "It's Just Like Narnia"

Krakow

On August 31st, Krakow will be releasing minus via Karisma records.

Honestly it's the kind of album that I struggle to write about personally because it's so left of center, so unique, but still utterly compelling.

It becomes very hard to convey my feelings to my readers.

So, the smart play, if you ask me, is to get the band themselves to explain the whole thing to you instead!

Glacially Musical: Thank you for taking some time to speak to us today.

Krakow: Thank you for your interest

GM: Your style is bit left of center. How would you describe your music. The unabridged version please.

KR: That is no easy task. If I should put our music in one genre, I would say post-rock. That being said I know it is a mix of a lot of stuff. 

You can definitely hear that we grew up listening to a lot of alternative rock bands, like Tool, Primus, Faith no More, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Helmet and all that stuff. Maybe even more on “minus” than on our previous albums. 

When it comes to describing our music I would say that all of our song are rooted in an emotion that we want transform into music. We are always finding new ways to create a feeling of catharsis or something eerie and claustrophobic, at the other end we aim to create something that gives the listener peace.

It´s all about creating music that we and the listener can get lost in.

GM: How did you squeeze two albums into one?

KR: Hehe, we didn´t. We had music for two albums, and put the songs in two different folders. We have the next one ready so to speak.

GM: How do you feel about the tag progressive?

KR: I like it.

GM: The Stranger really stuck with me. Can you tell me about that song?

KR: The Stranger is quite special for me (Kjartan). The whole idea for the song started with the synth that starts the song. 

I remember playing that note and I thought “that reminds me of the tv-series Stranger Things”, and I then wanted to make a song with that kind of duality. 

Everything about that song is about things having two sides.

GM: Now, not the business of music, but how do you feel about the state of music in 2018?

KR: I think there is a lot of good stuff out there, but it is harder to navigate. Before Spotify etc, I would buy Metal Hammer and Kerrang and read about new bands and checking them out after. 

The pool of bands was smaller if you know what I mean. Now everything is out there, there is always a new band behind the next click. Now I use festivals to show me new stuff.

GM: Here in the USA, Norway is often thought of as a barren, snow covered wasteland, like as seen in Narnia.

What's it really like where you live?

KR: It´s just like Narnia. We all live in Bergen and here we say that we only have one season; autum. We have a lot of rain. But not always. This year we have had summer for two months, good warm weather.

GM: Do you have American Food restaurants over there?

KR: Of course. McDonalds, Burger King, TGI Fridays, Dominos (?). probably a few more as well.

GM: What's the question we didn't ask?

KR: Well, you didn´t ask about our name and that is a first.