By Ace, 14th of April, 2023.
With their own style and their own voice the Danish band Blaue Blume is raw, dark, and emotional, just like certain feelings humans share. Blue is a color that because of the social and cultural movements it has represented carries a nostalgic and dreamy tone, just like the music composed by Blaue Blume, the band conformed by Jonas Holst Schmidt, Buster Jensen and Søren Buhl Lassen.
We have the chance to talk with the the guitarist / keyboardist Buster Jensen in representation of the band about how they normally get together to make music, where do they live, their future plans, and other topics that bring a deeper view into them:
808blogg: Feelings are one of those things that we all have to experience, that we all have to deal with, even if we want it or not, how important is it for you to capture your daily experience about this topic on the music you present?
Blaue Blume: I am not writing the lyrics, but expressing my everyday life in music through my clarinet, guitar or synthesizer is very important to me. Words are different and more concrete than what I can express through my guitar, but even though I try to have a conversation going on with myself. It’s more abstract and it’s also up the listener to decide what it’s all about; I wake up and see the sun rise, it’s makes me feel something and I want to express that feeling through sound and I record it, and we use it on a song. By then it has morphed into something different, but the initial seed grows out of me seeing the sun rise and having a sensation of some sort.
808blogg: How does everything begin for Blaue Blume, how do you decide to start making music together?
Blaue Blume: The process of making music is actually a continues process which never stops for us, so it’s more a question of when we decide to meet up and try to fit everything together. We each do a lot of work on the music on our own in our studios which we email back and forth, but being together in the same room is something different, so for us it’s a balance of those two processes; working together but being apart, and working together being in the same room.
808blogg: Do you all live in the same place?
Blaue Blume: Up until recently we all lived in the same city, Copenhagen. But some of us just moved to the countryside.
808blogg: Do you consider yourselves as the successors of the New Romanticism?
Blaue Blume: I don’t think of us being a successor of anything or being part of any scene or genre. We try to be as focused on being us and be as true to our gut feeling as possible.
808blogg: What music hooked you into this, who were your major influences at the beginning?
Blaue Blume: It is very much dependent on the situation and which mood I am in. When I was young and everything was new to me, I listened a lot to instruments and texture and landscapes, which I still do, but what really fanned the flame was when I started to listen to Radiohead, Kate Bush, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Nick Cave. I have a lot of siblings who introduced me to music, books, took me to concerts, and gave me DVDs and VHS’, and therefore my musical upbringing is very much a prolonging of what they liked. Up until then, I listen to what my friends in school listened to at that was mostly pop-acts like Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls, which was fine, but it wasn’t until I was around 10-11 years old when my brother, Simon, introduced me to “Ok computer”, I felt inspired and touched in a more profound way. There was something about the sound, the landscape, and the songs that lead me down the road to playing guitar and music myself. As of now, it is mostly my friends who introduce me to new music. There is so much new and good stuff coming out, so the small personal introduction which accommodates the music they want to show me really makes the difference. I am lucky to be around really good and inspiring people in my day-to-day life, so my main source of inspiration is them; listening to their ideas and their thoughts always pushes me into doing things I wouldn’t have come up with by myself.
808blogg: How is your creative process while making music, and also with the passing of time has it changed, or it is the way it was since the beginning?
Our music is often a product of experimentation, teamwork, and trying to keep the eye on the ball. When we work together and compose we are most often in a lot of different places before we settle on something. That can at times be a tough and tiresome process, but the hard work always pays off. The first small seed of a song or piece of music can actually be pretty old, we have tons of stuff lying around, so it’s mostly a question of what gets to us and what state of mind we are in, and how the process is working out.
808blogg: Can you tell us more about your last release for hfn music called Mood?
Mood is not necessarily the one we have worked on the most, it came to us pretty easy, and by that i mean pretty easy for us at least, it took a lot of hours to compose, write, record and finish, but the process were more streamlined than some of the other stuff we have made. One thing about this song which makes it stand out to me, is that it’s maybe a bit more accessible than some of the earlier music or the other things we have going on right now. That is not necessarily a good or bad thing, that is just a quality to it.
808blogg: What are your future plans for this year?
Our plans is to meet up and do some writing and work on new stuff.
808blogg: Where are the places where you have the best time making music?
We all have our own studio, but sometimes we take a trip to a house on the countryside or something similar so we can be focused and also just to change the scenery.
808blogg: What music do you enjoy to listen on your free time?
A lot of different stuff. Mostly I am influenced by my friends and what they listen to. As of now I am listening to Bowery Electric, Anais Mitchell, Emerson String quartet, Oren Ambarchi, Twain and a lot of other stuff.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
For more information on Blaue Blume visit his: Facebook / Bandcamp / Soundcloud
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Hey, I’m Ace from 808blogg a music addict, a video nerd, an information freak, and I wrote this interview, you can get more 808blogg content here: 808blogg.wordpress.com.
Thanks for reading and please don’t ever say no to good music…
808 blogg 
Leave a comment