Trentemøller:
No Looking Back

You are a man open to very many ideas and methods. Is that a search for something or is it more out of curiosity and interest?

I don’t really see it that way. It’s very much the music I write that kind of ‘demands’ how it should sound. I don’t really think that much in terms of boxes like.. ‘this is a folk song, so we HAVE to have some acoustic guitars on it’ or ‘this is more a electronic tune so I need some 808’s’

It’s much more about what every song needs, what is the vibe of the tune, the atmosphere. Then I try to follow that vibe.

You wrote the theme for AMC series Halt and Catch Fire, are such projects something that you are looking to explore more?

Not really , my main focus is on my own stuff. In fact AMC asked me to write a theme that was quite close to my track Still On Fire from my last album, because they really loved that tune. Nearly the whole AMC crew went to see our concert when we played in LA and they came backstage after the show and said hello, so that was of course quite big for me. Later when I came back to Denmark they wrote me and told me about this series that takes place in the 80’s and they could hear some of my 80’s influences in that song I think, so they asked me to do the theme.

You have a very fine art/scientific approach to your music exploring concepts like audience participation. Tell us about some of the outcomes from the Come Undone DIY video project?

It was just a simple idea we had during our rehearsals for the last tour. We rehearsed Come Undone in a new version for live and we thought, why not record what every musician is playing and then just give all the recordings to the fans to play with and also this way they had the chanche to actually see what each musician plays live for a whole song.

Would it be fair to say that your single releases are where you do most of your experimentation, especially with more electronic sounds?

No, not at all. It’s the opposite actually, you find the more experimental stuff on my albums. Not so much on the singles. Singles are more for the radio and unfortunately they don’t wanna play an 8 minute long song. I don’t really think in singles when I do my albums. I’m a bit old fashioned and really love the album format and try to do an album as one long journey. Unfortnalely the focus nowadays is much more on the damn singles, because it’s easier for the blogs, people are listening to music on Spotify etc as single tracks, not so much as albums. That’s pretty sad I think. And my music is not very good for singles. In a perfect world there would be no singles if you ask me.

Since The Last Resort that had glimmers of Indie, Rock and Punk elements, your music has evolved in a way where they have become more prominent. What made you return to those sounds of your early days and the setting up of a full live band?

It has always been a part of my music taste, but as I develop myself as an artist I also make music that does not sound the same as it did 10 years ago, I at least hope so [Laughs]. Again, it’s really not something I think that much about, it’s the music that decides how it will sound. Sometimes it’s more electronic sounding, other times it’s more shoe gaze or what ever you call it. The challenge is to make it feel natural and that you actually don’t think in genres when you listen to my music, but you just feel the moods.

Are there any limits to the scope of where you would take your music, within your last album Lost you explore a spectrum that goes from the Folky tones of track The Dream to the more industrial sounding Techno of Hazard, are there any other sounds you plan to explore?

It depends on the song I write, I don’t sit down before an album and think ‘Now I have done a techno track and an indie kind of track — I need to do a jazz song’ That is not how it works for me. Again, fuck the genres and just make some music! That is my mantra! Don’t think too much about it.