SOCIAL MEDIA

TM – Hi, this is Amelia and Elizabeth from twinmusix. We are here with David from The Nightflight Orchestra. Thank you for having this interview with us today, we really appreciate it.

DA - Thank you! It’s a pleasure.

TM - How has everything been going for you?

DA - That's a big question. These last 18 months have had their ups and downs, we are about to release a new album now on September 3rd, that's a big thing. I am really excited to see what people think about it, and it's a tiny cause for celebration and we need those these days.

TM - Yeah, we definitely do. As you said you have your second album coming out and it's the second album of the series, did you expect to do a second album for the series?

DA - It wasn't something that we had planned from the beginning, but when we had assembled the songs for this new album Aeromantic II, with a logical continuation of the first "Aeromantic" album and we liked the title "Aeromantic". Bjorn, our singer, came up with it and it just felt like the two previous albums "Amber Galactic" and "Sometimes the World Ain't Enough" had a space theme in common, these two albums had this down to earth aeroplane atmosphere stratosphere thing going on. Sound wise they inhabit the same territory in a way, so it felt like they belong together. The new one takes off in various directions as well, we always try to surprise people or try to have some new elements or incorporate elements in every new record we do. Everything that we have done from the first album to here has been a continuous process in developing sound and trying out new stuff and branching out in various and odd directions.

TM - What was your writing and recording process for "Aeromantic II"?

DA - Mostly me, I write half the songs and lyrics and Bjorn does the rest. Sebastian does some to, so we have some rough demos then we just meet up in the studio together. I think we have quite a special chemistry in the band as musicians, and the recording process is very spontaneous. We all love our unique voices on our instruments, we want that to shine through. We have always engineered and produced all our albums ourselves, so it's very much a group process. It's a very spontaneous organic process and it's all about the group dynamic, and the fact that we are still great friends, and we still like to hang out with each other. It comes very easy, it's not like we sit around and plan stuff like “Oh let's press record and see what happens”.

TM - What was the inspiration behind the album cover "Aeromantic II"?

DA - Just like the first "Aeromantic" album, its nostalgia for the first imperial face of commercial air travel. When people who are allowed to travel from Europe to the USA on a commercial airline and that whole 50s era, it wasn't for everyone because it was expensive, but it still had this romantic shimmer to it. One of the main themes behind our band and the image has been traveling and escaping or flying away from stuff or flying to stuff. There's something special about the fact of travelling and flying. It's a female pilot, we'd like to have that aspect there to to get rid of that macho stuff that still rears its ugly head way to often in rock music, and it’s nice to have that comment on the state of the world.

TM - I noticed in your video clips you have the female pilot sit in yellow so that's really cool

DA - Yeah absolutely!

TM - And I noticed you have a game for your album. I played it this afternoon.

DA - We wanted to create this parallel universe of our own little worlds; the music is the main thing, but we wanted to have more than music for you. We wanted to have a theme, we wanted to have official content games and stories, and if you want to you can go deeper and immerse yourself in the world of The Night Flight Orchestra. It's all about helping people escape the everyday grind and the bleakness of everyday life, but it's all entertainment and there's some depth to it to.

TM – Definitely! I think everyone can relate, when you go on tour you get away from it all.

DA - Yeah absolutely! It's been a major change for touring musicians, we are lucky we are Swedes, and we haven't had harsh Lockdown rules. We have been able to see each other in the studio, we are physically able to meet up and do this stuff the way we are used to doing it instead of sending files back and forward over the internet. That whole thing of playing live and doing shows, that's a whole other aspect to it that we are missing right now, so hopefully things will go back to the way were before the pandemic. Perhaps being stable enough so we can go out and play shows again, we are just standing around in standby mode waiting to see when it is going to happen. We have lots of festivals, and everything is getting postponed over and over so we have no idea when it will happen. Nevertheless, we will stick around waiting for that to happen. We will continue to release music and keep up our online presence as our fans appreciate that, we are releasing music and putting stuff out there. I think people need new music now more than ever, we can tell people are listening to our music more and streaming our music more, and we are getting more views, there is a void to this and science. We can't get more live shows so we try to fill it by creating new stuff.

TM - What differences in artistic expression and song writing do you see switching between Soilwork and Night Flight Orchestra?

DA - In some ways the actual song writing process is pretty much the same it's all music in a way for me. Song writing starts with an idea, it could be a melody, a word, a sentence, or a concept, you just get an idea in your head that you want to create something out of it. It's usually pretty obvious if it's a Soilwork idea or a Nightflight idea. The idea with Soilwork is we have to stay in some metal context, we can't really do a bossa nova song with Soilwork. Whereas with Nightflight Orchestra, we don't have any genre boundaries, it's pretty much whatever we want to do, so that's the main difference but it poses a different challenge. I mean, I love writing metal songs trying to do something new and interesting but still in the metal idiom, and with Nightflight since you can pretty much do whatever you want the challenge is exploring new stuff and taking things even further out there, but still trying to keep the same Nightflight Orchestra feeling too, even if you do something really strange you are still able to identify it's us.

 

TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs, what band would it be? What song? And in your style or their style?

DA - I would love to hear a really good female country western singer like Kacey Musgraves or someone like that interpreting Soilwork and Nightfight Orchestra songs, that would be interesting!

TM - What's your favourite memory watching someone else perform live?

DA - I don't go to concerts often because I'm usually playing concerts myself, but I think one of the best concerts was when we were playing Tuska in Finland and I saw Electric Wizard. They’re one of my favourite doom metal bands from England, and on the side drops they had Italian 70s vampire porn movies going on during the entire show! It was a really great performance and atmosphere; I love their song writing and their whole image so that was one of the highlights. Otherwise, my favourite concerts of all time are jazz and fusion concerts. It’s something I listen to a lot but that's just there for the music it's not really a show, it's just people playing. But for me, that is really fascinating! Seeing people master their instruments. I find most rock and metal concerts quite boring to be honest, it's just a lot of posturing and trying to look cool, I think that the most intense show that was really good to watch was the Dillinger Escape Plan a couple of years ago in the Czech Republic at a festival. That was really special, they were a really great live band, I’ve seen lots of huge bands that are quite boring to watch, because if you get really big you can just go up there, cash in the millions, play your hits and everyone will be happy anyway. So, I think the best shows are still bands are getting somewhere and reaching the next level because that's when you are hungry and that's when you have something to prove.

TM - I love how your music tastes are so diverse, that's really cool

 

 

TM - Anything else you want to say to your fans?

DA - We love Australia we have been there with Soilwork quite a few times, and that's always a great experience! So, I guess I hope as many people as possible listen to our new record in Australia, and tell their friends, enemies, loved ones, and hated ones or whoever that they should check it out to, and eventually we would love to come down there and do some shows in the future. I think for every album we make there's more and more media interest, if we do more and more interviews hopefully there will be some sort of buzz going and a promoter will think it’s worth bringing us over. It’s the same with America, it’s such a huge country! That's also a place we would love to go to. We have been planning so many tours in America with Soilwork but I guess you need to reach a certain level before you can go overseas, because it's all down to final numbers. Which sounds really boring but visa costs and flight costs and everything, and you have to reach a certain following which is on the level before it's doable. However, we are doing all we can to promote ourselves and hopefully the word will spread in Australia, and the US, and everywhere else around the world. We have been doing some great tours in Europe and festivals Europe and Night Flight Orchestra have been going really well! So, once we get enough of a following overseas, we will. I think it will do well everywhere so it’s just a matter of reaching out to as many people as possible and getting them to hear our music.

TM - Thank you for this interview today we really appreciate it.