Kalandra, a band from Norway and Sweden who have roots in melancholic Nordic folk and gritty guitars, released the album ‘A Frame of Mind’ in September 2024. A month before release we sat down with the whole band to chat about the new record and haunting cover art. Take it away Katrine Stenbekk (vocals), Florian Döderlein Winter (guitar), Jogeir Daae Maeland (guitar) and Oskar Johnsen Rydh (percussion).
Text: Anne-Marie Forker
Photography: Linnea Syversen
The album is called ‘A Frame of Mind’. What particular frame of mind does it refer to?
Jogeir: It’s not one particular frame of mind. These different songs – they are reflections of different feelings, experiences, memories, and so on. It’s all a different frame of mind, each song, I guess.
Florian: I would say there’s always just one frame of mind, but that’s the frame of mind you currently have. The album is made up of a lot of different states and there’s the expression ‘it’s only a frame of mind’, which is almost to say ‘Oh, it’s just a frame of mind, you can just change your mindset’. The frame of mind is the only thing you have. It’s not only a frame of mind, it’s …
Katrine: …. a moment in time, I guess, and I wanted to call it ‘A Frame of Mind’ also, because it is literally a square frame, the releasing an album, and we wanted to make sure that the artwork captured someone’s way of thinking and how the external world effects the mind and vice versa, how mind affects matter.
The album cover is beautiful but haunting. What was the inspiration behind that? Who painted it? It looks like a real painting.
Katrine: It’s been painted by this artist named Elena Chubar. The artwork is definitely an inspiration from AI art, but we wanted it to be a real artwork painted by someone. So, it looks a bit dystopian because it is interesting how the machine tries to convert our human condition and how it all looks a little bit gory. It’s a bit fluid, this idea of man versus nature, and I wanted the artwork to capture that kind of state of mind.
‘The state of the world has been on my mind, demanding my conscience and all of my time. Was there ever an age where it all made sense? Or am I reminiscing about lost innocence?’ That lyric, and parts of the album feel very personal in places. I know it’s about the world, the state of the world, but is it also personal?
Katrine: Yeah, those last words we were really happy with. A few people have been involved in putting that last nail into the song, in a way. We also had a separate songwriter friend of ours named Tom Cox who actually suggested that last sentence about lost innocence.
Florian: We had a bunch of different lines, meaning the same thing. But to answer your question, it’s all about your frame of mind, I guess! It’s all very personal but even writing about the external world and what happens all around us will always end up being personal. We’re viewing it through our lenses and even though we write about the current affairs and all that, it always comes from the personal outlook.
Katrine: Of course we can’t hide the fact that, of course, we’ve been affected by the state of the world and the time that we live in. And I’m also very curious about why the mind works the way it does, and why we make certain choices, where does it come from, and how does the external world affect how we think and vice versa?
Jogeir: I think it’s specifically on the ‘State of the World’ song. It’s a good story to tell to get the idea of how the songs got created. Because, Katrine, you wrote the poem that was the baseline for the entire song.
Katrine: It was written in March 2022.
Jogeir: Very personal and very beautiful. And then you made a song from that later and then took it to the band and then we started creating many different interpretations of that and just the idea that is presented in the demo, there is a really vulnerable sort of space that it comes from and we all in the band have different interpretations of what that is, and trying to make an arrangement and create a song together that’s cohesive and still maintains the idea of this song and idea of the really precious little moment captured in time, then make a journey that is grand but still has that original idea. It’s a big challenge and it took us a long time to keep that. For me, that last sentence there, I think that is the only time I did end up trying to change some lyrics, but the only line that I had was ‘Or am I reminiscing about my youth’s innocence’, that was my line, but then it was changed. It has more layers but the most important thing of the song was to keep the original purity.
Katrine: I would say that the songwriting for this song is quite naïve and it’s very direct. I’m literally saying ‘May war stop once and for all’ and most of the time in our songs, we try to make it timeless and not a very specific time to it, but for this song, when we tried to take away the word ‘war’ and use something else, it lost a lot of its inherent meaning and what I wanted to say
Florian: Well, to be fair, war is pretty timeless.
Katrine: Ha! Yeah, but we all know what I mean when I say that we try to use other words. You literally told me ‘don’t use war’, so I try to make amendments for them but then it didn’t really work. It took away a lot of its inherent meaning and I just couldn’t stand by it, so I thought – that’s not what I want to say – I want to be direct and naive about this song, a bit like John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. It’s a nice song but when I was young and especially a teenager, I thought it was a bit cringy because it was quite direct. But when you grow up and you take in a lot more of the world now, than when you’re younger, you understand where it’s coming from and that naivety towards peace is actually quite beautiful.
Speaking of time, in another way, which was the hardest song to put together and took the longest amount of time, and which came together the fastest, and was the easiest and most natural?
Florian: The easiest was ‘The State of the World’ or the Old Norse song, which both ended up as fantastic songs that I’m proud of. But The processes with those were different than we’ve had before, and harder. They also came at a time in the writing process where we were all worn out, and I guess you can hear that in the end product, they’re kind of desperate songs.
Jogeir: I agree.
Katrine: It’s also because I hid my original outlook on what I wanted the song to sound like because I don’t want to immediately tell people what they should create. I want to leave some space open for them to interpret the song in their own way. But then I also felt like it was moving towards a different direction than what felt true to the songwriting. So, after four months or something like that, I had to be honest and say ‘Actually I was kind of picturing more of a ballad’, and they were like ‘oh, so no techno and no chuggy riffs, okay.’
So there was a techno version?!
Katrine: Maybe not for this album!
Jogeir: It has been electronic, it has been Meshuggahfied, it has been pop rock. I’m happy we ended up with the version of the arrangement that we did.
Florian: I would say that both of those were playgrounds for ideas that later ended up on the album. Some of the reason it took time was because these were early singles that we had to finish up before we finished the entire album so everyone had a multitude of ideas, and I felt since we focused on one track, all the ideas came into one track and it was hard to take that away and just put it on the other songs because we just started to focus on one track. That maybe made the process of making the rest of the album easier. Hopefully.
You mentioned ‘Bardaginn’, that was one of the standout tracks for me, the way the tension builds is really foreboding. What is the inspiration behind it?
Katrine: I don’t want to say too much about what some songs are about, because I really leave some interpretation from our viewers, but I feel like ‘State of the World’ and ‘Bardaginn’ go hand in hand even though there are polar opposites of each other, to the point where it’s a bit schizophrenic, but they are next to each other on the album for a reason. One song is about peace and the other is a lot more aggressive and totally giving into very primal instincts. I’m like ‘Charge!’. Bardaginn is a very thinking ‘Charge!’ kind of song, but not necessarily in a good light.
Jogeir: And we have, I’ll say this for some of the songs, there are some ‘deep issues’ and some personal issues and current affairs and all that. And we do try very hard not to be preachy about these things and also not to be too direct because, listening to music, you find your own interpretation, your own meaning in things, and that can be more important than whatever the artist actually originally intended. Even if you mishear some lyrics or misinterpret, I’d say leave it to the listener to make up their own mind what the song lyric means to them.
Florian: In fact, sometimes you make something and you don’t really know what it’s about yourself. You’re navigating through your own subconscious and you have this feeling and you try to put the right words and the right sort of atmosphere or the arrangement to it. I reached a different spotlight or place in the end than what I saw in the beginning. If you have this preconception that I know what I’m going to create when you’re creating it, I think you’re not open enough to your own ideas, in a way, to what the music is telling you.
You performed at ArcTangent and a few other festivals. How did the new songs feel live? Did they have a new life or was it very much like the studio version?
Katrine: We’ve performed some songs from the album live but not everything. We’ve not performed ‘The State of the World’ yet, but we have performed ‘Bardaginn’, ‘Are You Ready?’ and ‘Segla’ from the album. It feels like a huge relief to be able to perform new stuff.
Florian: But it doesn’t feel like the studio versions necessarily and, and for some of these songs, we’ve never played them together. They were written in the studio. So we’re now, before this upcoming tour, we’re in the process of figuring out how we make live versions of these songs. How do we play them? And how are we going to arrange it, so that it works in a live setting?
Katrine: We can do it! [laughs] Because we are songwriters and producers and composers, then we want to be able to really express ourselves with the with technology and software. And so it’s just up to us to then afterwards become good performers and transcribe it for the live setting.
Florian: If the song is screaming for string arrangements, then you put a string arrangement in there and then you will figure out later how to do it live and if the song is good enough, and well enough written too, then it doesn’t matter if the strings are there or not.
Jogeir: We have to upgrade our live set up for this tour coming up now and – yes – it’s a very fun challenge! I would say that we write a song, we arrange it and we don’t think too much about how we’re going to do it live, and it’s a fun challenge to see how we are going to do it, but it’s going to be a different beast – for some of the songs it’s gonna be quite different but still true to the feeling of the original idea, I hope.
Your music is an intriguing mix of folk and heavier elements, and progressive rock. Did you always intend to sound that way or did it come about just by accident, by evolving?
Katrine: I don’t particularly find it necessary or interesting to stick to a certain genre. I don’t see it as relevant. I know that it makes the marketing of the band difficult in terms of like ‘What are we?’ and how will a journalist market us? How will a festival know where to put us? But I just feel like if the music is good, the rest will speak for itself. The most important thing is that we all connect with the music that we’ve made. Obviously there are elements that are more prominent than others, for example the folk influences always sneak their way in there. I’m very inspired by the female voice and vocal techniques from all over the world, so I obviously try to sneak that in into whatever genre it is.
Jogeir: It’s going to sound like us anyway. We have learned how to play with each other and what are different strengths and weaknesses are. So, you guys’ guitar playing is going to sound like you guys, even if it has like full-on distortion or if it’s this sparkly clean shimmering thing. So, of course, we could go too far but we haven’t yet, I think, but it still ends up sounding like us which is very comforting to me that we can do these different genres and use different elements, but in the end, I always have faith that we will end up sounding like us.
Katrine: I also use myself as an example because when I listen to an album and all the songs are similar, even if you are the greatest singer on Earth, I become a little bit tired after the fifth song. So it’s important for me that the storytelling and the journey, and also the arrangement, can be able to carry the listener throughout until the end.
Do the heavier elements tend to come from particular people?
Florian: They do and they do not. I think Oskar and myself, we’re the ones who are more into metal. But for example, when Jogeir and Katrine bring in their heavy ideas they sound just as heavy, but very different. So there’s a metal heaviness coming from Oskar and myself and then there’s a more grandiose big rock heaviness from Jogeir and Katrine.
Katrine: I was very into metal when I was a teenager but I’ve definitely evolved since then, into folk and I do like some elements of pop. There are elements of the structure of our songs that can sometimes be very pop, but then the arrangements can be a bit rock and folk influenced. My songwriting is folk influenced in the way I use my voice, but the structure is pop and the arrangement as well.
Florian: It can also be not as well thought out as that, just like I borrowed an 8-string, and it’s like ‘what can we do with this? This is the coolest guitar ever’. I actually couldn’t figure out a riff but I knew what I wanted, I need something heavy and chuggy, and and then I asked Oskar ‘You write it!’ [all laugh]
What would each of you say each of your strengths are? I won’t ask about weaknesses, we’ll leave that!
Katrine: That’s the interesting part! People want to know about our weaknesses! [Laughs] You should start with Oskar if you want to talk about people’s strengths.
Oskar: My strength? A strength? Maybe that I don’t care anything about genres, about styles. I think of stuff like sounds different sounds and colours.
And textures …
Oskar: Yeah, and then there’s nothing wrong, it’s just different. Every person is a different type, as the music should be. Yeah, this is my philosophy. The one strength is that I have practised drums for a while.
When did you start playing drums?
Oskar: When was eleven. Before that I played trumpet.
Katrine: Oskar is also really good at being sort of the middleman because it’s not just about the instruments. It’s also, how does the group work together? How is the group dynamic? So Oskar’s good at being the peacemaker, but also having the final words, sometimes, after having sat in silence and just analysed what the three of us are arguing over. Oskar: Looking for another strength here, it’s silence. I’m very good at silence!
Interview originally published in Norway Rock Magazine 2024 Issue #3 – SUBSCRIBE HERE