EB: In addition to being in ShamRain, you also are a very talented graphic designer (utudesign.net). You’ve designed cd covers and websites for music artists. Which is your preferred way of communicating an emotion – through visual art or music?
KALLE: First of all, thank you for your kind words. It depends which mood I am in, but if I would have to choose between music and visual art, I’d choose music. It’s more important for me. I also love to create visual beauty, no doubt about that. Actually, usually when I create some visual art it is influenced by music. I get into some mood by music and then want to visualize it.
EB: Have you ever done work in film? Would you ever consider producing or directing a video?
KALLE: I’ve done some school projects in film, but nothing special yet. But I’ve started planning to make my long time dream true and do a short film. I hope I have enough time and inspiration to get into it and make it true during next year. If not next year, then later. We’ve also planned to make a ShamRain video by ourselves.
EB: I think the ethereal quality and dark atmosphere of ShamRain’s music is best left for the listener to imagine what the songs are about, as opposed to being influenced by video. Is there any particular song you would actually love to see in a video version?
KALLE: Hard to say. I don’t have anything in mind now, but it would be interesting. Maybe some slow, ethereal track like ‘The Missing Pieces’ or ‘Into Distance’. But I think it’d be a very hard job for the director and writer since what comes to visualizing our music, we would be extremely demanding.
EB: Tell us a little about the process of writing and choosing which songs you will record? After not working exclusively on ShamRain material, how do you decide what is best to keep and best to shelve? What influences the flow the album will take?
KALLE: Most of the time a song comes from a melody or a rhythm playing in my head, and then I just try to lay it down the best I can. It usually is quite different from the original idea, but it doesn’t matter. It might be better. Then it builds up track by track. It’s easy these days, when you can make demos with your own computer at home. We record all the tracks and then see which end up to be recorded for the album. The decision of what to keep and what to shelve comes out by itself. You just somehow know.
EB: When you are ready to take the band out for gigs, what determines the songs you will play live? Does rehearsal weed out things you think may not go over well in a club environment; friends have opinions?
KALLE: The songs we play live are usually a bit more up-tempo. Of course, there are slow songs too to spice it up. But we just choose the songs we think are the most suitable for the gig situation. Friends don’t have much opinions, hehe. It all is quite clear already when the album is under making which songs will end up in a live set and which won’t.
