What happens when you mix a Swedish-based Grammy award-winning production team with a Williamsburg multi-instrumentalist who happens to be a Downtown Records in-house producer? Probably close to what you’d expect. Now that the Swedes, better known as Bloodyshy & Avant, have put off winning Grammy’s for Brittney Spears tracks, they’ve teamed with Brooklyn’s Andrew Wyatt to give you Miike Snow.
The result is a debut full-length that satiates the electro and indie-pop palette with an amalgam of well-crafted songwriting and over-the-top production. While one track may enlist hook after hook, another blends synths pumping hard with vamped soft and easy going piano chords – all being tied together by a pop sensibility with no shortage of melodic vocals. They’ve also snuck in the studio trickery you’d expect from such a talented group of producers.
The group met while working on a project that’d fallen through the cracks and decided to keep writing. We met up to speak briefly about the band:
You all are producers, two of three are Bloodshy & Avant, who’ve worked with Madonna, Kellis, Jennifer Lopez, and have won a Grammy for Brittney Spear’s “Toxic”. How exactly did this Miike Snow project come about?
[Andrew Wyatt] We met because we were both working in the music business doing production and stuff for other people. A friend of ours brought us together in mind to work on a project that actually ended up not going anywhere. So, we then just stayed in touch. We had a really good personal chemistry and then I had this other band that they heard on Myspace, and they reached out and said do you want to do a band together and I said all right.
So right now is Miike Snow more of a priority than producing? Are you guys fully committed to Miike Snow?
[Pontus Winnberg ] Absolutely, we don’t do anything other than this. We haven’t done anything else is almost a year.
[Andrew] I have a frozen yogurt business but that’s another interview.
The record seems to draw from a lot of influences but still maintains originality. What are some of your influences in creating this record?
[Andrew] That’s a fun question to answer. I’m from New York and I’ve lived in Williamsburg for about five years and kind of came up there in the early 2000s and there was a lot of psyche-folk music going on, the beginnings of what is mainstream now. I’ve produced bands like Dragons of Zynth. That had an influence to some extent. That and the New York City ethos, so definitely put Lou Reed in there as an influence as well.
When you’re writing these songs as Miike Snow, are the roles divided at all as far as one person focusing on an aspect of the song, say lyrically, while the others on different parts?
[Pontus Winnberg] We don’t have any rules for that actually. We basically do everything together in the studio. Sometimes it’s more divided and sometimes not.
Do you have future plans for writing another record, focusing on touring or what?
[Christian Karlsson ] This is what we want to do
[Pontus Winnberg] I think we will probably start writing something soon, probably within a couple of months.
Do you have plans for remixes or anything to be released?
[Pontus Winnberg] We have one that we did that hasn’t been releases yet for Kings of Leon
[Christian Karlsson ] We have some other remixes coming out and we’ll probably keep doing that as Miike Snow.
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