Mew : The Frengers, Sensory Spaces, and their Sixth Album

A day before Mew kicked their show in Jakarta for Guinness Arthur’s Day, we caught up with the band and had a chance to interview them. We discussed a lot about the band’s influences, the friendship that they have been building with their fans, and the band even gave us some spoiler of their upcoming album.

Q: Are you guys currently working on a sixth album?

Bo :  Yes

Q: Can you tell us about it?

Bo : We have been writing for a while now and have recorded most of our new record and it’s taking a while to make it as it always does. We have a very professional and slow approach to it working with. The writing is a slow process but it’s turning out to be a really great record so it’s really exciting, actually, but we’re like 2/3 of the way. We’ll go back to Copenhagen and try to finish the record.

Q: Can you give us any spoiler about the album?

Jonas : Hmm, well, there’s a finished—there are a few tidbits of—not the final, but the song structures of the materials in the app we put out. We can hear a little bit of stuff and some of that is not even very honorific but it sounds good.

Bo :  The tracks make the—uh—the every song a—you know—personality like its own person and—uh—  they’re very different from—very different from each other, but they still fit in the family, but I think that it’s the most different tunes we’ve had, but also probably some of the best, so yeah. Like, it sounds like another world, you know?

Q: Is there any song that you wrote after a dream? Because I heard that “The Zookeeper’s Boy” you wrote after you had a dream?

Jonas : I think that dreams, it’s not so literal, it’s not like you have a dream and then you write it down, that’s not the secret for it. In the beginning I thought about making a children’s song, teaching children about different animals. That’s kind of the idea, and then it turned into something completely different. But I think there was a dream involved in the sort of mood of it, kind of.

Q: Bo once said that music experience is not music only. So, I mean, that world that is created on its own. So what’s the world you got created for yourself and your fans in your album?

Jonas : I guess it’s where we feel at home at this point in our lives. Like if you move into a different house each time and then you might have a different–feel at home in a different environment and so you change the environment to go with how you feel, or what you’re into at that point, so it’s kind of sort of a diary about where we are at this point in our lives.

Bo : But it’s also kind of like having to go from to show one thing to reference the other thing and that way you create a whole network of things that you have connected with and meaning and you do that with some kind of purpose and not random and you put yourself into everything that you have, because you are in control of it and that means it gets personal and connected that way, so I think that’s a way of doing it.

Q: What did inspire you in making music?

Silas : Nowadays it’s more…I don’t know if there’s that much that we’re really attached to…different things…but we still have that love for that old…but it’s not the same anymore. Cannot accept that what I want then is what is now. A lot of song’s genres…we all listen to different genres, not all fit into one of them. So that could be technical music, African music, hip hop or whatever.

Jonas : So I think after a year of us working together our friendship really begins. It takes time to, you know, find your own world, in a way, your own musical world.

Bo : You have a lot to express when you’re a kid and you have so many feelings all the time and having a way to come out with that in a different way than talking, because, when you’re a teenager, nobody really listens to each other. Trying to find someone you can really– So it’s a great way to express things that you can’t really do in another way. It felt very much like that when you were younger. When you’re older it feels a little bit different but the same thing.

Q: It turns out that you guys have been making a quite friendship with your fans. Especially in Indonesia, you contributed as the final judge of their competition. So, how did it actually start?

Jonas :I think we obviously took notice a long time ago, and will meet different groups or people are doing these things. And I think nowadays, because we’re doing things on our own now, we’re kind of taking charge of our own career. The role of the label has changed a lot, and we kind of feel like we want to be in control of things ourselves. Your fans are really the people who create the career for you, they are the people you depend on. Not the label but the fans are the people who buy records and come to your show. Usually the people who can both understand you your view of the world are the people you can connect with on some level. So we always find it very enjoyable to communicate with them. So it’s a big honor that they do lots of stuff.

Q: You’ve left your major label right? You left Sony. So has this affected your creative process?

Bo : Not so much the creative process. You got someone from the label, checking in, you know, you play, and they go “All right, well, I’m not sure about that.” But that makes us feel like, yeah, we’re doing the right thing, but more like, you know, we spend a lot of energy and time trying to create these albums and then if you feel like you hand them to somebody who doesn’t really care about it, sometimes, you know, some play a song and care about it, some play a song and didn’t care about it. And then you go out, and it feels wrong to have somebody who doesn’t really care about your music handle it, you just care about it a lot. So in that way, just getting rid of those people who are just there to like, rip your heart out, but didn’t really care about it, that’s really nice. So something like that. I think that also hard work starts if people who work with you connect to what you do, so that’s something we wanted to do more. So we’re setting up a whole way of instruction on independent labels and working knowledge and we’ll see how that works out.

Q: You launched an application called ‘Sensory Spaces’, what motivated you to create it?

Jonas : We wanted to present music in a different way. We wanted to try to be inventive about how to present it. We wanted people to have a little look inside the process, and we booked these guys you know who are, like a classic design hi-fi company, who know your brand and they are very creative guys and we had the same views and we wanted them to be a part of that.

Q: You launched you song ‘Making Friends’ through this application. Is there any relation between the song and the application, or “Sensory Spaces” is pretty much a medium for you to launch your song, or is there any concept between “Sensory Spaces” with the album and the song?

Jonas : I think the song is just to show some music from the new record and yeah, I mean, I don’t know.

Bo :The color on the record is going to be black and white. We’re looking for different ways to do creative—working together with other people creatively, and getting our music out in different ways, you know. You gotta do all these things. It’s interesting, but it’s also a pain in the ass. You have to do all these things to get your music out there but you just want to make music. Everybody’s got to listen to it. But the fact is that you have to do all these things to promote it and stuff. And stuff like that that’s based on something that’s like creative or inventive shows through, and that’s fun. You can do a google and like take your shirt off and that’s awesome [laughs] That’s kind of fun too, but it’s not really us.

Q: What is the one thing that you’ve been enjoying about the trip you’re on? Was there any trip you’ve taken that inspired you to write a song? I heard that “Hawaii” –

Bo : We’ve never been there

Q: Yeah, you had a dream about Hawaii? You made the music.

Jonas : No, we’re going to. But I think Hawaii is just, where we’re from, is just paradise. Your troubles, your problems

Bo: That’s why we came up with, used that name. It already has this surreal, sort of quasi- I don’t know, I just remember Hawaii from that movie [laughs]

Q: According to your local fans, I’ve heard that Jonas would like to see a gamelan show and try experiencing the local culture in Jakarta. What makes you want to hop on the local stuffs?

Jonas : Yeah, I’d love to see that and also I’m not sure where in Indonesia that has Kecak dance? I’d love to see that as well. But I think we’re all fascinated with different kinds of music and really intense and fast and so much information at once.

Q: You’ll do this when you’re here?

Jonas : don’t know if there’ll be time. I’m really hoping we’ll do a longer tour so we can take a few days off.

 Photo : Ainur Rasyidah

Ps : Thanks to Ann (MewXInfo), Peggy (Cita Cinta), Hardy (Jurnallica), and Renny (Concertholic) for making this interview happen!