News Track By Track: Club 8 - Above The City

Back in March, DIY co-premiered a song, ‘Stop Taking My Time’, from Club 8’s new album. Now we’re a little closer to the full-length’s release, we’ve another preview - this time for the full album; check it out below.

The Swedish duo - Johan Angergård and Karolina Komstedt - will release ‘Above The City’ on 20th May through Labrador. Their eighth effort, it follows on from 2010’s ‘The People’s Record’ and features Russian field recordings, children’s choirs and samples from erotic movies and construction sites.

Johan has also put together a track by track run through for us, to give listeners a little more insight.

1. Kill Kill Kill
The first song of the album and the first song I wrote for the album.
We stole the song title from McCarthy. As much as I love them the topic of ‘Kill Kill Kill Kill’ was pretty stupid. They were offended by animal right activists caring more about animals than people. Which, of course, is not true. I believe most would be happy if animals were treated as animals in opposite to dead, manufactured products.
I did quite a lot of field recording before we started working on the album. For this one I recorded sounds from a construction house close to where I live.

2. Stop Taking My Time
I’ve loved the sound of analogue, monophonic synthesisers ever since I heard Depeche Mode’s ‘Speak & Spell’ when I was a kid. That album is still one of the best, and best produced, albums of all times to me.
On ‘Stop Taking My Time’ I wanted to combine these type of sounds with something more futuristic, massive and, yes, even danceable.

3. You Could Be Anybody
I’m pretty sure I was under the influence as something as unfashionable as late 00s minimal techno when I produced this. Some days I think I think it’s one of the best songs we’ve recorded. There’s something really direct and melancholic about the atmosphere, the melody and the lyrical theme. It sounds so direct and electronic and has some sort of techno-like build and still sounds very fragile and emotional.

4. Run
Karolina usually hates to sing loud. And loud in her world is, well, not loud at all. I had to force her to do it on the chorus - and the chorus of ‘Stop taking my time’ for that matter - and I think it sounds absolutely amazing. Everyone should do things they don’t like to do. Always.
ps. The drum fill in the middle of the chorus is one of my favourite things on the album. It’s worth a track of its own really.

5. Interlude
As much as I dislike anxious bands who adopt to what other bands do and don’t do I must admit my initial thought of using this as an intro to the album was scrapped when I noticed how many bands had started their album with an intro in the last six months or so.
A Club 8 fan from Russia called Vladimir has site with field recordings called www.oontz.ru. He helped us with this one.

6. Hot Sun
If you check my Last.fm account I have 20.000 plays of King Tubby tracks from the last two years. So it’s perhaps no surprise something dub-like ended up on ‘Above The City’. It, of course, doesn’t sound like King Tubby though. It just sounds like us. In a dub mood. I would love to hear a whole album like this by us.

7. A Small Piece Of Heaven
There are few things as boring as bands singing about their life in a band. Especially when it’s done by self-obsessed, whining kind of people. This is probably the closest I’ve come to writing a song about being in a band. I wrote it once when we came home from a tour in Asia. Meeting friendly people, playing music, staying at hotels, swimming in pools and in the sea, and best of all, spending time with people you like (= the band). What’s there not to like about it? No wonder ‘A Small Piece Of Heaven’; like a travel commercial.

8. I’m Not Gonna Grow Old
I imagine this will be the official summer smash hit of 2013. Disco strings, oh-oh-ohs, retrofunk, glossy dance drums and a slight death wish. Does it get any more summer, any more hit?

9. Interlude #2
A little whistling passage to give you a nice intro to ‘Into Air’.

10. Into Air
I’ve said I recorded this whole album with Cubase VST 5.0 from 1999 or something. It’s just almost true. This song was 90% done in Logic. Hmm… this was a bit of nerd info I guess.
Anyway, I love the airy coldness of this song. It connects well with the lyrics.

11. Instrumental
Karolina says this song gives her angst. That must be a good thing.

12. Travel
It’s basically just an organ and Karolina’s voice and yet it sounds quite spooky in an understated kind of way.

13. Less Than Love
It’s funny how this ended up sounding a little bit like Frida’s ‘Something Going On; produced by Phil Collins. ‘Something Going On’ was the first album I ever bought. Around the time of recording this I hadn’t heard it in years and years though. But after it was finished I happened to hear it in a shop or something like that and it struck me that it’s not only a brilliant song, it’s a little bit like ‘Less Than Love’.
The children choirs on this song was the very last thing we did on the album and I think it finishes off the song perfectly.

14. Straight As An Arrow
I initially used a sample / loop from Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. Then someone pointed out that it might not be the smartest thing to use the world’s most famous drum intro unless you have millions of dollars to clear the sample. So I recorded something similar myself. Or me and Thomas Eberger, our mastering engineer, actually. He did a swelling bass drum at his place. Then I recorded when I hit on wood in a basement, construction material, clapped hands in a stairway and so on. In the end I think it turned out really well. Possibly better than Queen’s drums actually.
For a short time I wanted to start the album with this song. The reason that didn’t happen is partly because it’s Karolina’s least favourite song on the album and partly because we started our previous album with ‘Western Hospitality’, which also had a ‘whoo-oh-oh’ kind of chorus. And we definitely don’t want to repeat ourselves.



Club 8’s new album ‘Above The City’ will be released on 20th May via Labrador.