INTERVIEW: Laufey Soffia – Kælan Mikla

Until this summer, very few people in the UK would have heard of KÆLAN MIKLA, but the Icelandic trio caught the attention of one Robert Smith from THE CURE, landed two spots supporting the goth-rockers and have since grown immeasurably, their brand of darkwave and post-punk resonating in a 2018 world. Recently, Distorted Sound spoke to vocalist Laufey Soffia about the day they got the call from Smith, latest record Nótt eftir nótt and why, sometimes, releasing your own music on cassette is the way forward.

Laufey, thank you very much for joining me today. To start off, your home nation of Iceland is growing in stature as far as the alternative music scene is concerned; a number of UK citizens love your Secret Solstice festival and there are bands such as SOLSTAFIR, SKALMOLD and yourselves making an impact, but can you give us an idea of what it’s like to start a band on a small island in the North Sea?

Laufey: There’s actually a big music scene over here. There are so many bands per capita that it’s not really hard to start a band and there’s a lot of stuff going on, but it’s different when you try to go out of the country with the music. That said, the internet helps a lot in that situation.

So taking into account that it must have been quite easy to gain a fanbase in your home country, even with the internet how’s it been getting your music out to a wider audience?

Laufey: Well, we haven’t really tried to do anything – we just put it on the internet and things happened, so I’m not sure how to answer this question! It’s been easy I guess but then we’ve not really been trying!

So, you just put it on the internet and it began to gather momentum?

Laufey: Yeah, somehow we just got lucky and it ended up reaching out from there!

Well, there’s lucky, and then there’s being handpicked by Robert Smith of THE CURE to play Meltdown Festival and open for the band at Hyde Park over this summer – what was your reaction when he contacted you initially?

Laufey: It was very strange, we first got an email and we thought it was a scam because it just seemed too weird. Initially we weren’t going to answer it but we decided to forward it to our booking manager and he verified that it was real so I think that’s when the shock really started to set in but it was amazing and an honour to get the opportunity.

I can imagine. How did the shows go?

Laufey: Very well, it was great to play in both the Southbank Centre and Hyde Park. There were a lot of people to see us and we were very pleased at how the shows went.

When you played at the Southbank Centre, did you play in the Royal Festival Hall?

Laufey: We did, it’s a very beautiful, 2,500 seater venue and I really enjoyed playing it.

You also played at Roadburn Festival this year, which caters for a very different audience to the ones at Meltdown and Hyde Park. Did you adapt your live performance to suit the crowd change?

Laufey: Not at all, we just do ‘us’, it’s weird and maybe it doesn’t always fit in with where we’re playing but we just do it anyway. People liked it though and it was probably fun for Roadburn to have something so different than the other acts that play there usually because we’re not really a rock band.

I’d agree with that; you have a very distinct sound that mixes the likes of darkwave, post-rock and post-punk among others. Who were your main influences when you got the band together?

Laufey: Well this is the hardest question for us, always because we all listen to very different music. We’re bringing a variety of different inspirations to this and I think that’s maybe the reason why our sound has ended up sounding as obscure as it does, in a good way, we all have different tastes in music so there’s not really one thing that we can mention. That said, all of us do like THE CURE so that added an extra layer of fun when we were contacted by Robert. For the band itself, we were never really trained to be anything, we were just doing what we like, playing around with things here and there and that led to the sound we have today.

Why did you take the decision to sing in your mother tongue?

Laufey: We used to be more of a poetry outfit and I think you can always express yourself better in your own language. I think you have more creativity if you’re writing and singing in your own language and it’s so typical nowadays for bands to sing in English, it shouldn’t really matter.

Have you’ve found it harder to get an outreach as a band because you’ve not sung in English?

Laufey: That’s what people would think but it’s not like that. Usually people don’t mind at all that we’re singing in another language which is amazing because you really wouldn’t think that, but they say that they can feel the expression in the music; even though they don’t understand the words, they can still feel what the song’s about – and they’re usually right!

It sound like, for those individuals, the vocals become another instrument on the top, so it enhances appreciation of the musical aspects more because they’re not concentrating on what’s being said. Would you agree with this?

Laufey: Definitely. We try to make sure the music and the vocals are completely equal because the lyrics are often very poetic and complicated but we try to do the same with the music so everyone can feel it.

On the subject of the lyrics, they’re very fantastical on [latest album] Nótt eftir nótt, drawing heavily on the dark arts, mythical lands and fairies. What inspired you to write like this?

Laufey: We’d been travelling so much that we all got extreme homesickness, especially with Solveig [Kristjánsdóttir, the band’s synth player] living abroad in Germany, so we tried to write something that was very unique to Iceland, connected with the countries folklore and old tales of witches, witchcraft and stuff like that.

I would imagine as well, with Solveig living in Germany, it’s a logistical nightmare trying to meet up at the right places to record and write?

Laufey: It is, but we talk a lot over the internet and we don’t really rehearse any more [laughs]; we play so many shows together that it’s taken the place of our rehearsing! That said, we recorded Nótt eftir nótt in Iceland because we felt it was right to record at home and it was nice to do that; Solveig came over for a month or so.

Has her experiences of living in Germany fed into your music at all, given that the scene is probably quite different to the one you have at home?

Laufey: Not at all, although we do have quite a good fanbase in Germany. It’s interesting, we tour a lot around there, Poland and the eastern European countries and there’s a lot more in the way of ‘goth’ music that goes on there than at home. We’re probably the only band in Iceland doing this sort of music! I don’t know though, it’s very strange.

Do you have any personal favourite tracks on the album and if so, why?

Laufey: One of my favourites has to be Nornalagið because it’s the only song we all sing on and unlike a lot of our songs, it’s not particularly sad; it’s about crazy witches fucking shit up – the lyrics sound scary and evil but it’s actually a very nice song about friendship, and one that in a way symbolises the relationship between the three of us in the band; we ARE the witches.

How did your collaboration with BANG GANG on the title track come about?

Laufey: Actually, I just bumped into him one day and whilst we were talking he said “I was actually going to talk to you about making music together” and I was really eager to do it because he’s been one of my favourite Icelandic musicians since I was small and we’d not really done any collaborating up to that point. It was perfect though, he’s very similar to us in terms of musical influences and he wanted to make something extremely dark. It was amazing to work with him: he’s a very talented individual and a lovely person.

We’re going to shoot a video for the song too – it’s a secret as to what the video will entail, but it’s not the only one we’re currently working on at the moment and eventually we’d like to have a music video for every song on the album. We’re working on four of them at the moment and the rest will follow and that will all be coming out soon.

I look forward to watching them all! Both your self-titled album (released in 2016) and Nótt eftir nótt are heavily rooted in darkwave with a lot of electronics, but middle record Mánadans strips a lot of that away and has a definite post rock vibe. Was there a reason for that change in style?

Laufey: Actually, Mánadans were our first recordings ever, we just couldn’t release them until much later on because we couldn’t get signed as a band with them!! We started off really raw and then the electronics came in later on, which led to us getting signed off our self-titled album instead on a darkwave label in Greece called Fabrika. However, we still had the Mánadans recordings and I got really frustrated that we couldn’t release it, so I personally released it on 200 cassettes and they sold out right away! Then, we got in touch with [current label] Artoffact Records earlier in the year and they wanted to reissue Mánadans so we went with that. I’m really pleased of course because it’s finally out there, but I can see why that would be confusing to people who are discovering us for the first time – we just didn’t have the money or the opportunity back in 2013/2014 to release it then.

Why did you move from Fabrika to Artoffact Records?

Laufey: Honestly, it just made more sense – they’d released Mánadans and we were still in contact with them. But we still love Fabrika and we played their festival in Berlin this weekend just gone. We’re still friends with them and everything, but it just made sense to take this record to Artoffact this time.

That’s understandable. Another factor in all of this is that darkwave is really coming into its own as a genre. We’re seeing a lot of bands playing sold-out shows at sizeable venues, particularly in the UK. Given that you’ve taken that sound and made it bleaker and harsher, do you think you could find yourselves as a torch bearer and leading this movement from the front?

Laufey: I mean, that would be nice [laughs]. To be honest, we’ve not really thought about it because we’ve never put ourselves in a specific genre at all. We tend to change styles so much and we’ve never tried to be a ‘goth’ band or a ‘post punk’ band or whatever. We just started doing something, people started categorising us and we just accepted whatever we were put in! It would be nice to see the scene grow bigger though, for sure.

Do you find it frustrating that you’re categorised into different genres?

Laufey: Not frustrating as such but we definitely don’t want to be stuck in some niche group; we just want to make music for anyone and everyone who wants to listen. Sometimes you get categorised into a small, underground scene and I think it should be more open to broaden opportunities.

From that response, therefore, does being associated with different genres mean you get the opportunity to tour with bands from all of those areas?

Laufey: It does. I don’t want to be stuck with one kind of thing and neither do the others. We want to be able to tour with different bands and play to different audiences because what we are doing is more of a performance than a gig – it’s not just about the songs and how the audience reacts, it’s leans a lot towards theatre and performance arts as well. We’re all in character when we play live and there are certain ritualistic aspects during the shows that we would love to show to everyone, so the more avenues that open up, the better.

That’s a very interesting take – to play devil’s advocate therefore, because there is an element of theatre involved, is there a danger that you could over-rehearse and end up going through the motions each night, or does it change so regularly that it’s always fresh?

Laufey: It definitely changes a bit from night to night. We always have a couple of songs that begin and finish the shows that have become almost like opening and closing ceremonies and we have several weird props that we’ll use throughout the time we have on stage, but a lot does depend on the crowd and the venue which way went take it, whether we decide to make it more beautiful or more scary.

Ah okay, and that way it would make sense for people to come and see you on multiple occasions on tour because they’ll never get the same show twice?

Laufey: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’d probably play the same songs but maybe in a different way.

That shows a real versatility and it’s really cool you have that ability; it’ll really give you an edge over other bands. If we were to relate this to Nornalagið as we discussed earlier, for example, would you then perform it live in a way that people understand you’re having fun?

Laufey: Definitely, I’m pretty sure we’re all dancing and laughing when we’re performing this live, it’s a lot of fun to play and we can take it in a number of different directions depending on the mood.

What’s the plan for the rest of 2018 and the first part of next year then? I imagine a lot of it is going to be spent on the music videos you mentioned!

Laufey: Yep, now that we’ve finished our shows for 2018 we’re concentrating on them before going out on the road again in the first part of next year. We’ve just come off the road with KING DUDE which went really well, it was seventeen dates in a row and it was fun to work with a very different musician and band so we had a very different crowd to play in front of; I would actually say our best gig was in London! [laughs]

Well that’s lovely to hear! To finish off then, what’s the ultimate dream? Where would you like to see KÆLAN MIKLA get to?

Laufey: I think we just want to keep on going and growing as we have. We’ve been so lucky recently with what we’ve and we want to maintain that momentum. We’re really happy with where we are and if we can keep this up, that would be amazing. We couldn’t ask for anything more, so we’ll see where it takes us!

That’s a really good way to look at it! Laufey, thank you very much for speaking to me today and we will see you back on these shores next year, hopefully!

Laufey: It was lovely to speak to you as well, we should be back in the UK in February so we’ll see you all then!

Nótt eftir nótt is out now via Artoffact Records.

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