But it s actually close to Cook Islands. I think maybe we saw the word Cook Islands somewhere. And then we included it s getting cold on this island. Magnus Zingmark: Yeah. It s when you ve grown up and you re in a relationship and you re bored and remember how easy it was when you were 17 and you were in love and there were no complications.
You didn t really have to deal with life. Magnus Zingmark: Yeah, we are trying different techniques. We are control freaks and want to control everything but sometimes it s good to try to loosen up a bit and see what happens. But in the end it s us sitting there with all of the recorded files, then we do as we please. It s the same thing with the solos. We record maybe four or five takes and then we cut it. Oscar Simonsson: The thing is that Koop is something that happens between us.
You know, we spend hours talking and spend a lot of time together in the studio, not only making music but talking and exchanging ideas. MV: We haven t touched upon your sort of alter egos as perfomers because you re going to be made up tonight and your going to be entering a performance space. Magnus Zingmark: Well, I guess we started wearing makeup this time around because it s fun for us.
And no-one has thrown eggs yet, so it seems to be working. It s just a fun thing and especially in the jazz world, which is very conservative and macho.
It just comments to that, I guess. I m curious how people react. Do they embrace you or do they say this is different. Oscar Simonsson: It s different if you play in front of people who knows about Koop, about what Koop is.
But if you just see Koop on stage you see a lot of musicians. Magnus Zingmark: But, then again, in the Hague everybody s stoned so it doesn t really matter laughter.
Magnus Zingmark: There some songs that have a rhythm and especially also the marimba gives the Caribbean feel. And that s the Caribbean angle on the album and the music. Koop Islands is also songs that are very much from the 60s like A Different You.
And the last song, Whenever There s You could be a French jazz number from the 80s. And we like it, we have a lot of different ingredients. Oscar Simonsson: We want people that don t know how it s made and about Koop, when you hear Koop for the first time you should be very confused.
What time is it from? How is it made? Is it live or is it electronic? We like that confusion. Magnus Zingmark: Also, back in Sweden, the last album has been very successful. It s made it to the charts. And it s fun to, because the history of jazz is so filled with good song writing, not only instrumental it s good to be able to maybe lead with teenagers that may be into pop to say, we like this, this is good. Magnus Zingmark: Yeah, of course but that s the flip side. But it s nice to get comments that people are discovering jazz because of us.
Even if it s just Stan Getz playing bossa, they re buying something. Oscar Simonsson: If we have any mission at all, it s really satisfying when we get pretty much a jazz tune on MTV with a video. That means you ve passed it on to a new generation. MV: Well, going back to the nu jazz category, that did introduce a lot of people to jazz or to embracing music that bridges categories.
Magnus Zingmark: When we were growing up there were a lot of people who when acid jazz came along as a concept or a label became very hip people and then discovered soul jazz and then Jazz from the 60s and 50s. So, that s the way it goes. MV: Absolutely, it can t be put into a museum to be preserved.
In any case, Koop is jazz. Jazz for the chillout and downtempo set, and for those who want to ease into the genre for the first time. They occasionally evoke the sound of the acid-jazz movement from a decade back, but they are not from that school of funky grooves and Hammond organs. Koop achieves a more sophisticated and luxurious soundscape, and are taking Swedish jazz into new and exciting directions of exotic rhythms, less improv and programming that breathes.
It's less about having that "clean" sound that purists demand. The two jazzheads bring influences like Boogie Down Productions , Public Enemy and Detroit techno to the collaborative table, though it is the influences of jazz giants like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane that on the whole, shape their musical direction.
Colin Benders: het geluk van de modulaire synthesizer. Oscar Simonsson, one half of Koop, is clear on one thing: halfway through the past decade, jazz became hip again, and bucketloads of bands started making music heavily influenced by jazz - "jazzy" music. And that's something he and his musical partner Magnus Zingmark do not do. So please, mister music journo, don't go down that road.
Actually, even this music journo hears it: this is sample-based music that sounds like live music rather than, err, sample-based music. Is this what modern jazz should sound like? You know, mixing jazz with rock and stuff. It didn't work. Then in the nineties, the 'jazzy' stuff started to become fashionable. But we, as jazzheads, wanted to make jazz. We love the swing rhythm, which is the essence of jazz in our opinion. I don't know if what we do is the way jazz 'should' sound like, it's just our way of making jazz.
As they were both gutted by the egocentric attitude of many musicians and the loss of the true spirit of the early days of jazz, they became friends and decided to join forces "in helping Sweden regain that momentum it's lacked ever since the sixties", as their biography states so eloquently. Quite a task. Actually we upset some Swedish jazz journalists who thought we were taking the piss. And that's exactly the kind of reaction we had expected.
Most people in the jazz world have their heads up there where the sun never shines, you know what I mean? They are so fixated on technique and 'the way it used to be' that they have forgotten what it's all about: the music, the freedom in music.
When you see a jazz band playing, you get all those guys doing minute drum solos, or bass solos, or whatever kind of solos. And the crowd is going 'o wow, this guy can play, man!
0コメント