noisedfisk

An Interview with Hanna Fahl

2005.12.16

— Music

I do like Swedes. A couple of days ago, I posted a short article about the P3 Pop radio show and sent an email to Hanna Fahl to ask if she would accept to answer a few questions for Noisedfisk. A few hours later, I got her (rather funny, witty and interesting) answers. Things are so simple and straight forward with Swedes…

You’re very young and yet you already have a great show on the swedish radio. How did it happen?
Oh, but I’m not all that young! I’m 27, and I started doing the show almost four years ago. When I got the job, I think they were actively looking for someone quite young, since most of the hosts for the other genre shows at my station (there’s also P3 Rock, Soul, Hip Hop, etc) are middle aged men. I hadn’t done any radio at all before I started doing P3 Pop, actually. I was fresh out of my journalism studies at the university, and had been writing a bit of music criticism before, but P3 Pop is my first real job, believe it or not.

Do you think that you’re recognised, now, as some kind of “Swedish John Peel” (without the beard, and without the “Fahl sessions”)?
Haha, not really… Like I said, there are many other great dj:s at my station, and I think maybe a couple of them have a more “Peel-like” reputation. However, I do get some recognition, or rather, the show does: it’s the ONLY ether media in Sweden that plays this kind of music, and P3 Pop does have some really dedicated fans.

I have done “Fahl sessions”! I didn’t officially call them that, but me and my friends would joke about that title! I used to have bands play three songs live in the studio, and then do an interview in between. But unfortunately my job deal has changed a bit, and I don’t have access to the studios enough to do that kind of thing anymore. That’s a shame!

You say on the website that you’ve been into indie-pop for a long time, that your best pop moment was the Benno festival with My Favorite, Fosca, Montgolfier Brothers and Trembling Blue Stars in Sweden. What was so special then?
I have been into indie pop for a long time, yes! My brother first introduced me to bands like The Go-Betweens and The Smiths and Prefab Sprout when I was just ten or eleven. When I was a teenager I was really into the brit pop scene, haha! And then I started discovering more obscure stuff. The past year or so I’ve been more and more interested in house music and dance music and electronic stuff. (I’ve also done a show called P3 Klubb – P3 Club – that plays house/techno/electronica).

The Benno festival was just… perfect. It’s probably one of my fondest memories of all time! It was really tiny, maybe 300 people. The setting was beautiful, it was right by a small lake. Everyone went swimming in the middle of the night. There were no security guard, no fences, nothing. The band line-up was amazing – imagine having all those bands, Fosca, My Favorite, Trembling Blue Stars, Montgolfier Brothers, playing right in the middle of the forest, at sunset. The Embassy, one of my favorite Swedish bands, did their first-ever gig there as well. Oh, great memories!

Have you ever played in a band yourself?
I have played in bands, yes! I started my first band when I was fifteen. We made three cassette ep:s that we copied on our parents’ tape recorders and then we painted each cover by hand with felt tip pens. Since then I’ve been in a couple of other bands. Right now I’m in a group called Kissing Mirrors, and that’s something I’m really excited about! We’ve just recorded our first single, and it will be released early next year.

It seems indiepop has always been pretty popular in Sweden since the 1990s (or even before). And something special is happening in Swedish Pop at the moment, with great bands signed on Labrador, or the success of the Concretes… Which swedish bands do you think are the most promising? What kind of advice could you give to our readers who feel like discovering new bands from Sweden?
The Swedish indie scene really had some sort of peak in the very early 2000s. There was a fanzine called Benno (the same people who did the festival mentioned above) in the late 90s/early 00s, that I think kickstarted a whole movement here. They wrote about music in a way that no-one here was used to. And so suddenly there were all these kids who grew up listening to obscure twee from the 80s! 15-year-olds starting bands, making their own fanzines, etc. I don’t think indie pop was ever that big here during the 80s, there was a punk scene of course, but the pop side of it never really broke through back then.

Swedish pop now is… well, I don’t know, the guitar pop scene doesn’t seem so exciting to me at the moment. Most of the bands just sound the same. There are lots of good bands – but most of them have been trying to make something new, something original, bringing in new sounds and new concepts. Swedish bands I love right now are (among others): The Embassy, The Radio Dept., Differnet, The Flow Flux Clan, Nicolas Makelberge, Friday Bridge, Testbild!. Foreign readers should check out a label called Friendly Noise , that’s the best Swedish label in my opinion. They have a great compilation with Swedish bands coming out soon. I also think that Service have some good bands, and Bedroom and Hybris .

What about the other scandinavian countries? Do you think there is something special happening as well in Norway, in Denmark or in Finland?
Norway has a pretty good pop/electronica scene nowadays. People like Annie, Röyksopp, Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, Kings Of Convenience. But Denmark and Finland don’t seem to have the same tradition of pop music. It’s weird, I don’t know why. I do try to find stuff from the nordic countries. I think the last Finnish band I played on the show was Ultrasport. The last Danish… hm, probably Junior Senior.

Okay, I won’t take too much of your time. Do you have any plans for the next few months/years?
I’m looking forward to next year with P3 Pop! I haven’t had any real vacation for two years now, so I’ll probably try to take some time off early next year and make some new plans for the show. I’m spending Christmas in Norway with my sister’s family. She had a new baby a few months ago that I haven’t seen yet, so that’ll be fun. As for New Year, I don’t know! Any invitations to parties are very welcome, haha. My plans for next year? I’ll try to make it to New York for a vacation, I’ve never been there. I’ll hopefully be playing a lot with Kissing Mirrors and if all goes well we’ll be making an album. I’ll be trying to spend some more time with my friends (some of which I see way too rarely!). And hopefully I’ll be blown away by some new marvellous bands!

Tack så mycket, Hanna! Puss och Kram!

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