Niklas Åström (EF)

You are not well known band in Croatia, so please give me a brief history of how the band started?
It all started in 2003 when Niklas ran into Thomas on a bar in our current hometown Göteborg, Sweden. That night we decided to start playing music together with his friends Mikael and Kalle and we met already the day after again to try it out. And suddenly things went pretty quick. Started to record our songs, started to tour Europe and had a great time. 10 years have now passed and we have released 4 full length studio albums, a few EPs and made about 20 tours in Europe, Russia and Asia.

Why do you name yourself EF? Is there any meaning in those letters?
EF is just two letters pronounced E F (with a small break in between). There's no deep philosophical meaning with and means pretty much nothing - but still EVERYTHING to us. It's our baby and our biggest project in life. It keeps us busy most days of the week.

Describe Your Music in 4 words?
Emotions, explosions, energy, eternal
Your new studio album is now out. Are there any differences in sound compared to previous works?
Yes I believe so. Since Erik and Emanuel joined the EF constellation about 1,5 years ago we started to work/write our music in a different way. Instead of just jamming and improvise we actually talk and discuss how the music should sound and how the songs should turn out.
There's also more influences from the pop-music and the orchestral arrangements are much more well written. We've also started to sing a lot more. But I believe you can still hear that it's EF you're listening to.

To me Yield, Heart, Yield! is one of the best songs this year so far. How did you chose the name of the song?
Naming songs for us is always a mess. It's a epic battle between five grown up men that sits and brainstorm for hours, days, weeks… Everyone have different opinions and feelings about the song and that of course affect how they think the song should be called. But the name itself is inspired by a poem of Karin Boye.



What do you do when you're not with the band?
All of us try to make a living back home in Sweden with normal day jobs. Someone is working with e-shops, someone is carpenter and someone sell sport stuff. For now there's not enough money in post-rock business to finance our everyday life.

Which do you prefer, CD, vinyl or mp3?
Vinyl! I have nothing against MP3 or streaming music business - I think that have helped EF a lot to reach out to people all over the world. Without internet and digital channels we'd probably NOT be able to tour Croatia, Asia and Russia… But if I buy something I'd definitely go for vinyl. The feeling to hold it in your hands, the massive artwork and the sound (if it's properly mixed) cannot be beaten by any other media format.

What do you listen when you're at home, on tour, right now…?
At home we all listen to a lot of different music. We're into hip hop, post metal, indie rock, classical. And I also think this affect our way of writing music. We've so many different sources of inspiration. But recently I have enjoyed the new albums of Kanye West, Daft Punk and Volcano Choir.

/strong>Tell me something I would never guess about you?
Hm, I don't know what that could be… But I guess a lot of people believe that people that play the kind of arty music that we do are also kind of arty and "boring" people. That we're taking ourselves to much serious - but EFs kind of the opposite. We love to get out, talk to people and dance. We dislike the whole "Hang out in the backstage and get drunk/high alone"-idea that many bands are going for… And we also love swimming! Every tour we try to find this adventure swim places with slides and stuff.

Thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our readers?
We want to thank you ALL for taking time to read this and hopefully you come out to the show at KSET. We'd love to meet you all, have a beer, a few laughs and hopefully dance ;) See you soon!

pedja // 14/10/2013