Interview with Harald Björk

Hello Harald nice to meet you, tell us something about yourself!

Well, I’ve been producing music since the last years in high school (Gymnasium).It started out with me and a couple of friends started sending eachother tracks that we’ve made. One of my friends got signed and started to release his stuff And that motivated me to continue producing and develope my own style.

What is your musical background & what prompted you to start with electronic music?

I started listening to Rock and Indiepop and everything between and that evaluated into a period of hiphop and then back to indie again. I listen to a lot of indie more than I listen to Electronic music in fact. of course I listened to the electronic music aswell but it was mostly related to my gigs as a DJ.

Did you start to perform as a DJ or did you start with your Live performance?

I started out as a DJ before I started to Live produce but i knew a couple of guys who performed Live sets so i started to figure out a way of doing it, a way that suited me and felt right. To figure out how to do it in a good way is the thing that has taken up most of of the time out of my creativity.

How would you categorize your music in order to describe it to someone not familiar to your work?

I'd like to call it 'indie pop techno' or pop influenced techno. In my opinion, the genre Techno is often misinterpreted. My style is more laid back/defensive Techno. When You say just Techno to the common Swede they starts to think about completely different sounds.

Tell us the story about Kranglan Broadcast and why you decided to start your own label. What are your future goals with it?

I chose to start my own business because I had been working with other labels. both bigger labels such as Traumschallplatten and some smaller labels which were just recently started. Its kind of like Traumschallplatten is very straight to business, they really want to sell what they give to the people and they only give the people what they think will sell more.

At the end of the day it becomes very depressive and tough to work with such a label.

I started working for another label where the people really were passionate with the music, allthough not everything that they did had a selling issue. Instead they dropped tunes but without any good PR. Also I didnt like their graphic stuff, thats about when I decided to start my own label as I already had the contacts from that smalltime label then. But the point for me was to get some help from graphic designers and do it in a way that I felt was more nice, plus I got to drop my own music. I wanted to have more things to decide about, I felt that I had friends whom I could send my songs too and get better feedback. Considering that I’d get better feedback is because that my friends were into the same kind of music. I knew that the response would be relevant and not like the german labels who'd probably say something sounding like "Use this Bassline and these clubs will play the song alot because it works there". It can also be both positive and negative suff, but the response given will always be sensible. This gives me more instead of working for guys that I dont really think understands why we're doing music!

How do you work when you’re in the studio?

The ideas usually comes pretty spontainously on days when I don’t have anything important to do, days when i feel free to do whatever comes into my mind. I usually start with a sound and starts to mess it up and just play around with it for a while until i find something worth building a track around. The sound becomes a little part of the track. After I’ve found that interesting sound I starts to build the whole track around it. All of the tracks I’ve done so far has started as some kind of sound experiment.

What about your Live performances, How do you work?

Some of the Machines I use is the same as in the studio and it’s a pretty classic setup.

When I performs i use a Drum machine a Bass Synthesizer and a Multi Synth. I don’ play any Clavier Live so I’ve got my Lead Loops and Vocals sampled in Ableton.

What is your future plans with your music and your label?

It’s Hopefully to get more time to create more music and release more stuff. But right now is my aim locked at an Album this autumn and follow up with remixes on the tracks and some EP releases because I’ve got a lot of unreleased stuff that I’ve just have to give that final thouch.

To close this up, Tell us about what inspires you to produce electronic music?

I don’t know really, maybe because it was the first Genre I started to do whole productions in and after that it has felt right to continue and develope my own style and way of working that I feel satisfied and confident with. It feels like that all the things that affects me no matter what kind of music or whatever. It always turns up in my head as a basic idea that sounds like a start to a track in my head. I´ve created my own way of working and process ideas from all kinds of elements and put it together hand in hand with my musical creativity.

Thank You Wery Much For The Interview Harald!

Interview: Johan Andersson

Photos: Jon Eldeklint

P.s. Be kind to the English and the grammar. I hope it's ok. And Thanks to Everyone who helped me to translate!

//Homie J