Lister

By Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen
Translation by Tobias Bindslet

Motorpsycho has drawn from a wide variety of genres through their career spanning almost 20 years. It is therefore interesting to look at the background of these shifts. Sæther begins by talking about the artistic base for the band:

”Motorpsycho started in 1989 and at that time, there was a certain interest in a certain type of music. We’ve just been honest about what we liked ourselves. When you have, for example, made a hard rock album, you might not be as interested in creating a similar album the next time. You can look at this as a reflection over the types of music we’ve been interested in through time. Actually, it’s a process that comes very naturally to us; we try not to have a career plan for everything, but have everything based on how we feel we want it to end up.”

”But still, it’s clear that the members influence the music. The newest band member has his primary musical roots in metal, which means that our sound grows harder, but at the same time there’s also something that makes the music more loose, in the sense that our compositions become more free.”

Focus on the entirety

Motorpsycho works with wide ranging and extensive songs, and they themselves believe this to relate to a certain state of mind, for both audience and band: “That specific state of mind you feel, when you have to concentrate on long compositions, is completely unique. It depends on a certain immersion.”

”At the concerts it’s about more than song, applause, song, applause. To a greater extent a different ‘drama’ grows from it all – it becomes a whole. In this way a concert doesn’t consist of many songs, but becomes one long song.”

”We have a large repertoire to draw from at our concerts, so because of this, the concerts are strongly influenced by where we feel like going tonight, so it changes from concert to concert and stays fresh, inspired and focused. Here, we try to display the uniqueness by composing new songs every night. There’s a greater chance, that it will seem magical, if you don’t quite know, where it’s all going.”

”Our starting point is also in the rock/pop tradition, where the song is a starting point from where we build our composition. For example, a song that lasts five minutes on an album can easily last for 25 minutes live.” And bringing the audience into a trance was, according to Motorpsycho , exactly the strategy for their concert at Odeon Stage, Friday night.