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Hailing from Copenhagen, Alcoholic Faith Mission are an indie electronica five-piece. The band's name is less of a nod to over-indulgence, and more of an ironic corruption of 'Apostolic Faith Mission', a phrase spotted on a sign in Brooklyn by the band's founding members Thorben Seiero Jensen and Sune Solund. Their debut album, 'Misery Loves Company', was released in 2006 and saw the transformation of the band from a varied collective with a core two, into the solid line-up that makes AFM today. The band have just released their third LP, 'Let This Be The Last Night We Care', on PonyRec. As they prepare for a number of UK dates, including a show at The Barfly in London on 27 Mar, we caught up with Thorben to find out more.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
There's a lot of winter in Denmark. Lots of time to spend indoors and wade around in one's wounds. Do that enough and you'll need a place to put all that pain and perspective. I think, as a band, we have different reasons for making music but it's definitely a path to solace for all of us. A canvas on which to paint away all the boogiemen hiding in our heads. Alcoholic Faith Mission was born out of an attempted departure from music, rather than a sought arrival into it. Sune and I had been in a few bands together but it wasn't until we decided to walk away from making music that we found the momentum to embark on this Alcoholic Faith Mission.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Our first two albums involved a lot of dogma. Musical straightjackets, we affectionately call them. They're obstructions we'd restrict our creative process with to see where it led us and what sort sound that landed us in. For the new album, we took all the restraints away with an idea that it would slingshot us into something that kept the basic character of our music but took it to a new place. This album also marks the embrace of Kristine into our creative midst. Her voice and her ideas, particularly the synthesizer explorations, have had a significant influence on our evolution into 'Let This Be The Last Night We Care'.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It varies really. Sometimes one of us shows up to a session with a new idea or a new riff or a new verse. Sometimes we're fooling around and land on something unexpected that inspires an exploration. As mentioned, we used to make rules for the music like there'd have to be booze and candlelight and a cramped space and no percussion. It defined us in 'Misery Loves Company'. For [second album] '421 Wythe Avenue' we locked ourselves up in a furnished Brooklyn flat for three months and created every track with our guitars and stuff we found in the flat. We really try to create a space or an atmosphere and see what grows out of there, that's about the extent of the premeditation.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
I think each of us have different influences but it's difficult not to mention Port O' Brian, Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, The Antlers and the Danish band, Efterklang. Especially since those bands come up frequently when people talk about our sound. For my part, I've recently rediscovered Talk Talk, always been a disciple of Kozelek's work on the Red House Painters, love The Cocteau Twins and so many others.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
We'd probably give them a shot of Gammel Dansk (Schnaps) with a beer chaser and a cigarette tell them to turn it up and stare out of a window in Copenhagen on a rainy Tuesday in April. Seriously though, with any luck, the music speaks for itself and doesn't require an explanation or an introduction.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Ambitions? We'd like to keep being able to do this. Perhaps our biggest single goal is to keep up with the inspiration, to always find the fire that moves us to make the music. To keep creating and to keep finding audiences that feel our music. Other than that, it's pretty standard stuff like fame, money, sex and power.
published march 2010
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