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Sep 07, 2009 Web Exclusive By Laura Studarus

After a two-year absence, The Legends (aka Johan Angergård) has returned with Over and Over, his fourth full-length under the moniker. Featuring the single “Seconds Away”—affectionately dubbed “the noisiest pop single to ever come out of Sweden”—the album effortlessly interjects aggressive distortion and white noise into traditional electro-indie pop structures. Under the Radar caught up Angergård via email to discuss multitasking, distortion, and making music in emotionally trying times.

Between playing with The Acid House Kings and Club 8, performing as The Legends, and running Labrador Records, how do you stay creatively focused?

Johan Angergård: It’s fairly easy actually. I do Labrador in the daytime and record and write songs in the nighttime, and I tend to focus on one band at the time. I never want to think of making music as a career, so I think it’s nice to both have the label and to make music myself. I’ve never understood bands who do 100 shows and 300 interviews a year though. I think music is too important to be treated as a regular job.

When did the writing process for Over and Over begin in relationship to the rest of your projects? What does your writing process entail?

I wrote the first song, “Seconds Away,” in March 2008. Before that I was actually writing some songs for the upcoming Acid House Kings album and I also started on a couple of Club 8 songs. As my existence turned pretty shitty around that time, I needed to do something different for a while. There’s a particular type of harmony that can be found in the noise; it’s like all these layers of distortion, feedback, and fuzz have a life of their own and that’s very easy to sink into and lose yourself in. Not to mention that some songs on the album are just so noisy that it makes it impossible to think of anything else if played loud enough. It’s medicine really.

Many songs on Over and Over, particularly “Monday to Saturday,” almost feel like they could have had a home with one of your other projects. When writing a song, how do you decide where it will find a home?

Karolina from Club 8 doesn’t really like hit songs, so Club 8 usually turns out pretty melancholic. Acid House Kings is sort of the opposite, as my brother (who sings there) is really fond of catchy choruses and stuff like that. So there’s a bit of a natural divide between the two bands. Also, for Acid House Kings I write together with my brother. The Legends is a bit of an experimental playhouse, as it’s only me and I can change the sound completely from album to album. The songs themselves, if they were performed on an acoustic guitar or something boring like that, probably aren’t that super different from band to band, but the production differs a lot. I couldn’t do the noise I do on Over and Over with any other band; neither could I do an all-electronic album as I did with Facts and Figures. “Monday to Saturday” was the last song I wrote for the album and that’s probably why it turned out to be the happiest sounding song.

What do you think makes a compelling pop song? How often do you feel like you hit that mark?

It could be anything really. Anything that makes it emotional. I throw away quite a lot of songs, but every time I write a song that’s good enough to put on a record, I feel I hit that mark. When I come home from the studio and want to listen to the new song 50 times in a row—I know it’s good. That’s the best part of making music. I find those moments very rewarding.

How do the songs on Over and Over fall in relationship to your other albums?

It’s a very special album for me and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the one I listen to the most in 10 years time. It’s a more emotional album than the others. Not that the other albums were impersonal in any way—of course not. They’re stories about my life, too, and it’s actually interesting for me to listen to the old albums because they make me remember what my life was like during those periods. But Over and Over has a very openhearted, personal, and strong expression, I think.

When writing a song, do you take into consideration how it will be fleshed out when preformed live?

No, not at all. Albums and recordings are way more important to me than performing live and they don’t need to sound good live, i.e. they don’t have to be performed live at all.

There’s a gradual tonal shift over the course of Over and Over from the “noisiest pop single to ever come out of Sweden,” to songs with a rather cheery undertones. Since the press release mentions that the material is pulled from in your own “angst-driven life,” I have to ask: Are you currently experiencing a similar return to joy? Do you feel like you’ll look at this record as an auditory diary of a tough time, or simply the result of a tough emotional catalyst?

On a personal level, the recording process of Over and Over started in a dark, black hole and I had a need to distract me for myself. I needed noise. So the first songs I wrote for the album were blasts of distortion and feedback. It really helps and it cleans the mind. Then, as things got better, the music started to let in more light and bear signs of hope—so the album became more varied that I had initially thought. It’s a good thing though. Partly because it means my life doesn’t suck so bad anymore, but also because it made the album a lot more interesting, I think.

One of the first songs written for the record was about “the wonders of Tryptizol.” What are your other non-musical influences?

It’s just my own life that inspires me.

Your press release also mentions that when writing the new album you “had a desperate urge to distract me from myself.” When not making records, what bands or records do you turn to for distraction?

The Smiths, Leonard Cohen, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Mobb Deep, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Johan Hedberg, [ingenting], The Mary Onettes, lots of African music from the ’70s, Giberto Gil, Red House Painters, N.W.A., Anders Persson och Carl Smith, Pet Shop Boys, Camera Obscura, The Neon Judgement, Erasure, Clan of Xymox, and lots and lots more. It depends on which mood I’m in—and perhaps what mood I want to be in. For example: I find a lot of music from Mali and Brazil from the ’70s very uplifting, while Anders Persson and Carl Smith’s song “Tony Montana” has a more comforting effect on me…and N.W.A. or Mobb Deep are obviously the best if you want to feel tough and cool.

If you could build your dream Legends tour or mini-festival, what other bands would you bring along for the ride?

Morrissey, The Mary Onettes, Pet Shop Boys, and Little Big Adventure would make a nice mix I think!

The Legends was first introduced as a nine-person orchestra. Now with web 2.0 as such a ubiquitous force in our lives (I’m currently staring at the list of Labrador-related Twitter accounts) it seems unlikely that any band could keep up such a cover story. How has the Internet affected the way you interact with fans? Have you found it to be a blessing or curse?

Hmm…this reminds me I haven’t logged in to my MySpace page for a month or so. I’m probably a bit too lazy for these things. I really like when people send me kind messages. But I don’t spend much time on Twitter, MySpace, and so on. I prefer writing songs and recording before writing about writing songs and recording.

You mentioned you were “…obsessed with death when I was 13.” With the death of Michael Jackson, it seems like the world is suddenly obsessed with the idea of legacy. How do you want to be remembered after your death? How do you think you’ll be remembered?

I’d like to answer that I don’t care at all how people remember me. As I’ll be dead it will make no difference at all to me anyway. But as I’ve told a bunch people that any money I might leave behind should be spent promoting my death and my music, saying that wouldn’t really ring true… I’d probably like to be remembered as someone who made people’s lives a little better by bringing [them] the comfort of honest and emotional pop songs.

(www.myspace.com/heknowsthesun)