BLØSH Interview

Oslo-based electro-pop duo, BLØSH, will release their debut album ‘Keep Breathing, Keep Bleeding’ on 12th February. With significant support from the music industry and success with the happy, foot-tapping single ‘Give It Away’, we had a chat with Teresa and Jørgen to find out more.

Hi Teresa, Jorgen, how are you today? Whereabouts are you at the moment?
We are very well thanks! We are in Oslo just finishing up the last details of the album release. It’s getting close now!

Are you excited?
Mega excited and absolutely terrified! We can’t wait to get it out though; it’s been caged long enough!

Will you be touring the album? Any exciting locations on the horizon?
We will be touring, absolutely. For now we only have shows booked in Norway, but we will be setting up shows in England and the rest of Europe within 2016 so hopefully we can reach as many places as possible.

Is there a story behind the title? It sounds quite sinister in comparison with your sound?
Sometimes our sound and our lyrics don’t necessarily reflect the same emotions, and this you’ll hear on the album. We’ve had a couple of tough last years both as a band and personally and this album is a product of that time. Though ‘Keep Bleeding, Keep Breathing’ might sound sinister, to us the album title is actually quite positive. To us it means “shit things do happen, but you’re gonna be ok”.

Speaking of which, you have such a summery sound; where do you get your inspiration and influences?
Being 50% Spanish probably helps on the summery vibes [laughs]. Lately we’ve been listening a lot to Oh Land, Dirty Projectors, The DØ, Tame Impala & St Vincent, but also some good old guys like the Beatles, Paul Simon, the late David Bowie and Rolling Stones.

What does it mean to you to get support from Wonderland, DIY and Steve Lamacq?
Well, first of all it gives us the chance to show our music to a much wider audience, something we couldn’t even dream of before their support came along. Also, it makes it so much easier to put in the hours and work when you see those glimpses of recognition from magazines and people that you’ve been admiring for years, so it really means a lot to us!

Where does the name BLØSH hail from?
BLØSH is really just phonetically how you would pronounce blush with a Norwegian accent. ‘Blush’ was taken by a good handful of bands already so we had to put our own spin on it, and since Jørgen actually has an “ø” in his name and we’re based in Norway, we thought the name had just the right amount of hipster pretentiousness to it.

What’s the music scene like in Oslo? There seems to be so much talent coming out of there right now.
The Oslo scene is great; it’s been very inspiring for us! The good thing about Oslo is that the city is not too big so you end up meeting most of these great artists, maybe playing together at some point or even doing collaborations like it happened with Siri Nilsen and Hanne Kolstø for our album! We feel very honoured to have such great artists that we admire so much on our debut record… lucky us!

Do you feel being from two different cultures has an effect on your sound?
Definitely! But the fact that we met in England gave us a “neutral” ground to blend the two and also find new inspiration together.

You started working together when you met in Liverpool. Do the songs you made then greatly differ from your sound now?
They do differ a lot. When we were in Liverpool we were studying and trying to figure what we wanted to do musically, so we went through a lot of folk, world, singer songwriter styles that we don’t really identify with anymore. Though that process of finding your sound probably never ends, we definitely found something special in 2015 with our EP ‘Keep Your Tongue’ and that has continued on the album, which we are very proud of.

Describing your music as Pop, do you in any way fear that “Pop” sounds too mainstream, what so many people judge as having a lesser quality?
We’ve never been scared of the word Pop. It’s such a big word and contains so many bands and references that to us it’s just a way of saying you write music that focuses on songs with a melodic and chordal structure. To us the Beatles, Tame Impala and Katy Perry are all pop. Also, there are so many genres and styles right now, it really doesn’t make any sense trying to define the music too specifically. No matter what label you put on a band you won’t know anything about them until you hear them. You could probably call us Indie Alternative Electro Dream Pop, but is that really gonna help you?

So true! Speaking of which, we love the mesh of guitars put with Teresa’s dreamy vocals, do you both write the music and lyrics?
Ah, thanks! It’s very much a collaborative process all the way. We both write music and lyrics and give feedback on each other’s ideas along the way, so really there isn’t one song on the album where we both haven’t been involved in all the stages. Usually there is some kind of melodic or chordal idea that kicks off the process, ether on the cello, guitar or piano.

Listen to BLØSH on Soundcloud and buy their debut album, ‘Keep Bleeding, Keep Breathing’ on 12th February.