Kashmir - Entering the No Balance Palace
Hedonism, depravity, turpitude, these are some words that describe my ideal Saturday night. They also have been used to describe the major themes of Danish band, Kashmir’s new album No Balance Palace. The album is the latest in a raft of intriguing offerings from the wilds of Scandinavia, and is no exception. Wrought with haunting tracks filled with evocative lyrics and musical depth beyond your basic pop fare, No Balance Palace could surely be the album to truly break Kashmir in Australia. Coinciding with the release of their new album down under, Kashmir are soon to tread our shores with Something for Kate on their upcoming national tour. The Dwarf recently caught up with keyboardist/guitarist Henrik Lindstrand over a telephone line and a strong coffee to explore the world of Kashmir and to elucidate the surreptitious experience of making No Balance Palace.
The Dwarf: What was the process of making No Balance Palace
HL: We were fortunate enough to work with Tony Visconti who co-produced the album with us. That was a big thing for us as a band because we are very impressed with the things he had done before, particularly in the 70’s, such as David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy. We had most of the songs written in our own studio, then we went to a bigger studio to record it and we had five weeks together with Tony. We then took the mixing to his studio in New York. We released it last October in Europe, so it has been out for a while.
The Dwarf: David Bowie and Lou Reed feature on the album, how did that come about?
HL: Well, they didn’t come in pairs (laughs).David Bowie was the first thing that happened for us. When we were recording with Tony in Copenhagen… actually let me go back. Kasper was in New York to hang out and get some inspiration about two years ago. At that point we had agreed on working with Tony. Kasper met with him in New York. Tony invited Kasper to a concert one evening, and the thing is, Tony was supposed to go with his girlfriend but she couldn’t go, so he asked Kasper to join him. They ended up in this triple VIP balcony where there was a small table with four chairs and two of them were occupied. Bowie was sitting there with his personal assistant. Tony and Kasper were supposed to sit at this table, because Bowie had given Tony the tickets. At first, Bowie thought that Kasper was his Tony’s friend from Tai Chi, but Tony explained and luckily for Kasper, Bowie knew about us and had our two latest albums and he was quite glad for our music. He knew our website and every thing, so it was a sort of mind blowing experience for him to sit there with one of the biggest…
The Dwarf: Yeah, it's Bowie!
HL: Yeah, it's fucking Bowie you know! So after the concert Kasper got a ride in his town-car and they got the opportunity to talk for about 15-20 minutes and just before he got out of the car Bowie said ‘next time I come to Copenhagen we should do something’ and Kasper was like ‘yeah ok, whatever, maybe he doesn’t mean that’. When we were recording a few months later, we had this track ‘The Cynic’ which we thought would be perfect with Bowie singing the second verse. So we sent an mp3 of it from Tony’s computer and wrote a note that we really would be happy if he had a few moments to sing on this track. We were waiting for four or five days and then he replied with a very short ‘I would have no problem with doing that’. We were like dancing in our studio but at the same time we couldn’t tell anyone because it was a secret and we didn’t want to tell anyone about it until it was done..
The Dwarf: So you couldn’t tell anyone why you were smiling so much?
HL: No! It was like ‘who are these guys why are they dancing so much?!’ We recorded it New York shortly after the Copenhagen session. Then while mixing the album in July last year, we had this short sequence of freeform music we had recorded but we didn’t really know what to do with it. We felt it was a good idea to have it on the album and thought we should have some spoken word on it. It was Tony who suggested that we should ask Lou Reed to do it, because they know each other well, actually from Tai Chi. So we asked him if he wanted to pop by the studio and we sent him this poem that Kasper wrote about a big building that he would pass everyday on his way to the studio. This dark, empty, building that was kind of scary so he wrote this poem with some fantasies about what was going on in there and it was perfect to have Lou Reeds voice on it. We were so glad to have both of the biggest heroes of the band on the album.
The Dwarf: What about your heroes? Which artists influence you?
HL: I listen to a wide variety of music and I have a big collection of Miles Davis’ music. He has that interesting ability to bring young musicians into his work and to bring new flavours into the music from the 50s until the 80s he was a leading jazz musician. I think that’s very impressive and that gives me a lot of inspiration when I listen to his music. But other influences right now are Sonic Youth and The Flaming Lips… two bands that I really admire because they have strong integrity. They walk their own way and create their own universe, that’s what we try to do in the band as well, to not follow any particular way that is popular at the moment or anything that you hear on the radio, we try to listen to our own hearts and what we feel is right for us as a band
The Dwarf: So what has been your highlight of being a member of Kashmir?
HL: We have had a lot of great moments in this band, a lot of great concerts throughout the years. We played Roskilde this summer at two in the morning in a big tent and it was sort of magical. I think it was one of the best moments for us as a band. It is a special feeling to play that late when everyone is pretty wasted but at the same time they look forward to hearing the music to get blown away or something.
The Dwarf: You have a lot of power in that situation.
HL: Yeah, that’s right and I think it’s a very thin line between those things because I heard from people who went to that concert, there were about 30 000 people watching, and some people said that it was one of their most intense moments they had ever had and other people said it was crap because the sound was bad. Its very individual how you absorb music especially if you are very tired or maybe you only have one shoe left.
The Dwarf: Kashmir are about to join Something for Kate on their national tour, how did that come to be?
HL: We know them from the last time we came to Australia. We met them at the David Bowie concert actually, where they were playing support. We talked to them backstage and Paul (Dempsey) was aware of our album and he liked it. We hung out with them a couple of nights in Melbourne, and when they came to Europe after that we played a quite big show in Copenhagen and they played support for us. They knew that we might have the opportunity to play with them in Australia, so now that they have this tour coming up, we tried to make it happen, especially with the release of the album its perfect.
Catch Kashmir when they support Something For Kate nationally this September and enter The Dwarf’s Kashmir competition for your chance to win a copy of ‘No Balance Palace’
