Album cover
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8kHz Mono: music in green and black
8kHz Mono has just released their debut album and has gained a lot of attention in their homeland Sweden.
8kHz Mono started out in the end of 2001. Before that main motor Krister Hessling had been working on an unnamed one-man project.
- I were mainly doing techno/trance/house music back then. But started to grow tired of it and wanted to try out something new. Gradually the music became more and more synth/EBM.
As time went on the project took a more serious shape, a self release demo CD were produced, called Monolog E.P. and by then the other members of the band came into the picture.
- The release party for the Monolog E.P. was our first live performance and I persuaded Henrik Andersson and Joachim Andersson to help me playing keyboards on stage. After that they have become permanent members of the band and are now getting more and more involved in the creation of the music.
The album Monochromator is the first release from Swedish label Progress Productions who has also signed bands like Hype, Mr. Jones Machine and Sturm Café.
How did you come into contact with the label?
- I got in touch with Torny Gottberg who runs the label after a show in Stockholm. I wondered if I could buy some records with his band Project-X, and in the end I walked away with a bunch of cd’s and a t-shirt, all for free. As a thank I did send him our demo CD. When we later started to send the demo to different record labels I got a mail from him saying, “now I got two!” It turned out that he was working at Energy records back then. So one thing led to another… Being on Progress is only positive as I see it. The company is working very close to the artists and we feel that we are very supported from them. Their slogan is “Progress through co-operation” and that is very true.
The Monocromator album contains influences from trance and techno as well as bands such as Frontline Assembly.
- Of course there are trance and techno elements in our music since that kind of electronic music is close to my heart. But if we are about to name-drop influence or inspirational sources there are also Kraftwerk, Devo, Astral Projection and Front 242, says Krister Hessling.
Joachim Andersson mentions Clock DVA, Lassigue Bendthaus, Ultravox, Lustmord and others and Henrik Andersson finish it off by adding old Evils Toy and Suicide Commando.
Through out the whole album there are vocoder effects on the vocals, how comes that?
- When I did the first demo songs with 8kHz Mono I sat and experimented with a lot of different effects on the vocals, says Krister. I liked the vocoder effect when it was mixed with the unprocessed vocal. It did the sound more “electronic”. We liked the sound and have used it more or less on all the songs. I know there are people that thinks it sounds bad when we use it so much but I don’t know if it is so much worse than to distort the voice straight thru the album as many bands do. We are working to make more variations in the future though.
After releasing their debut album, the plans for the future are to get out and play live as much as possible.
- It is fun to get out and play at different clubs and to meet people. Hopefully there will be some gigs outside of Sweden in the beginning of next year. We will also be working on some remixes and of course write new material.
So far the band has already played a bunch of gigs throughout Sweden to promote the album and the reactions have been good from the crowds.
- It is always exciting to play for an audience that hasn’t heard us before, and to see how they react. Before when we were playing live and people asked if they could buy a record it felt very silly to have to tell them no, good that we have one now.
/Ulf Lundblad
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