Photos and Interview by Harlen Cruz
September 24, 2022
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY
NOTD performed at Bowery Ballroom, prior to performing their sold-out show, we had a chance to ask Samuel and Tobi of NOTD a few questions.
How are you feeling, what's going through your mind now that you two are able to complete a tour since the last one ended early due to COVID?
Samuel: We are mostly super excited to do this tour, hopefully we can finish this tour. Also, we are like of course nervous tonight, tonight is a special night, it’s our biggest show here in New York.
To add on, you also have a few sold out shows including tonight, did the early end to last year’s tour allow you to bring out new music for tonight’s show, can you share about what you two were up to during the time in between the early end and the start of a new tour?
Tobi: It’s an unreal thought that I feel like we’re not kids anymore, coming from Sweden, coming from the forests and now we are in the states playing sold out shows on our show, on our own headlines, it’s so unreal from playing instruments in our dorm rooms at school and now we’re here, it’s just so unreal. And with the new EP too, to get to play those songs live, I mean we just released the like 2 weeks ago. It’s going to be so fun to see the reactions live.
You also had a shift in the style of your music, you guys initially did dance music and remixes, and now you do pop, it’s been well received by your fans. Can you share more about what inspired this change in your music? What were some of the challenges you faced?
Samuel: So what inspired a change was like when we started playing our songs live, we kind of felt like we wanted to have those live elements in our songs, we both played instruments from the beginning. So definitely, when we played our songs, we felt like there should be live instruments to become more like a live band. And as for the challenges, it was kind of hard to keep our original sound but still make the change possible. It was hard to not go away from the old sound completely.
Tobi: Yeah, I agree. We’ve both been playing instruments since you were 7 and I was 14 when I first picked up the guitar. That change was kind of natural but still a bit hard to keep the NOTD sound, but still make something new from it, but it’s been fun.
Samuel: It’s been a lot of fun.
This EP consists of a lot of collaborations, what is your approach when you blend different musician styles with your own, can you share more about the collaboration process?
Tobi: So like first of all, when we made the songs for this EP with this new sound, we reached out to a lot of our favorite artists such as The Band CAMINO, Hastings, Quinn XCII, Kiiara, Kenzie. We sent our disc back and forth, we never met them in real life before making these songs, so a lot of times, we made them over the internet, and then we prepared for shows. We rehearsed so much, we made a whole set in Stockholm and rehearsed for a long time, put a lot of work to perform these songs live.
Were there any collaborations in particular in this EP which its result caught you by surprise when the project was completed?
Samuel: It was really cool to see that we could collaborate with bands, like Nightly and The Band CAMINO because we are super big fans of them. We didn’t really think that a band would collaborate with someone that’s been more into electronic music. So, when we figured out we could do that, there was a great feeling.
Do you plan on making more music in this genre or can we expect you to explore other genres in the future?
Tobey: I think we’ll stay but still look to explore other new genres, I think it’s a beautiful thing about music. We come from the electronic side of music and then be able to crossover to other genres like rock and indie, it’s a nice thing to cross genres and create a new sound. We’ll see where we end up.
Samuel: It’s always fun to experiment with music and try new stuff out to see what works out, we’ll definitely try to evolve this sound even if it means to stay here for a while.
When can we can we expect a full-length LP? Is this something that you will wait until the end of this tour or is this something you’re taking day by day and possibly have a few ideas in mind?
Samuel: Kind of day by day, it’s definitely something we don’t really know when though.
Tobi: Hopefully, I don’t know if it’ll be as soon as next year, maybe. This year, we’re super fresh now, we have a lot more songs in the works so hopefully that turns into something.
