Experiments, Myths & Ruined Breakfasts: We interview Miike Snow

Editor Ana Grabova snaps up the chance to speak to Andrew Wyatt from Miike Snow ahead of the release of their widely anticipated second album, Happy to You.  They call themselves the three-headed band, and use the mythical Jackalope as their avatar. Their videos are consistently surprising and as other worldly as you might expect from a band who like to do the unexpected. Miike Snow's three heads are provided by New Yorker Andrew Wyatt and Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg. If their respective origins don't make them sound uber cool already, the trio's back catalogue certainly will. Andrew Wyatt has worked with the likes of Mark Ronson, Carl Barat and Coco Sumner. Whilst the Swedish duo (aka Bloodshy and Avant) has co-written tracks with some of the biggest names in pop; Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Ms Dynamite, Christina Milian, Sugababes... The list goes on, but perhaps the most illustrious of an already unbeatable list is co-writing and producing Toxic for Britney Spears (incidentally also one Dave Grohl's favourite songs). However, as a trio Miike Snow have cast off the bubblegum exterior of their past in favour of creating their own brand of electro-indie-pop. When I speak to Andrew Wyatt, it is over the phone at 11am in the morning, with Andrew presumably still in his hotel suite after performing live on a Channel 4 show the night before. His voice [very deep, calm and collected] is what confidence sounds like. It is obvious Miike Snow doesn't have to prove itself to anybody, and unsurprisingly so. Their experimental sound is building a constantly evolving, loyal fanbase and Paddling Out is already set to be the tune of the festival season. Hi Andrew. I’ve really enjoyed listening to Happy to You. Did you see it as the difficult second album? I don’t think so. I think we were pretty relaxed going in there. I mean we’re more relieved than anything because we knew that people would hear this one. With the first one we had no idea. We didn’t have a record deal when we did it. We made it just to make it pretty much. I think that honestly I was just as prepared to have it come out on MySpace and have a few of our friends hear it than have what happened, which is quite extraordinary. When you wrote the album was it immediately obvious that Paddling Out would be your first single? I think there was some inkling that the chorus had a sing along aspect to it, which usually is what people respond to. I think we were thinking more of festivals when we wrote that song. We could hear people singing along to the chorus at festivals. Definitely. Is it your personal favourite song? I don’t think it is actually, but I think it’s a good song. Bavarian #1 (Say You Will) is my favourite. Are you going to release it as a single? I hope so, I mean I think that the next single is going to be either a song called The Wave or a song called Pretender, but I would love it if Bavarian #1 (Say You Will) would be a single. I just watched the video to Paddling Out this morning, and I was eating a sausage sandwich... Oh sorry about that, my bad. I owe you a sausage sandwich. Ha ha, it’s alright. I was quite surprised by how the video pans out. Whose concept was that? Was that your idea? No, we’ve been working with a guy called Andreas Nilsson whose work we really like. Basically he directed the video for us on our last record called The Rabbit, and we really liked that. We just liked the way his imagery is quite abstract and though there is some kind of a plot, it is abstract enough for people to draw their own conclusions about the symbolic meaning of it. The images are quite striking and entertaining to look at, but at the same time they’re not boring, I mean they’re not easy. It does make you a bit uneasy to watch it. Agree – very unsettling. You’ve done a lot of festivals in the past. Which ones do you think are the best? Well, there are festivals that are really great in different ways. You have different experience at each one. To be fair I think my favourite festival to play so far is Coachella because it’s in a part of the world that I know, so I feel comfortable getting around there. I’ve been many times as a fan growing up so it is significant to play there, and the crowds there were really great the last time we played. As long as you go at night it’s beautiful weather. In the UK, Glastonbury was my favourite one. When we played the weather was terrific. And there was the best masseuse there. I had one of the best massages I have ever had in my life right before we went on stage, so I was the most relaxed I have ever been before a show that I can remember. There’s no Glastonbury this year, but I hope she has relocated herself to another festival nearby. Cool. You said Paddling Out is a stand-out festival tune. Would you say you are more of a festival band now? I think as long as we have the night time setting, we can really bring a good energy to festivals. Our sound works very well in big settings with lots of people, so yeah I hope we can bring that to a lot of festivals this year. And would you be disappointed if you got a daytime set? It’s a little bit of a drag for us if we have a pure daytime set because we have a lot of visual stuff that depends on darkness, but we can bring it to any situation. We just played on Channel 4 last night and we weren’t able to use any of our tricks, all the smoke, you know. But it still went fine. So you’re in London at the moment? Yeah I am. Do you get the chance to have a look around? Oh, I’ve been coming to London for such a long time. I know it pretty well now. I was kind of surprised that I was able to walk myself home from Soho House to my hotel on St Martin’s Lane without getting lost. You didn’t have to use a map on your phone. I did not. I did it sheerly by recognising where Jersey Boys was. So where do you hang out when you come to London? If I’m downtown I usually go down to a couple of these clubs in Soho where friends of mine go. Or we go east and end up in places like Boundary or The Royal Oak, stuff like that. Going back to festivals, do you think this is the end of you doing small gigs? No, I wouldn’t say that. We just did a gig for 500 a few nights ago in Stockholm. I think there is always something cool about the intimacy you can have with the audience when doing small shows. I hope it’s the end of us doing small shows not by choice. You’ve talked about the band as being more of a project rather than a band, is that right? I don’t think so now. I would definitely say we’re a band because we’ve had so many shows, we’ve hung out so much and we’ve made this the only thing we’re doing professionally for a while now. Do you prefer the writing process rather than the promotional, marketing, gigging stuff? I think the gigging is different from the promotion. The thing that comes most naturally to us is playing music, whether it is in the studio or on stage. You know every phase of playing music also has an element to it that is just a pain in the ass. When you’re in the studio there is going to be engineering stuff that is challenging and if you’re on the road there is going to be travel stuff that’s challenging, so they are kind of two sides of the same coin. We like to take the rough with the smooth. Miike Snow's second album, Happy to You is out today on Columbia Records. To purchase and find out more about the band, visit the website.