Little Dragon’s favourite things
Little Dragon are one of our favourite bands at Electronic Beats. Off-kilter pop that you can dance and sing along to from a charmingly rag tag bunch of Swedish multi-instrumentalists, singers and percussionists. Straddling a fine line between cute and edgy Little Dragon are a unique proposition.
With a new album Ritual Union due to be released later this month on Peacefrog, we thought it was about time we got back in touch with the band decided to take the chance to find out about some of their favourite things in an interview with the band’s drummer Erik Bodin.
At side of the page you can also find our Slices video feature where we join the band in the studio to discover more about their backgrounds and approach to making music.
Hey Erik. What is you favourite song on the new album?
My favourite song on the new album is ‘When I go Out.’
Why is that?
I think mainly because it is so different and also that it means something special … we put it there just to show just for ourselves that we still are keeping it open for experiments and it is a song that is really far out for me. I think it stands for that curiosity that we really want to have as a big ingredient in our music.
A big bit of strangeness?
Yes exactly.
What is your favourite part of recording an album?
When you are still in that vague place where you don’t really know where things are going to take you. When you maybe you just have a drum beat and you starting to put down the harmonies and Yukimi brings in her stuff and that’s when you feel… you don’t really know where all this music is coming from but it is obviously coming from us but you are still excited and curious where it will take you.
What is your favourite place to play?
There are so many right now but I must say in general it is always fun to be in America and play just because there are so many good places to play. But the some of the most appreciative crowds have been in Poland and yeah in San Francisco. So, yeah San Fran and Poland.
What’s your favourite bit of studio equipment?
That will be the PC. A strong PC with the soundcard.
What’s your favourite website?
My favourite website… I was almost going to say Google! No but actually I must say YouTube, if that is considered to be a website.
Absolutely! If it has www it is a website
It is full of so much other stuff. I think it is magic the way you can find anything and discover so much new things all the time. Yeah it is a winner!
And who is your favourite Swede? Swedish person?
That would be Mum.
Who is your favourite Jackson??
My favourite Jackson. Yeah that would be Janet Jackson. She seems to be so full of surprises. I have never heard anybody do dirty songs like Janet. She seems to be strange in a wonderful way.
What’s your favourite dragon?
There is this monster called Katla, it’s a from Astrid Lindgren books. The one with the two brothers and they end up in this place when they die. They are both young and they die from some disease and come into another dimension. They made it nice in the ‘80s they made this Swedish film about it. It was very scary, it was a huge dragon, very scary but it was more of a monster then a dragon but I think it could be considered as a dragon.
What is your favourite way to listen to music?
Right now… I just bought the Tonium Pacemaker. I have a hard time to listen to music and relax so now I have a solution I can just listen to the music and mess with it at the same time. So it would be through that little DJ machine.
Thanks Erik!
Published July 07, 2011.