Norwegian electro duo Lemaitre are touring across Australia as part of Falls Festival and doing their own headline shows. We caught up with Ketil Jansen of Lemaitre ahead of the tour to talk music, moving from Norway to USA and what it’s like to live in Dr Dre’s old house.
SCENEzine
Firstly how was 2016 for you?
Ketil Jansen
It’s been nothing but great. A crazy year we’ve had lots of shows. We played in Europe and the States a bunch.
SCENEzine
How was the experience of playing Coachella?
Ketil Jansen
It was amazing and everything I’d hoped for. We had been wanting to do that festival for the six years that we’ve been doing this. It felt really good to finally go there and especially having everything work out the way we wanted. We had a huge turn out it was a real dream come true.
SCENEzine
Can you tell us why you decided to move to Los Angeles from Norway?
Ketil Jansen
We’ve always wanted to be able to grow and grow in anyway possible not just in terms of size but we constantly want to learn and evolve as songwriters and producers. The whole industry seemed to move to Los Angeles from New York and it felt like the right time to hop on a plane and switch bases to USA.
SCENEzine
Was it hard transitioning from your colder to climate to LA?
Ketil Jansen
No that was actually a very welcome change. I really don’t mind skipping out on winter.
SCENEzine
Is it true where you live used to belong to Dr. Dre?
Ketil Jansen
Yes it is. It’s actually etched in the concrete.
SCENEzine
Did you know that before you started living there?
Ketil Jansen
No we found out like a year after we got the house. The owner had some family over and wanted to show them the house so she took them on a tour and when she did we sort of just tagged along and she told us that it used to belong to Dr. Dre. A lot of things made more sense about the house then. There are a couple of weird things like a massive dog pound that seems like it would be nonsense to have if you didn’t have eight pit bulls.
SCENEzine
Your EP 1749 features the super catchy “closer”. Were you involved much in creating the video for that song?
Ketil Jansen
Yes that we were actually pretty closely involved with. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out the way that we wanted because Joe our director went to France when he got there it turned out they were renovating the outside of the location they shot in. Which looks amazing but they weren’t able to film outside.
SCENEzine
“Stepping Stone” has been getting a lot of airplay in Australia. Did that song come together fairly quickly in the writing process?
Ketil Jansen
That song was one of the quicker songs to write. I don’t know it just feels like some songs just come together at a very natural and comfortable pace. We had Mark Johns on it who wrote the vocals.
SCENEzine
Are you excited about spending New Years in Australia for Falls Festival?
Ketil Jansen
Yes very much. Australia will be the third country I’ve experienced New Years in. I’ve only had New Years in Norway and USA before that. I’m also excited about Childish Gambino playing.
SCENEzine
You were in Australia a little while ago for Steresonic festival. Can you share any favourite memories from that trip?
Ketil Jansen
That was a crazy trip, really fun. It was just great seeing all of Australia. It felt like 80% vacation and 20% work. The only real work we did was rigging up on stage. The rest was just really fun.
SCENEzine
Do you how it came about getting “We got you” onto the FIFA game?
Ketil Jansen
I actually don’t know how it got there. I remember getting the offer. It was crazy. I used to play FIFA 98 a lot and I remember very distinctly hearing “Song 2” by Blur. So it’s surreal to think we are now a part of it.
SCENEzine
Lastly can you leave us a message for your Australian fans?
Ketil Jansen
We are excited to tour Australia and we are going to do new material that we haven’t done yet so it’s going to be really fun.
(Interview by Christian Ross)
