I had the idea to spend the year off in 2008 and start writing a rock album. I wanted to do something else other than melodic metal after more than ten years of After Forever. I thought it would be nice to sidestep into rock.
Linkin Park has been a band for such a long time, for me, in my eyes. I was 16 years old when I first heard them. I heard ‘Hybrid Theory,’ and I was floored at what I was listening to. It was angry yet melodic, it had hip-hop and it had – it was just different, good. Good songwriting.
We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don’t just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.
What So Not used to be a lot more dance-y, and now it’s becoming a lot more melodic. Flume has always had that melodic thing, but it’s starting to become a bit heavier, so it’s just difficult to navigate between the two.
It may not be the most popular but there is a place for it. I think about the kind of music I love, acoustic, melodic, and I guess it kind of took a bit of courage on my part to think I could be one of those songwriters.
The songs in ‘Wonderland’ don’t have a melodic life for me – I’m not a musical person – but they have an emotional life, an emotional echo perhaps.
I had always been a jazz fan – Django Reinhardt, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, the early George Benson. And I come from the Hank Marvin melodic upbringing. So blues, I loved, but I also liked jazz. Therefore, my style was more lyrical.
When punk came along, it made perfect sense to me. I found it melodic. The Clash, Buzzcocks.
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