Sofie Tollefsbøl first became known through the band Fieh. Photo: Jonathan Vivaas Kise
TONO spoke with Sofie Tollefsbøl about songwriting, studio work, concerts and the way forward for Fieh.
/ 03/09/2018 / Willy MartinsenTONO spoke with Sofie Tollefsbøl about songwriting, studio work, concerts and the way forward for Fieh.
Text: Willy Martinsen, photo: Jonathan Vivaas Kise
Two days before Fieh's concert at Øya, TONO meets singer and songwriter Sofie Tollefsbøl for a cup of coffee and a chat about songwriting at the Literature House in Oslo. The band is on tour this summer. Rumors about their legendary concerts have also reached VG, which has printed a picture of Sofie on the cover this August.
– What about these concerts of yours?
– I hope people experience that they are full of energy. We plan for spontaneous things to happen along the way. There are good musicians in the band, and we like to improvise. We have an organic soundscape that makes us freer than if we had, for example, played with lots of ready-made recorded tracks, she says.
Fieh is more than Sofie. The band has eight members, and so it has been dancing since she got a midi keyboard for Christmas in 2011, and gradually started tinkering with Garageband. She went to the music department at Gjøvik then, and something quickly came out of the Mac that sounded like proper songs. She uploaded them to Soundcloud, became Ukas Urørt in 2014, got a couple of local musician acquaintances to play the songs, and soon there were concerts around her home area in Toten. She found the last band members among her fellow students after she started at the Academy of Music in 2015. What they have in common, these musicians, is that they have gone to music departments and have continued with higher music studies. They also share a love for organic, funky soul music with roots in the 1970s.
– We start from the 1970s soundscape, but we also include newer elements, and we want it to sound modern. And we are musicians who like to spille. We like the organic soundscape. Electronic music also has some qualities, but it's not something I feel at home in.
Watch the video for the song "Glu":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY3QaOA5FPU
– How are the songs created?
– I usually make a demo in Logic with simple instrumentation. Drums, bass and a few other things, and melody and lyrics. We don't always use what I've thought of first, but we pretty much always start from those sketches. Some songs also come up during rehearsals, for example Glu (that Elton John has placed his love on, editor's note)"Another song, which we haven't released yet, is based on a demo the guitarist brought with him. Everyone jams out to something everyone is happy with," she says.
There isn't much recorded Fieh music to listen to yet. There are some demos on Soundcloud, but only two songs – "Glu" and "25" – are available on streaming services at the time of writing.
– I hope there will be a new single this fall. We have a whole album recorded, but it hasn't been released yet. We have a lot of material coming eventually, she assures.
The aforementioned "Glu" and "25", and the rest of the as-yet-unreleased album, were recorded at Studio Paradiso in Oslo with Christian Engfelt as technician and co-producer. We spoke to him as well, and he says that it was a fun and rewarding experience to have Fieh visit.
– There were no hard nuts to crack. The creative flow went well all the way. It's an extremely talented band, which was also well prepared. The song was ready in one or two takes, and so were the vocal tracks. The arrangements and production were a pure feast with only ups and downs.
Engfelt made the recordings using a Neve 8036 mixing console from the early 1970s to a 24-track Studer A80 machine, before the tracks were continuously transferred to Protools. The preamps in the Neve console were occasionally supplemented with some new 500 series preamps. The microphones are mostly standard, he says, and lists Coles, Neumann U67, SM2, AKGC12 and Royer. Engfelt also mixed the album. It didn't present any major challenges either:
– We made the production and sound choices in the recording, and thus the mixing was mostly about general EQing and getting it as 3D as possible. The ideal is an optimal mix of cool and good sound. Just good sound becomes boring. Just cool becomes… cool. But it's even better with cool sound that is also good, he states, and nerds out on demand. – I don't use parallel buses and things like that much. I compress a little here and there. The occasional drum mic might get a little harder treatment. I run 24 channels out on the Neve mixer and EQ and compress a little there, and then I do all the subtractive EQ in the box.
In August, Sofie began her fourth and final year at the Academy of Music, specializing in pedagogy. But in the fall, she will also be active on the music front with several concerts at important venues, such as the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg in September and Iceland Airwaves in November. The coffee cup is now empty, and we ask Sofie about the band's ambitions in conclusion.
– We hope to be able to have it as a job. And it would be fun to have an audience abroad. I like both traveling and playing, so if I could have combined that I would have been happy. We have to give it our all now, and see how far it can go. We will take it as far as we can.
Fieh consists of:
Bass: Andreas Rjukan
Guitar: Jørgen Kasbo
Drums: Ola Øverby
Keys: Edvard Synnes
Trumpet: Sounds Øvreås Røed
Choir: Thea Lien
Choir: Solveig Wang
Vocals: Sofie Tollefsbøl
Follow Fieh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fiehfiehfieh
The band's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/fiehfiehfieh