Name: Den Der Hale
Members: Pontus Lindskogen, Max Bredberg, Axel Nelson, Ejner Pedersen Trenter, Mimosa Baker
Nationality: Swedish
Current release: Den Der Hale's Pastoral Light is out February 2nd 2024 via FatCat.

If you enjoyed this Den Der Hale interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit them on Instagram, and Facebook.  



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Pontus: It depends. All too often I just end up dissecting what I’m listening to because I want to understand how it is made. It sometimes makes it hard to enjoy listening to music. I’m not mindful enough.

When I do manage to be mindful, it is the same experience that you describe. Although I would add that it also becomes a physical experience.  

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

Max: Having a musically interested father meant me being force-fed music from a very young age. Driving to school we always listened to what I called “The Froggy Song”, or colloquially, “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” by Frank Zappa in the car.



I later had a period of discovering music on my own accord (which unfortunately disproves my ambitions of hoping to influence my yet-to-be-born child to become a virtuoso through rigorous “enhanced interrogation techniques” from a young age). Becoming a preteen / teen / young adult and having to choose between the options of socializing and failing to do so or listening to music I chose the latter.

When it comes to being an artist I think the question is moot as there is no such thing as an artist - there’s people, there’s objects, and there’s experiences and if their existence is meaningful to someone else, that’s great!

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Axel: When I was 14 I saw Taking Woodstock (2009).



The movie is alright but I remember being really struck by what music does to people. I had never thought about it more than it just being in the periphery of everyday life. I remember getting really into all kinds of music from that era and I discovered this gold mine of music that I didn't know existed. Somehow it felt like home. Let's face it, mainstream music in 2009 wasn't the best.

I think this in the long run has led me to prefer music made by people who do it all the way and not letting their craft be blended out by too many hands. Sure, I’m a swede. I love ABBA, a hit is a hit in some regard. But I will always prefer listening to music that feels real to me. Not always pleasant, not always sad.

Music is like mirrors of life, it's not always easy to see what they reflect.  

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Mimosa: I feel like the yearning to create is something integral to my being, and yet the impulses that spring from this yearning, and the ways in which they manifest, remain quite a mystery to me.

There are moments in which I need to excavate my soul for this movement to happen, as well as other times when a creative outburst spontaneously animates from salient objects in my (both political, personal and dream-oriented) view, or seemingly mundane and temporal things like finding mold on a forgotten fruit, a lost glove on the pavement or the sound of exhalation.

It’s an interplay of ever changing factors. Everything plays a part.

The partner of a musician once told me that he often felt jealous of her guitar. How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment – is it an extension of your self/body, a partner and companion, a creative catalyst, a challenge to be overcome, something else entirely?

Ejner: To be perfectly honest (which I guess we ought to be), I started playing fretless out of pure vanity.

At the time, I was in a black metal band, and was frankly quite bad at my instrument. In my desperation to appear unique and to craft a sound of my own, I switched to fretless bass. In hindsight, a fucking childish decision, since my ego would not let me return to fretted, despite my playing deteriorating even more.

However, what I learned was a valuable lesson in not trying to craft a unique sound through a violent act of instant change, as much as just to let the instrument take you in new directions and to let that bond be formed organically.

With that said, I have to admit that both Pontus and Max have a bigger impact on my sound than anything else, seeing as they know tons more about the technical stuff than I do.

Are you acting out certain roles or parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? If not, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

Max: On three occasions in my life I have experienced anger. In fact, I’m so unfamiliar with the feeling whatsoever that the last time it happened I had to go on Wikipedia and read up on the subject to see what the fuck was going on with my body.

One of the three times I have felt anger coincided with us playing a show on our last tour. I became an apparition fully disconnected from any part of my mortal coil, and I believe the very fact of me being on stage with people watching me allowed that to happen.

For me personally the driving force is not having to become performative for the sake of other people’s experience but rather being allowed to be seen undividedly by people you don’t even know that allows me to grow not just as a musician, but also as a person.

Music is a language, but like any language, it can lead to misunderstandings. In which way has your own work – or the work of artists you like or admire - been misunderstood? How do you deal with this?

Max: For me this relates to linguistic relativity and the way that language influences our view of the world.

The Paman language Kuuk Thaayore relies on absolute rather than relative direction, and replaces left / right / up / down with cardinal direction. I think the way in which this influences a person’s worldview has similarities to the way that music has the ability to act as a cognitive filter and become a process through which everyday experiences get interpreted.

If you’re asking about the “separate art from the artist” discussion I refer to Nick Cave’s answer.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness as things become more professionalised and how do you still draw surprises from equipment, instruments, approaches and formats you may be very familiar with?

Axel: That is something I often think about whenever me or us as a band approaches a new project. It’s so easy to get stuck in old and comfortable patterns that we know we are good at and yet there will always be a certain sound that we’re drawn towards as a band for sure.

But I find it helps alot when we allow ourselves to do completely silly and ridiculous songs even though we might be stressed out by expectations and loss of time. I’ve found that is a good way to press that reset button, to find that playfulness again.

More often than not, that “silly song” has a lot of cool elements that we wouldn't have thought of otherwise and it might just result in a new banger.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Mimo: I’ve always felt that there are immeasurable ways in which nature organically mirrors the divine through sound. I find everything about this musical in the sense that it moves me in an equivalent manner as many musical pieces I revere.

As a child, I would listen fervently to the wind and spend many pondering hours atop the mountain where I grew up. I remember one stormy night spent there when I endured the rain and listened to the way the wind waned over time; how the almost wrathful force receded into a benevolent breeze.

It was one of those moments when nature moved me into an almost submissive, yet sovereign reverence.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in numbers, from waveforms via recommendation algorithms up to deciphering the code of hit songs. What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

Ejner: As counterintuitive as it may sound, as a bassist I’m terrible at counting and keeping continuation in terms of rhythm. I mean, really really shit. For this reason, I’ve always leaned more on melody and relied heavily on the percussionist.

My utter hopelessness in the mathematics department also means that I have close to zero interest in quantifying music as a concept. Sure, it’s amusing that you have people trying to decode hit songs and whatnot, but not for me. Nope.

I prefer to let music be a journey where I discover and rediscover elements on every visit. Music, for me, is relative and ever changing, and, at least until I learn to count to more than five, I prefer to keep it that way. Except for the cowbell in “Screenshot” by Swans. We all know that is a constant and an absolute.



How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Ejner: In a previous question, Max answered that only on three occasions has he felt anger. For me, anger is something integral to my existence. Anger at the presiding political system, at the injustices of global capitalism, or simply just at having someone being late to an appointment. Anger, for me, is not something inherently ugly, as much as it is a way of managing the borders protecting one’s integrity.

The way that I create music, I reckon, is reflected by that form of self-management. Musically I strive towards the tension between the highs and lows of anger, the beauty of totally surrendering oneself to feelings, while simultaneously trying to retain a sense of control.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold? What role do headphones play for you in this regard?

Mimo: As much as sound, noise and music are incredible tools to enliven the spirit of my experiences, silence plays a crucial role for me to stay present and grounded in my day to day life. I know through experience that abandonment of my meditation practices (with an emphasis on silence) has a deteriorating effect on my mental health, and so I’ve come to take that quite seriously.

Over the years I’ve become more intentional about my music consumption and am quite mindful about it not coming to a point of frequency where it asphyxiates my presence with the world around me. In my younger years, I would oftentimes turn to music in defiance and avoidance in a sense that numbed me from my emotional world.

Today it’s quite different as I can allow it to be a voyage of trance-inducing absorption, yet it mostly transpires in a way that strengthens my presence with my corporeal experience as I ‘return’ from being swept away.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Axel: As I was reading this question I got a sudden urge to make a cup of coffee. But I think that says more about me and my body being addicted to caffeine.

Sure, I could go on and talk about how we can make every mundane task in everyday life meaningful just by being more aware. But losing yourself playing music, those brief moments where it just clicks and you lose that sense of time and space, your limbs are playing by themselves and all you know is that you exist somewhere in it all.

I could never make a coffee that good.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values which don't appear to have any emotional connotation. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a seemingly counterintuitive way – and what, do you think, is happening here?

Pontus: I seldomly focus on the lyrics when I listen to music, and I often prefer musical pieces to be either instrumental or with vocals that work more as an instrument. Maybe it has to do with me wanting music to express something that is beyond words, that maintains a sense of awe.

The best thing about music is the way it translates beyond language. It’s a way of communication.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Pontus: I would like for it to be a surprise. Sometimes I search for music that is within my niche, thinking that I know what I want, but that never really works out.

I wish to be struck by something new, that completely changes the way I listen to music.