interview with Red Room Ensemble
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes, but on a local level only, so probably nothing that you would have heard about. All of us played together for many years in the cover act Moonburn, performing with classic metal from the 70’s to the 90’s. Before that, we have been playing together or separately in different constellations.
How is it that you started playing music? Inspired by the metal scene of the 80’s and the 90’s, all of us picked up our instrument of choice as wee lads, and been sticking to it since then!
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Red Room Ensemble is Torgny Stjärnfelt, vocals ;Kari Sundström and Sebastian Söderlund on guitar, Kim Darmark on bass and Jonathan Grönqvist on drums. We are all in the prime of our lives.
Have you had other previous members? No.
Did you make music even when you were young? Yes, Sundström and Darmark started making music together at age 14.
Where are you from? We grew up on the Åland Islands in Finland. Even though we are scattered in different parts of the world, the town of Mariehamn on the Åland Islands works as our base.
What year did the band form? Red Room Ensemble formed in 2014.
What's your style of genre? We would say that it is a heavy metal with considerable portions of progressive metal and elements of thrash. In hindsight, it seems that all the band members have brought something of their own musical background to the project.
How often and where do you rehearse? For practical reasons we hone our skills individually, but come together for intensive bursts of rehearsal when we are all around Åland. We have a quite nice three room apartment, which we share with a couple of other bands.
How have you developed since you started with the music? Well, we have gotten a lot of experience when it comes to all the steps required to produce a finished album, which will come in handy in the future. Musically, we are starting to find our own sound.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? At the moment, no. We are in a situation when it is not possible to go on extensive tours, and thus we just take the occasional live gig.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? We are open to the idea, but it would depend on what kind of agreement we could reach.
What made you decide to make this music?
We had been playing other bands songs for many years, and realized we had a hard time renewing our repertoire. Sundström had quite many ideas for original tunes, which we all felt were so promising that it would be a waste not to turn them into complete songs.
What are your songs about? The lyrics are dominated by the themes fear, violence, psychology, mystery.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? Sundström is the main composer, with input from the rest of the band. Stjärnfelt and Darmark have written roughly half of the lyrics each.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? For our debut we composed the music, tried to find a melody and rhythm for the vocals based on that, and then wrote the lyrics, almost as an afterthought… For our next album, we hope to work more actively with the lyrics from the start.
Have you done any covers live?
As Moonburn, we have done plenty. We used to cover 30-40 different bands, but the bands that contributed most to our repertoire, were Iron Maiden, Metallica and Slayer. We’ve kept a few covers, which we have played as Red Room Ensemble as well.
What language do you sing in? English.
What ages are most of your concert attendants?
Our main group of listeners seems to be guys between 25-45, but we hope to be able to reach others!
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? As for now, we don’t have much of a choice. Our debut album has 8 songs, to a total length of 40 minutes, which pretty much constitutes one set. We can only get pickier, when we have composed a few new songs.
What was your first gig like? Our first gig was in March 2015, and is also our latest one. It went very well. It was at Dino’s in Mariehamn and we were glad for the response that we got from the audience.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year? We will play at the Dark Water festival in Åland, headlined by the Swedish band In Mourning. Dark Water is a new metal festival that will take place in August at the Stallhagen brewery.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale? We don’t have merch yet.
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? It seems to be an inevitable development, which the artists have to cope with. As a band that has just began, we are only happy if our music spreads and is listened to and have no illusions of being able to live by the revenues from this. If a small portion of our listeners decide to buy our music, that is of course a welcome support.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? It is harder to get a living as an artist and touring and merchandise have become essential.
What do you think of my work? You seem to be very productive and it is laudable that you help artists, especially unsigned ones, get a presence online.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? We hope that some of your readers, or you yourself, check out our music and if found enjoyable, spread it further!
Do you have any new material? We do. At the moment, we are working on riffs that have the potential of becoming four or five new songs, which will surpass those that were on the Red Room Ensemble album. It sounds very promising!
What are your web sites? We have a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/redroomensemble) where you can follow us for updates. Our music is available at Spotify, as well as on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Youtube. We have been working on a website, which will eventually be available atwww.redroomensemble.ax, but some work remains on that.
How can people reach you?
You can get in touch with us either through our facebook page or by sending an email to [email protected]
What are your plans for the future? During 2016, we hope to be able to produce our second album. Now we are busy composing songs for this and are also in the process of releasing our website and planning a kickstarter project in order to get funding for our work with the album. We are cooperating with Peter Ekholm from 36 Productions, who will direct an introduction video for the kickstarter thing.
