Exposed Vocals Interviews Azgard Avantgarde
Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
We fell in love with music and each other for very long time ago. For a long time we had en idea about making together a musical project. One beautiful day we understood: “it’s now ore never” and took our relationship with music to another, more serious level. We were both born in a magical country, that doesn’t exist anymore and later on moved to Sweden – another magical country, that does exist and smells like northern light and beautiful blue glacier ice.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?
The name came up absolutely spontaneously and without any connection to the music or band. “Aha, that would be the cool name for the duet” – sad one of us. Afterwords we had some more variations, but this one stuck to us for good. The logo based on this name was created easy and fast, so it seems like the name chose us, not the other way around.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
People are very welcome to download our music for free from Soundcloud, but also can buy it from iTunes and other platforms. Music industry is very different nowadays and it is all about social exposure, streaming and so on, but to be honest we think that music is for people to hear and if they think that our music is worth paying for, they can do it through iTunes for instance. If not, then have it for free by all means.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
We are also very new to this, but as in any other business it takes a good effort to make a decent research about opportunities out there. We believe that any kind of music can find it’s own audience. A good presentation of your product or a showreel might help a lot in finding gigs, but it is just our speculation, since we do not position ourselves as performing artists, but more as songwriters and producers.
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
It is all very different from song to song. Sometimes it is lyrics that come up first, sometimes it is melodies. We present ideas for each other and let them grow inside of each other’s minds. We believe that everything around us in this world is a vibration, a wave and have a sound. Probably you could record the sound of electron moving around the atom core. Why not to write a song about that? Any musical idea is worth developing. If you feel for it, go for it.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?
Yes, we do. www.azgardavantgarde.se. It is more like a gateway with links to most of our profiles on different platforms. We do our own videos as well, so have a look in Youtube. Visual art is a lot of fun too. Basically you can find us on the most of the platforms like: Soundcloud, Youtube, Spotify, iTunes and so on.
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?
Well, it would be definitely very nice to get that amount of money. It would give us the freedom to concentrate on creative process even more. And in the end it’s all about magic of music, so why would you stop doing it for a hole year, no matter how much money you’ve got.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
It is all online nowadays and we still testing our ways to get exposure. As we sad before, we are very new to actually get paid for the music. Maybe it is Exposed Vocals that will bring us some juicy opportunities, that will get us that half of a million dollars, or euro, or yet better a half a million fans.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
First of all we need to finish the album and put all the pieces together so it all works nice and smooth. Live performance is another exciting goal for us. When the album is ready we’re planning to make a release party with some cool light effects and VJ-ing. We also want to position ourselves as songwriters and producers. It would be very interesting work with some talented musicians out there.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
It seems like it would be music anyway, just in some other form, or at least something creative, something that connects with music.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?
Step by step. We try to share responsibilities as much as possible. We are in this together, so we try to support each other in every matter. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes on contrary very uplifting and simple. We believe that life is beautiful in every circumstances and it will always lead us the best way, you just need to understand what you really want. Life is magical.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?
We have really cool songs upcoming this year, with more strange music and some powerful lyrics. More videos to come as well and of course the whole album release, so we invite everybody to follow us on Youtube, Soundcloud, Instagram or any other platform, so you don’t miss anything. Stay creative and positive. Love, sound, music, life.