Prior to Liima’s performance at the SPOT Festival 2016, Jutland Station did an interview with the band on the meaning of their name and the creative process that’s going when writing new material.
By Alessandro Amato, photos by Teresa Weikmann (Jutland Station).
Yesterday night the Scandinavian Center was overflowing with good spirit and exclusive, colorful music, all in spite of the not-so-spring-like and grey weather conditions. After the inspiring performance of the next big thing aka Chinah, the venue was filled by the sharp and arcane sounds of Liima.
Previously that day, the Nordic band told us the story of their sticky name, their friendship and professional relationship.
It all began when the Copenhagen-based electronic-rock trio Efterklang started looking for a drummer. After a few auditions Casper, Mads and Rasmus met Tatu Rönkkö, a highly creative and talented Finnish drummer. We sat down with the blonde, long-haired band member to talk about the origins of this new project, their passions, quirks and ways of expression.
When did you guys meet each other?
When Efterklang were still active they were looking for a drummer, two years before they stopped touring with the name Efterklang. They held this audition and they liked me.
At what point did you come up with Liima?
Half a year later we were invited by the famous violinist Pekka Kuusisto to do a collaboration with him for a festival. That was the first time we got together, we spent ten days in this residency and we composed music from scratch. It went pretty well, so we decided to keep on doing that.
So you sort of tour also when you compose, right?
Yeah we would go to these kind of residencies where we would mostly compose new music and occasionally perform it. In one year we went to four of these that led to the first album. They were all around the world, from Berlin to Istanbul and Madeira.
And why the name Liima? Where does it come from?
Well, Liima means glue, just like the Danish lim. We all thought about a cool band name and Liima was one of them. To me it sounded much like what it is, glue. So at first it felt weird. But the others immediately liked the name and after a while I started to like it as well.
I’ve got a specific question. I’ve seen the video for your song “Roger Waters” and it really creeped me out, who came up with that idea?
Oh it was the filmmaker’s idea! I’ve been a huge fan of splatter horror movies, but I had no influence on that video, and I don’t think the others share this interest. But yeah, when they pitched it to us we all really liked the idea.
Now a more serious question: what would you say is the thing you like the most in what you do?
Okay I would say that it’s playing live. I mean, touring can be really cool because you get to see a lot of different places, meet inspiring people and different situations. But when you’re on stage, when you play to people, you realize what works and what doesn’t—it’s the ultimate way to take the band to the next level. All the different combinations of audiences, stages, places and so on makes this part of the job the most exciting one.
And how does this influence your creative process?
When you play live you can instantly feel that a new song works well. After that you now what you have to focus on to get the most out of the performance. You can say it’s like being a sculptor or a painter who each day comes back to the atelier and adds a new layer, a new color. It’s about constantly shaping a song. Eventually you arrive at a point where it’s done—that’s when you record it. But you can always modify it during live performances.
This is deep. You shared a lot of inspiring thoughts with us, thank you Tatu!
You guys had good questions too, enjoy the concert!
