Owusu & Hannibal

Torsten Schmidt

See, that’s how friendly we are. You don’t have to do anything and already you’re getting a warm welcome. They wouldn’t even know who it is sitting here with us, so do you want to introduce yourselves?

Philip Owusu

My name is Philip Owusu.

Robin Hannibal

And I’m Robin Hannibal.

Philip Owusu

We are Owusu & Hannibal. [applause]

Torsten Schmidt

These gentlemen flew in from Denmark last night, and we figured it might be a good idea, since they released their debut album last year, which came out on Ubiquity, which in this day and age performed the rare thing of being an album. For those of you born before neon colors, you may remember an album was a thing you put on, you put the needle on it, and when you hear the [makes sound of needle hitting center label], you turned it over and listened to the other side of it. You could listen to something as a whole, maybe even for an hour. Maybe it was even sequenced and arranged in such a way that you would even like to listen to it again, put it on tapes and hear it over and over again. It was more than just a good song, although a good song is hard enough in itself, isn’t it?

So, yeah. Since we figured those fellows might know a thing or two about a good song or even an album, we might just follow the line of the album. What do you start an album with?

Robin Hannibal

In this case something from a native tongue.

Torsten Schmidt

What’s the native tongue for you folks?

Robin Hannibal

Danish. Partly, actually, because we are both part Danish, part foreign. But both our mothers are Danish and there is a lot of Danish music with Danish lyrics. Being Danish and making a record in a foreign language, it seemed in some ways appropriate or fun to include some Danish.

Torsten Schmidt

How many people are there who speak Danish?

Philip Owusu

How many Danes? What is it, five million?

Torsten Schmidt

That’s quite a few, huh?

Robin Hannibal

It’s important for us.

Torsten Schmidt

Since we’re in a country where the neighboring city might be five hours away, if you’re lucky, how long does it take to go through Denmark from top to bottom or left to right? Islands not included, that’s cheating.

Robin Hannibal

Five hours maybe.

Torsten Schmidt

But then you take the bike, yeah?

Philip Owusu

Then you take the bike. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Maybe we’ll listen to it before you do the Danish translation.

Philip Owusu

We got some kids to do the singing for this one.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Intro” / applause)

The thing we liked about starting the track in Danish was we knew it would be something people would hear but not immediately recognize. And it would be a reference for us as Danes and give it a bit of an international flavor too at the same time.

Robin Hannibal

A funny little detail at the end is that one of the girls says, [speaks in Danish], which means “I’m opening my bag.”

Philip Owusu

They were ad-libbing.

Torsten Schmidt

So what were they supposed to say? I presume, we don’t have any of the five million Danish-speaking people here.

Philip Owusu

I think we have one here who understands a little bit.

[inaudible comment from audience member / laughter]

Philip Owusu

The song is like a kid’s story. It’s about a cat who sits on the windowsill. The mailman comes with a note saying that the budgie committed suicide. It’s a stupid story.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s a lot darker than it sounds.

Philip Owusu

I remember children’s shows back home and the ones I really appreciated had that something that was a little bit dark, or sometimes a little bit morbid.

Torsten Schmidt

So it’s the Where The Wild Things Are approach, having this cutesy little guy in this costume who goes off to the island with the big monsters. It still looks all cute, but when you think about it, it’s like... [shudders]

So we’re starting out on a fairytale feel, but being the age where we are and living in the world we live in, fairytales are not exactly cool.

Philip Owusu

No, man, you never get too old for fairytales.

Robin Hannibal

Also one of the biggest storytellers of all time, at least we think, is H.C. Andersen, who is also Danish.

Torsten Schmidt

So how long will it be before we put Arne Jacobsen in here as well, then we’ve got the whole Danish... [throws arm in the air] Whoo! So what are your favorite Andersen stories then?

Robin Hannibal

The Ugly Duckling, I love that. Also, he wrote a lot of poetry that is really good also, but he just got really famous for the kindergarten fairytales.

Torsten Schmidt

Shall we move onto the next track?

Philip Owusu

This is a track called “Blue Jay” and it’s the first track that came out on Ubiquity.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Blue Jay” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

I don’t know how it would be for the audio guys if we left it on in the background, or maybe it’s just an incentive to go and get the stuff yourself anyway.

Philip Owusu

This was the first track that came out on the Rewind!, no, the HVW8 compilation that they put out.

Torsten Schmidt

So how did you get in touch with those guys then? It’s not exactly around the corner, LA

Robin Hannibal

We did a track before this and started mailing it around to different people. But we didn’t start with Ubiquity, we only mailed a couple of record labels and the rest of it was more or less radio, promotion, a couple of management things also. We were just playing around at that point, and we were both listening to a lot of BBC, Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide, and he labelled it as Record Label of the Year, or rather it was voted Label of the Year. [to Philip] You noticed that and got their contact details, right?

Philip Owusu

Yeah, we sent an MP3 to their A&R, Andrew Jervis, and he mailed back within half an hour saying he liked it.

Torsten Schmidt

At least someone is doing the work over there. So it wasn’t like it was your favorite label of all time, more a case of “Why aim low?”

Robin Hannibal

It maybe suicidal to say it, but no, not really. We knew a lot of the artists when we found out about it and checked their site, [to Philip] and you had a couple of their 12”s.

Philip Owusu

It seemed like a good label for us because we didn’t want to straight hip-hop or straight soul and they seemed diverse in what they put out.

Torsten Schmidt

How does it work between the two of you? What’s the division of labor or is there such a thing?

Robin Hannibal

There’s no real recipe to it. As far as it goes for me, it’s about being open to the other person and taking each track as it comes along.

Torsten Schmidt

But do you both contribute to all or part of what you do? Do you both sing or both write beats?

Philip Owusu

It’s pretty much 50/50. We both write and both play instruments, so with each song maybe Rob will come up with something and I might add on to that. It’s very much like ping-pong.

Robin Hannibal

Other times, Philip may have the whole idea and we’ll build around that. I think it really shows, it’s an open game, it wasn’t really constructed so one has one role and one has this role and you’re not allowed to play on the other side. I think you can hear that also, that it doesn’t sound exactly the same. The ideas, it varies a lot.

Torsten Schmidt

Coming back to the Hans Christian Andersen thing, when the song starts off – and those are the first words the international audience will understand – it’s actually relatively poetic. What is the song all about and how do you avoid failing into traps and clichés when writing those songs?

Philip Owusu

Well, thank you. The song is about, the picture I had of the time was an immigrant worker. I don’t know if any of you know but Denmark is not the best country for the way it treats its immigrants.

Torsten Schmidt

You like your cartoons as well.

Philip Owusu

So the idea was of an immigrant worker, a well-educated intellectual who had a low-ranking job. And because of that, he rebelled against the city.

Torsten Schmidt

So it’s like a classic What’s Going On type of feel, with a sweet melody but with a really sturdy story behind it.

Philip Owusu

Which is kind of like the contrast we were going for with the first song on the intro.

Torsten Schmidt

Are there similar themes like that later on?

Robin Hannibal

Contrasts was a big essence of what we were aiming for, to mash things up that maybe weren’t the obvious ones. So yeah, that’s a key element to the record.

Torsten Schmidt

Maybe jump to the next one.

Philip Owusu

This one’s called “Le Fox” and it was the third, maybe fourth song we made.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Le Fox” / applause)

Philip Owusu

We met through a mutual friend and heard each other’s stuff and then thought maybe we should try working on something together.

Robin Hannibal

I invited Philip out to my apartment and played him stuff. He seemed like, [nonchalantly] “Yeah, yeah, sure,” and then he played me some of his stuff and I was, [gasps] “Goddammit, I need to work with this guy. This guy can really take it to the next level.” A couple of years of courtship started; Copenhagen is a really small town and we met at various different places at the weekends and just played each other stuff.

Philip Owusu

I think it was about a year before we really started working on anything.

Torsten Schmidt

We all know it’s hard enough courting someone of the opposite, or same gender, whichever way you want it. And there are countless comedies around that theme. But how does the whole courting of a potential work partner, a relationship that might last a lot longer than the other ones? Any dating tips? Don’t call up in the first few days, something like that?

Robin Hannibal

Making good music and playing that to each other and getting that healthy competition also. “Oh, he played me this, I really want to play him some good stuff also.” It’s just the same with good friendships or a colleague you work with. If they do something good then you also want to do something good. Healthy competition in it was a key factor in many ways.

Torsten Schmidt

Yet in all this healthy competition there are also insecurities that have to be dealt with. If you want to do something meaningful, you have to open yourself somehow, and that’s when the scary bits may come in. Especially when you use your own voice. Do you hide yourself undercover, “I don’t want to look at you while I’m singing”? I mean... how was your first time?

Philip Owusu

As regards with the singing, I would usually do it at my grandmother’s place. The whole album was done really, really low-key. Robin has a studio set up at his place, I have one at my place and most of the vocal recording is done at my grandmother’s in her cupboard actually.

Robin Hannibal

Wardrobe.

Philip Owusu

In her wardrobe. I kind of avoided the nerves of having to sing in front of somebody.

Torsten Schmidt

But why your grandmother’s cupboard? If I think of my granny’s cupboard…

Philip Owusu

You get food and you get your laundry, it’s a perfect match.

Torsten Schmidt

And you can use the laundry for sound diffusion.

Philip Owusu

No, the thing is we didn’t have the budget to go into a really expensive studio and do the album. Our own studio, we live in the city where there is too much noise and it would inevitably be heard on the record. My grandmother lives in the suburbs, in the countryside.

Robin Hannibal

We live right across the street from each other. Philip can see where I live from his porch.

Torsten Schmidt

I’m not sure that we should go into more detail. So how did you record at your granny’s place, what did you record it with? You’ve got to get to a certain sound quality. Everyone’s always fetishising about this ‘50s mic or that 1930s Neumann thing.

Philip Owusu

We don’t really have that. We basically use what we have. OK, we have computers and that’s the most expensive thing in our setup. I think the bass guitar we used for this track was missing one string [applause]

But to some extent, if you play it for people who are gear freaks, listening to it now there are times when I wish we could have done a better mix of it. But at the same time it’s a fair representation of what we did at the time.

Robin Hannibal

I think a lot of times it can be a bit inhibiting that you can do everything. Sometimes it’s also good to have some restraints, things that you can’t do, because then you have to solve it creatively or you just have what you have and do the best from that.

Torsten Schmidt

But still you’re shying away from the question, how did the vocal get into the computer? I take it you were not recording through the in-build one, right?

Robin Hannibal

I don’t really want to tell people what the microphone it is because it’s really not a good one.

Torsten Schmidt

Fisher-Price?

Robin Hannibal

A bit better, but it’s one that everyone can afford, it really is.

Philip Owusu

To give a good example, I sung a track for Metro Area recently in the same wardrobe. And they are gear freaks, really. And I sent them a picture of the wardrobe that I used, with the beat-up mic and everything. I didn’t have a proper – what do you call it, pop filter? – so I used one of these things you dust off with, you know, the feathery stuff. [laughs] And when he saw that picture…

Robin Hannibal

I’m glad you didn’t tell me. Wow.

Philip Owusu

So it was really, really low-key. You can still manage to do music regardless of the equipment. What people really react to anyhow is not necessarily how well it’s recorded but the ideas behind it.

Torsten Schmidt

Speaking of ideas, maybe go over to “A Million Babies” then.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “A Million Babies”)

[referring to J Dilla] We both loved his music and met through a lot of his music and used many of his ideas as inspiration for other tracks. It felt appropriate to include him, and we got a little [grunts] from him. But that’s just part of the track, there were other big inspirations as you mention, and also in the song and the lyrics.

Torsten Schmidt

What’s the song about?

Philip Owusu

It’s about a guy who’s afraid to commit. He shares a cab ride home with a girl and he doesn’t know if he’s going to take her up because he is worried it might lead to this and that, a million babies. So it’s about a guy who’s afraid to commit.

Torsten Schmidt

Birth control? I guess, would’ve killed the song, sometimes you’ve just get a thing going.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Delirium”)

Torsten Schmidt

This whole thing about, “I got to know, are you for real?,” it’s hard enough to ask someone that in a one-on-one situation, or ask yourself that and then get it out of your head and muster up the courage to go, “What is this all about?” Now to go out there and do it in a pretty open forum and actually want people to buy it or whatnot, it’s definitely a bit of a process. How do you manage that?

Philip Owusu

Sorry, to get people to buy it? [laughter]

Torsten Schmidt

No, less the buying thing. You have something really personal there and all of a sudden you stand there and it’s almost like a love letter you’d put up on MySpace. “Here’s what I think about you. I don’t care, let the whole world know.” And on a really sensitive, touchy subject. In other words, how do you write about love?

Philip Owusu

There aren’t really any love songs on this album. That’s not a love song, it was written at a time when I couldn’t sleep and it’s actually about being delirious from not being able to sleep.

Torsten Schmidt

Insomnia is a horrible thing.

Philip Owusu

And I have it today, jetlagged as hell.

Torsten Schmidt

Insomnia is a strange state of mind, because you can’t really work but you still have all these ideas floating around.

Philip Owusu

Actually, it can be very creative for me sometimes to wake up – I don’t know about Robin – for me to wake up sometimes at night, you can lose some of the inhibitions and boundaries that might hold you back. It’s a good idea for me to have a recorder or something next to my bed. If I wake up, I can record something or try to write.

Torsten Schmidt

Then again, those recorders might be a lot more helpful, especially in that semi-conscious state of mind. You’re in this muddled state and to get so cerebral that you can muster up and get all the coordination going to write it down, even in a way you can still read it the next day, that’s the hard part. Recorders, any other helpful techniques and useful tools?

Robin Hannibal

I think being out of your normal state of mind can really work wonders in many ways. It can be like hangovers... You hear stuff a whole other way. If you make something in a normal state of mind, and hear it with a hangover, it’s a whole other way and that inspires you to do something entirely different on top of it.

Philip Owusu

It's probably why drugs and music are so closely related.

Torsten Schmidt

Not that we advocate the use of any mind altering substances at all. But, yes, I heard from people that it may be the case. [laughter]

Robin Hannibal

Someone you knew who told you something that knew someone.

Torsten Schmidt

It's people that tend to think a lot and they are pretty efficient when it comes to pushing the reset button by using drink or whatever. And after major, major hangovers, and after watching all the football that they could possibly watch, all of a sudden the thing that was in their head for like two weeks and seemed unsolvable, seems to be crystal, crystal clear. Yet again, I'm not really sure how good it is for your liver and all the other parts. Any other probably, slightly more healthy techniques?

Robin Hannibal

Carrots and orange juice.

Philip Owusu

David Lynch would argue meditation.

Robin Hannibal

It was an interesting question, also, you asked about the process from I mean doing something that's on your laptop or computer or whatever the transition into people actually buying it, and like it being our product in some ways.

Torsten Schmidt

Part of the industry.

Robin Hannibal

That's also a process that you go through in your mind also, coming to terms with also that. This track, which was the first one, there's been a lot of this off-kilter Detroit things. This wasn't certainly the first one, but in Denmark weren't really doing this kind of music, so also playing this to your friends, families, foes, whoever, and getting their reaction was a big part of this process, and wasn't always the reaction that one wanted. But that's part of the process also.

Torsten Schmidt

Can you paint a picture of the surroundings? Are there parties where you try these things out or is it more sitting around in the living room eating peanuts?

Robin Hannibal

A funny little anecdote about this. I remember “Blue Jay” being played at the biggest hip-hop party that’s held once a week and there were all these breakdancers. Everybody was really dancing and they put it on and even the breakdancers were really trying to get into it. Now it’s quite normal even in pop music to have things with these off-kilter, twitched beats, but at that time it was a bit new for some places in Denmark.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Lonnie’s Secret” / applause)

Philip Owusu

Thank you.

Torsten Schmidt

So who’s Lonnie?

Philip Owusu

This song was written at the time after the London bombings so Lonnie was the idea of a child that had been hurt, but also London itself.

Robin Hannibal

And you had the idea of the verse being this Marco Polo game where you’re running after each other, kind of a little thing about catching the guys who did it.

Philip Owusu

Oh yes, like a dark secret. Like a kid who’d been hurt, maybe in incest or something. That was the idea behind it.

Torsten Schmidt

So there’s about five different layers already. Quite a bit of room for interpretation. Do you consciously think about these things while you’re writing?

Philip Owusu

Yes, I think it’s a good idea for lyrics to be interpreted in different ways. I may have certain ideas and images that come to mind when I’m writing them, but it’s also a good thing if people can relate it to their own experience. There was this guy who wrote to us on MySpace once who really liked the “Blue Jay” song and he got the whole thing about the cartoon character. We thought, “What cartoon character?” But if that’s what spoke to him, who am I to disagree? Cool.

And at the same time, this thing about creating layers in the lyrics is something that keeps it interesting. Maybe you can go in and dig out something new for the next time you hear it. That’s the way we also do in the music.

Torsten Schmidt

Then again, if you have lyrics in repetitive music, either in a dancing environment or a semi-conscious listening sense, you tend not to pay full attention to the lyrics or the story. I don’t know if there’s anyone here who has ever managed to listen to the full meaning of the Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold.” I think it’s virtually impossible.

Philip Owusu

It’s a killer song, though.

Torsten Schmidt

It is a killer song, but if you want to know the lyrics, you have to read them without the music on, otherwise you’re just going to get lost.

Robin Hannibal

But as long as there is a voice, heaven can be something you can read and something more than just the phonetic sounds. That’s the element that combines it and gives it an extra sense, an extra meaning.

Torsten Schmidt

Another thing is probably patience. Not to listen to it, if you don’t like all of it, but to work on something, where, even after six minutes, you bring changes in and new dynamics and automation spaghetti and all that. Most people might just skip, play, 30 seconds and off they go, cut it apart.

Robin Hannibal

But that was also the really important thing about making it. We weren’t going to do the thing you tend to do when you make music on a computer, which is four bars, copy-paste, copy-paste; chorus, eight bars, verse, copy-paste, copy-paste. We wanted each section to live and breathe and not be the same as the next one, and that is hard to do on a computer, also because you can see the graphic of it. Just seeing the visual thing, the mathematics of it, but going against it. Sometimes we actually closed the laptop, or shut off the screen, or went into another room and just listened to it, from the kitchen or toilet or wherever. Just not listening to it when you look at it because that’s two different ways of experiencing music.

Torsten Schmidt

The ultimate fight against the Lego brick sound. He’s our next Danish [guy]. [laughter]

But it is depressing, in a sense, because one of our team members, DJ Zinc, is just so fed-up having to cater to a market in this drum & bass world where if he doesn’t do a 16 bar intro, 16 bar drop, 64 bars of this or whatever, people just won’t buy it or do their own edits.

Philip Owusu

The only thing you can really do is to do music for yourself. If you’re too concerned about whether it would fit into this and that category, then you’ll never really end up with a result you’ll be happy with anyhow. That’s always been our point of view, whenever we made a song, we took one song at a time and every song we made, we really went for what we really wanted to get in the end.

Robin Hannibal

You’re totally right. I mean, when it comes to everything, the bottom line is you have to like it yourself. I mean, not be the first CD or album you put on because you get really fed up with what you do in the end because you hear it so much, but still wanting to hear it, and being able to hear it and appreciating it. That should be the essence, the key thing of it, definitely.

Torsten Schmidt

You can only do you in that sense. Maybe we should move on a bit?

Philip Owusu

Yeah, this is the flipside of our Delirium 12”, it’s called “What It’s About.”

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “What It’s About” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

I guess, this one is slightly eclectic. You start out with Sly Stone meeting a ‘60s garage psychedelia band in a Chicago warehouse and end up with a Morgan Geist remix of a Stevie Wonder song. I guess it’s, what, four minutes or so, 3:47?

Robin Hannibal

I really have to give Philip the credit for this one ’cause I remember him playing it on his guitar and I was like, “I can hear this, but as a B-side for the 12"?” I couldn’t really place it in some ways, and he had already the whole melody of it, but it seemed so odd, but that’s the beauty of it.

Philip Owusu

We made it pretty fast as well. I think we made it in a bit more than a week or so, which is fast for us.

Torsten Schmidt

How do we have to picture this working process, do you have two different set-ups?

Philip Owusu

Yeah, set-ups. [points to laptop / laughs]

Robin Hannibal

The laptop being a set-up.

Torsten Schmidt

Set-up and granny’s cupboard. You’ve got a picture of that there, maybe you want to hold it up. [Philip holds laptop up to audience to show photo of the cupboard] So much for the Brill Building in New York, 1956.

Robin Hannibal

We both have a set-up but we always put the pieces together at my place in some ways. That has a cathartic effect, a finishing.

Torsten Schmidt

But it’s got to be some place.

Robin Hannibal

No, no, at that time I was the only one who had the monitor speakers and a faster computer. But now we’ve both got almost the same equipment.

Torsten Schmidt

So what sort of equipment do you use?

Philip Owusu

A Mac.

Torsten Schmidt

And doing everything inside it? You said earlier you play the guitar and other instruments as well, as in?

Robin Hannibal

We both play, not everything, but everything on it is played. Philip did most of the guitar and bass and we switched between different keyboards. But the process is hard to describe because being two people and working together, it doesn’t become my keyboard figure or Philip’s da-da-da-da, it becomes this Owusu & Hannibal figure in some ways.

Torsten Schmidt

And here’s the crucial bit, because most people doing music have the urge to express something that’s within them and along comes this nasty thing called ego.

Philip Owusu

We don’t have that.

Robin Hannibal

I don’t know about that. I mean, it’s also about trust and wanting to work with each other and I think we’re pretty good about giving each other the things we made and the other experimenting with it or developing it. Of course, we have ideas we want to bring to the table and have as that idea, but if you work with two people, then two people have to be satisfied. If you work with alone, only one has to be satisfied, so there are some sacrifices but hopefully for the better.

Philip Owusu

There was always a situation where you know that if I gave something to Robin, I knew he’ll bring something good to the table. You could always trust him to make something good with it.

Torsten Schmidt

What about that nasty compromise word?

Robin Hannibal

Doesn’t have to be nasty.

Philip Owusu

Some of the stuff that I really like, some of the tunes I’ve done by myself, you basically know everything that happens: The next chord, you can imagine yourself playing that riff or whatever. But even though I’ve heard those songs a lot of times, the stuff I can appreciate is the stuff that Robin has put on, because it’s played in way that has a different logic to it from something I would do. And that’s what keeps it fresh.

Torsten Schmidt

There can be a great satisfaction in having an idea and giving it to someone and he turns it into something greater.

Philip Owusu

Exactly. Especially if the situation is one where you’re working with someone you trust. Then the end result hopefully comes together to be better than what you could do individually.

Torsten Schmidt

When you said you played these things, did any of you have some kind of band experience before that?

Robin Hannibal

Not any worth mentioning.

Philip Owusu

I used to play the guitar in a punk band, but we never really practiced and were always shit. That’s about it when it comes down to rehearsal and band situations. But we both worked on other stuff before doing this.

Robin Hannibal

And have a bit of formal training. Not crazy much, but enough.

Torsten Schmidt

So with that formal training, and knowing that almost everything on the album is played, what can you actually play? Or is it more like Prince style, “Hey, I can play everything”?

Philip Owusu

We play to get by, but we are not in any way virtuosos or anything.

Robin Hannibal

We also had the concept of wanting real instruments, but wanting to mess with them, and not having necessarily the sound of an acoustic guitar, but maybe getting it to sound like something else.

Torsten Schmidt

Essentially, you were creating your own samples and resampling yourselves?

Philip Owusu

Sometimes we would have a track that was played more or less conventionally, just maybe a bass or guitars and keys and stuff. And then the end result had a lot to do with the post production process where you would mess around with the sound, an acoustic guitar wouldn’t sound like an acoustic guitar. That’s also one of the good things about a set-up like Logic, it gives you a good chance to fuck up with stuff. Mess up with stuff. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

Any favorite plugins? Favorite mess-up tool?

Robin Hannibal

[The album] was done really minimal. A lot of stuff we did was just the stuff that was available. We both like gear and we both like sounds, but we aren’t the tech or gear freaks that need that Fender Precision bass or that plug- in. I can only speak for myself, but my thinking of it is really that it’s about the ears and doing music with what you have. If you buy an EQ that costs twice the amount of the one that you’re using, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to EQ it better. It’s all about how you hear it. Of course it’s probably better but it’s still also about how you use it.

Philip Owusu

The next track is quite a long instrumental, so we might have to jump in at some point. It’s called “Monster.”

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Monster” / applause)

By the way, that was about the Muhammad drawings.

Torsten Schmidt

So what did you say about them?

Philip Owusu

It’s about racism.

Torsten Schmidt

So where’s the lyric sheet with the album?

Philip Owusu

I think it comes with the CD. If not, people can ask us via MySpace and we’ll send it out. It’s happened a couple of times already.

Torsten Schmidt

So after the overboard eclecticism of the track before that, you’ve again gone [makes extravagant hand gesture] and created some sort of movement there.

Robin Hannibal

Totally. Also, “What It’s About” is a vocal track in many ways and “Monster” slows it down a bit and gives you an opportunity to breathe a bit.

Torsten Schmidt

So when you decided to come up with that order, did you do 30 tracks and narrow them down?

Philip Owusu

No, we spent a year and a half on this album and basically every song we did is on it.

Robin Hannibal

Totally. I mean, both of us are creatures who like to do something perfect and not let go of the idea. Stubborn kinda people who really want to finish it, instead of demoing 40 songs and doing them roughly. We really wanted to finish it. And we did that. We weren’t skipping in between, every time we were focusing on that track.

Philip Owusu

Maybe there were one or two tracks that didn’t go past the sketch level, but besides that, whenever we started, it came out on the album.

Torsten Schmidt

But with that perfectionism there might be certain people who find it really hard to let go at some stage. So do you do weekly voting sessions? How do you come up with the point where you say, “OK, this is what we want”?

Robin Hannibal

That really is the hard thing about it. When is something done? I don’t think there’s one answer to that. Sometimes it feels like something that’s never going to end, but then you come up something that feels like the epilogue or the end of it and it all makes sense. Some of it is hard labor, some really hard stuff, because we really were tired of doing it. It was a really long process because some of them are such long tracks.

Philip Owusu

I think the most difficult tracks were “Le Fox” and “Lonnie’s Secret.” With “Lonnie’s Secret,” we had a completely different version to start with, but we changed it because the vocals didn’t really fit with the track we had.

Torsten Schmidt

You say it takes a while and you want to have it really perfect, but people do need to eat in the meantime as well. Apart from granny’s home cooking, how do you survive all that time spent doing something?

Robin Hannibal

That’s a hard question. In the beginning I was managing a record store also, and Philip was constantly working on this all the time. I could see almost immediately that both of us needed all the time off in order to do it. Money-wise, it’s not like the best business to be in unless you want do something that’s going to be Billboard Top 100, so you need to want to do it and make sacrifices.

Torsten Schmidt

How do you organize your daily life then, especially when you’ve got another person to fit into your schedules?

Robin Hannibal

These are really good questions. What did we do, actually? It was about one and a half years ago, I can’t really remember.

Philip Owusu

The situation would be, like, we’d work on it in our own time whenever we had the opportunity, then we’d get together and put it together. Maybe there’d be a beat part to fix, put it together with another part, or some keys that seemed to fit with something else. We’d often work on our own time, and then meet up at Robin’s place at night and sit and work on it and put all the pieces together.

Robin Hannibal

It was also thinking out of the box sometimes. For instance, Philip would be working on a lyric, then there would be some time that we could use to work on something that we’d use for something else later. It’s also figuring out how to work around each other’s schedules as best as possible. Also, you can’t really force creativity. There were weeks where we weren’t really up for it and we’d need to get away from a track and listen to other stuff, do other stuff, and then being able to hear it with fresh ears.

Torsten Schmidt

Regarding the practicality of it, because there are going to be quite a few people in here who are going to want to collaborate at some stage, once you recorded all the stuff, you are working there with a computer and there is only one track pad or mouse, one person is always in the sort of passive role. Anything you learned there?

Robin Hannibal

Giving each other space, I think. There is always something where the other one is quicker or better at. It might not be so obvious at the start, but you tend to kind of figure that out during the process. Maybe someone is better at chopping something up, or maybe someone is better at marking everything and arranging it, mixing this or that. We would just take turns when we were working together.

Torsten Schmidt

So what’s the one thing he could do that you wish could do as well?

Philip Owusu

I don’t know, there are many things. He has a different perspective than me. Sometimes, the way I would do things would seem a bit stale to me, and it’s nice to have someone to do it differently.

Torsten Schmidt

You mean you’d play chords and melodies and wind up with the same progressions?

Philip Owusu

Exactly, it’s good to have a fresh perspective on something. It’s always nice to have somebody who you can play something, and you know that the response is something you can trust. He won’t just say, “Yeah, it’s good,” because he’s a friend of yours. If he thinks it’s shit, he’ll let you know it’s shit.

Torsten Schmidt

So he’s said that something you spent the last three days on is shit. What happens?

Philip Owusu

That has happened.

Robin Hannibal

That has happened both ways, definitely. Then you have to find a way to take the defeat in the beginning and then afterwards look at it constructively, that’s the only way.

Torsten Schmidt

Still, it pisses you off.

Robin Hannibal

Totally. Music is – all arts are – something really vulnerable to the person doing it. That’s when it’s honest and real. In the beginning it can be hard, but then you need to look at it and see. Feedback and criticism is going to happen at some stage, you have to look at it constructively.

Torsten Schmidt

What do you do with the feedback – especially from friends – where you know they won’t say anything mean, but the things they are not saying actually says so much more?

Philip Owusu

That’s the kind of feedback you can’t use.

Torsten Schmidt

If someone tells you the kick is wack, then you know what to do.

Robin Hannibal

I think it’s also really important to know the motives of the person you’re playing it to, and you can usually figure that out or know that already. Once you have that, a lot of the stuff that the person tells you know their meaning.

Torsten Schmidt

A bit like counter-espionage.

Robin Hannibal

In some ways, yeah, sure. If you play it to someone, who’s also doing music and they’re just into indie and rock, they’ll look at it from that perspective and taking that into account is a big part of that, I guess.

Torsten Schmidt

So let’s move over to the last third.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Watch”)

Torsten Schmidt

So, Prince Rogers Nelson. Discuss.

Philip Owusu

Well, the Prince influence is more the next track, actually. We let that be very open and very clear.

Robin Hannibal

It’s funny you say this because it actually started a bit, we wanted to, Philip had the chords and the melody for it and we wanted it to be just drums and vocals, the original track. And it was just too beautiful in some ways. It was more of a ballad and we were trying to force it into something that it wasn’t, so we ended up going there after the song.

Torsten Schmidt

Your top three Prince tracks?

Philip Owusu

You can’t just name three.

Torsten Schmidt

Top 30? Favorite album?

Philip Owusu

Even albums, I can’t name one.

Torsten Schmidt

Top four.

Philip Owusu

Off the top of my head I think I would say I really like “Do You Lie,” “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker.” It’s crazy, there are so many, so many.

Robin Hannibal

Also the early stuff, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999.

Philip Owusu

“All the Critics Love You In New York” is a crazy track.

Torsten Schmidt

Nice Hoover sound here, by the way.

Robin Hannibal

The vacuum beat.

Torsten Schmidt

Speaking of Prince, then.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Upstairs, Downstairs” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

Given the right amount of medication and other intoxications, there might be a person or two in this room who – and again, this is something I’ve only heard about – might break out into a weird singing voice, especially under the shower. Now, to muster up the courage to actually go and record that is a bit of a step, especially singing in that kind of voice because you’re putting yourself next to so many people.

Philip Owusu

I think the general thing with this album is there are so many mistakes. There’s so many things, imperfections, even though we try our best, at some point you have to accept that things are not perfect and you’ll do it better next time. It’s not that bad to put yourself up there.

Torsten Schmidt

Which in the end is why maybe D’Angelo has a lot longer career than, let’s say, Maxwell, ‘cause you hear the dirt and the grit. Whereas Maxwell, yes, he’s got a beautiful singing voice, but it’s almost too beautiful to be true and everything is “I’m dying of beauty” at some stage.

Robin Hannibal

That’s the dirt in the machinery. That’s the really important thing we both acknowledge, I guess. With a certain amount of beauty you also need something opposite in order to take in the beauty. Because if you only get that for 60 or 65 minutes, then you you won’t be able to feel it or recognize it. I think it’s in there in almost all of the tracks, things clashing against each other, or genres that really aren’t supposed to match.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s always about those imperfections, the freckles and whatnot that make it really work.

Robin Hannibal

We had that a lot of times where there were, as you said, small faults, and if it sounded good, we would just keep them. Like, little tweaks or if we cut up a vocal wrong or moved it in the wrong position, we might actually use it for that if it sounded good, even perhaps better than the original idea.

Torsten Schmidt

But this whole thing of cherishing those imperfections, because those are things that really make you love something to a greater degree, it gets kind of tricky once strings enter the arena, right?

Robin Hannibal

But again, it’s about doing as good as possible, and not perfect, makes everything possible, even strings. Not dirty, but not like a symphony or like you hear in the opera, just doing it the way we hear it.

Torsten Schmidt

So, how did you approach that touchy subject of strings then? How do you write string lines in the arrangement?

Philip Owusu

Basically the same way that we write voices, pretty much.

Robin Hannibal

Also, it was different from track to track. Some of them had strings already in them, and some we went after having the chords.

Torsten Schmidt

I mean, it does help if you know a chord from another one. But you’re still doing that by ear?

Robin Hannibal

We both have an amount of formal training.

Torsten Schmidt

When you say formal training, how did you get that?

Robin Hannibal

I can only speak for myself, but I took half a year of composition and musical theory and learned some of it. The rest of it is just by ear. It is important to know what you do, but it’s also important to forget it and do it by ear.

Philip Owusu

I think the same way. When it comes to arrangement, the best way is to do it by ear and the rest. Your ear is the best guide.

Torsten Schmidt

Nevertheless, the dymanics of strings are slightly different. If you hear a slightly elaborate piece by Mahler or Debussy, all the different parts of the string family are all doing something entirely different. That’s not exactly your classic Detroit techno approach.

Robin Hannibal

But it’s also being two people. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you wouldn’t be able to play like 60 people do. Even though you wrote all the things, you would never be able to get it to feel like 60 people. And, of course, we being only the two of us, some of it is being played, but some of it being programmed as well to some extent, it’s going to be hard to get that 60-piece orchestra or Mahler feeling to it.

Torsten Schmidt

Let’s move on.

Robin Hannibal

Alright, this is the other instrumental track we did, it’s called “The Elephants.”

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “The Elephants” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

Elephants are obviously the first thing one thinks about when you hear Denmark, right?

Robin Hannibal

Yeah, obviously.

Torsten Schmidt

Why on earth elephants?

Philip Owusu:

As you can tell, I have some African background. My dad is from Ghana. I grew up in different countries in Africa, in Ghana, Tanzania, Botswana. My mother works for a Danish NGO. She’s in Nicaragua now. But I don’t know why we called it “Elephants.” Somehow the title went well with it, it suited it.

Robin Hannibal

There are some sounds of elephants in there that we used. In that way we kind of got the idea. But I don’t remember what came first, though, the title or the elephants.

Torsten Schmidt

So who’s the one with the James Brown grandfather?

Robin Hannibal

That’s me. My father is part German and part American, his name is actually Braun, but James Braun. He got a little bit of both. When you pronounce it, it sounds like James Brown. We had a lot of fun about that in the beginning also.

Torsten Schmidt

OK, from James Brown to Carolina.

Philip Owusu

“Caroline, No.” This is a song we did for Rewind!, a compilation on Ubiquity where everyone does cover tracks. This is a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Caroline, No.”

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Caroline, No” / applause)

Torsten Schmidt

Dilla, Brian Wilson, Prince, you like to aim low.

Philip Owusu

Aim low? [laughs] What can I say to that? We’ve listened to a lot of the Beach Boys too. If you do music you have to search.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s school. Primary school.

Philip Owusu

Basically, yeah. You have to look everywhere. The reason we did that cover was that for people who had heard “Delirium” or “Blue Jay,” it was a little bit outside of what they’d expect from us. I think the Beach Boys is somewhere different.

Torsten Schmidt

Do you ever get that nerdy and listen to those box sets they keep putting out in the last few years, where they have 800 different stages of Pet Sounds, where you can actually hear rehearsal takes? You realize how many hundred different ideas are actually in there, all those Klezmer epics. And good on Brian for changing the chorus. The yen needed to go.

Robin Hannibal

When you are doing music yourself it’s good to listen to someone who’s also battled for something, done something like 680 takes of this song or made 100 versions of it. That way, as a study it’s good, but you should also respect the artist’s decision about the final track they made. I’m know how it works, but usually the label owns all the masters and all the takes, so I’m not sure Brian Wilson or the other Beach Boy guys think it’s the best way to advertise their music, having 120 different versions of “Good Vibrations” out. But as a study it’s good, because you get into how they made it. But still, you should respect their decision of what is the final track.

Torsten Schmidt

How does that decision-making process work with you guys? Do you send it over to the label and they OK it, or do they come back and say, “Look, after three and a half minutes that crap needs to go”?

Philip Owusu

They basically take what we send them. There hasn’t been a case yet of them saying they didn’t like it.

Robin Hannibal

One of the tracks we did they replied that it was OK. They liked the next one.

Torsten Schmidt

It’s the one you played least as well. [laughs]

Robin Hannibal

That gave us the incentive of wanting to do it again.

Philip Owusu

We did two versions of this song, actually I think we did three versions, but this was the one we liked so it ended up on the record.

Robin Hannibal

I think it was your idea – and I really appreciate that you got that idea – of only sending them it when it was totally done. Otherwise, it could’ve been really messy, “Here’s the new demo of this, blah blah blah.” And also, as with the Beach Boys thing, you should only play the version you’re totally satisfied with yourself, because it’s all about doing you.

Torsten Schmidt

Is there any particular reason the next song is the last one, apart from the outro?

Robin Hannibal

A bit to do with the tempo. It’s quicker than most of the other songs.

Philip Owusu

It stands apart from the rest of the album a little bit. Maybe.

Torsten Schmidt

So you get like a quick [whistles] before you go.

Philip Owusu

We agreed on that being the second-to-last song.

Robin Hannibal

It’s called “Another Mile.”

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Another Mile” / applause)

Philip Owusu

That’s about the end of it, almost.

Torsten Schmidt

So another mile, another single, another album. What’s in the works?

Robin Hannibal

A lot of stuff. We’re both working on numerous different projects and just making as much music as possible.

Torsten Schmidt

So what’s up with all the Boom Clap?

Robin Hannibal

That’s getting released in January and there’s another project called Non Plus that’s also coming out at the start of next year. Philip has done a song with Metro Area and is working on some stuff also.

Torsten Schmidt

So you’re now inclined to the art of recording handclaps for three weeks? Attention to detail galore.

Philip Owusu

Attention to detail, yeah.

Robin Hannibal

And some remixes also, that should be out now.

Philip Owusu

Yeah, I did a couple of remixes earlier this year.

Torsten Schmidt

So is there any jealousy when one of you is doing something with someone else?

Robin Hannibal

No, not from my side, it’s just another thing. I think it’s important to not do the same album or the same kind of music. As long as you aren’t trying to do that then it’s hard to get jealous because it’s not the same. I don’t think either of us wants to do the same thing again and again and again.

Philip Owusu

Initially the idea was to do one album, then that would be it.

Torsten Schmidt:

Have you changed your mind?

Philip Owusu

For now it’s one album, but we’ll see what happens. But right now, we’re both working on other stuff, our attention is needed for some other projects. When that’s over, maybe we’ll see then.

Torsten Schmidt

So you give each other the space to keep the relationship happy.

Robin Hannibal

It’s important, I think. It’s important not to stress or force anything. If it’s going to come, it’s going to come, it needs to be real.

Torsten Schmidt

Thank god there was no innuendo in there. Maybe this is the point at which we open it up to questions from around here.

Robin Hannibal

There’s the “Outro.”

Torsten Schmidt

Yeah, but the “Outro” is the outro.

Robin Hannibal

Yeah, you’re right, good one.

Audience Member

Man, I dig your sound and I relate to you guys as being two guys taking an instrument and taking the sound off of it. But this is something that’s troubling me and maybe you have the answer. With your vocal harmonies and all the instruments you’re doubling, how do you take that from your grandma’s cupboard to the live stage? I’m hearing your sound and man, that’s a big sound and I’m liking that sound, and I’m pretty sure people would want to hear it live. You can use hired musicians, but then you’ll get a corny sound because it’s not you two, and that’s the sound people want to hear. I don’t know how to do that.

Philip Owusu

Pretty early on, we kind of decided that if we were going to do it live… we decided first of all not to take this project out live and the reason was that, as you say, it would be a big task to transform it into a live format, with the choirs and the strings and what have you. But at the time when we were talking about it, the idea was to make a production for each track and then strip it down to the instruments that you really need. There are very few bookers that will pay the money it costs to bring out 20 people, especially for a new band. But as I said we’re not taking it out live.

Torsten Schmidt

But to a certain degree, keeping it as a studio project, isn’t that kind of commercial suicide?

Robin Hannibal

In some ways it is. The way the music business is moving, it seems like the sales of records is going down and the amount of live performances and people going out to see them is really increasing. So, in some ways it is commercial suicide. But also, what is the concept and the idea behind it? Not that it’s not meant to be performed live, but it’s just meant as an opera in some ways, or a symphony, and some is made for live music. I think a lot of music in this genre is really hard to be performed live, because it’s not made live. It’s a whole other entity in some ways. We heard this all the way through as an album and that was one of the key things that we wanted, to do a real album that you wanted to hear from start to finish. Maybe sometimes this idea clashes with doing a live album that has one sound and all drums are recorded alike and the guitar sounds like a guitar and the bass sounds like a bass.

Philip Owusu

But then again, at the same time if you put your focus on composition, then basically anything can be reinterpretated. Every song that has a very distinct studio sound or cut-up sound could be interpretated with a ukulele, any kind of instrument.

Audience Member

Have you guys been approached about doing live shows so far?

Philip Owusu

Yes, quite a few times.

Audience Member

You guys just say, “Naw, we’re not going to do it”?

Philip Owusu

I mean you know, it’s a whole different work. Not right now, right now we’re more concerned with this.

Audience Member

I’ve got one last question. When you guys are recording in the studio, and you add in like different harmonies, when do you know, like man, you’re not going to extend that cord no more? You’re just going stay there, or like you said, it took two months to do that song, when do you realize man, this is it, it’s over or I’m not going to add another harmony line or another arrangement? That’s a big problem for me also, because you want to add so much and you hear so many things, so when is it done?

Philip Owusu

I think sometimes you just get fed up working on the song and you just need to get it out of the way, you know? The way I see it, I think, for us, the thing that kind of worked for us was to kind of, like, record as many ideas early on as possible. Even if it’s stuff that maybe didn’t make sense at the time, when the inspiration was new, record as much as possible. Then do that, and some stage, when the inspiration is gone for it and you just can’t bear listening to it, you just got to let it go.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Robin Hannibal

Also if I might just add something to it sometimes there just isn’t room for any more. If you have a track and you have instruments playing different parts, there’s just a limit sometimes also. Then the cleaner comes, and then you go in and sometimes you have to clean something, or take something away. Not that it’s not good, but it might just be too much, or there might just be too much at this certain bar, or this part of the chorus or whatever. And then you have to evaluate what is the most important aspect of it, or part of it. Is it the harmony? Is it the guitar line that is doing the melody? Is it the counterpart between these two? What is it?

Audience Member

Hello. Good one. I was thinking about why in your session you’ve been talking about many things that you use that I see as, what do you say? Progressive or experimental things. The fact that you used equipment that maybe isn’t perfectly working. For me, for example, I use sequence that is quit, it’s not really tight and stuff like that. Also the thing with insomnia, you go up in the middle of the night making music you like, like Delirium. Is that something that you’ve worked with before Owusu & Hannibal as well, in your teenage years and experimenting. Has that been a conscious thing for you to work with that, in that sort of way?

Robin Hannibal

I have an example, actually, for that. When you mentioned Delirium that I remember that sometimes when you’re working, it’s really important just to try doing something differently than what you usually tend to do. I remember some parts of the beat, I import it to an audio file and threw them in without even touching them, and just looped it up and just played it and just listened to that and just took bits and parts of it and just moved it. That could be an example to how you can just go away from yourself in some ways, because normally if you do something or if you want to write a song on a guitar or you start with your favorite chord or you play it at a certain pace of rhythm, just going against that in some ways. There’s numerous ways to do it. Or just try another instrument. Just one you weren’t really thinking about starting on, like a glockenspiel. I don’t know.

That can really affect you or taking something you’ve done and just pitching a hundred BPM quicker and just taking something out of it. It’s all about going against your rhythms in some ways. Also, just for the pleasure of it for yourself in many ways, because that’s when you made something that is not within yourself, but in some ways out of yourself and you can look at it freshly in some ways.

I don’t know. [addressing Philip] Are you an anarchist? Have you always been up late and never slept at night?

Philip Owusu

Sorry, I didn’t really get your questions. [laughs]

Audience Member

For me at least, I’ve been trying to treasure and take care of those moments that when you’re out of your box, and you let go of all the rules and the bars that are within artistry. You can do it as we talked about earlier, like the stuff that we shouldn’t mention here. Or you can do it while you’re sleeping and you just wake up and feel like, “Whoa, this is not the world I live in.” You want to do something out of that.

Has that been a conscious thing for you to use that in your music for a long time? Or has it just come to you naturally? Or is it a conscious experimentality?

Philip Owusu

I think in order not to bore yourself, you need to try to approach things in a new fashion, in a new way. This thing about doing it, working late at night or whatever. I know sometimes if you, you may tend to have the same approach to when it’s time for you to work. You sit and you do the same thing, you hit the same chord or whatever. Pretty soon you notice that you’re doing the same song that you did half a year ago. A way to overcome that is to have a different approach to the song.

Audience Member

Oh yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Robin Hannibal

I think there’s some conceptual things also about some of the tracks that I really like that we were discussing. Like what would the theme be, or playing tracks to each other, or I really want to do something like this, or you would say this kind of feeling would be really cool. That way was also getting away from what we would normally just do if we would just sit down and just jammed. We would just do ourselves but in that way we could also get away sometime. “I really want to do a reggae track, but I never did it…” That could also be a way just to get into a fresh perspective, into new stuff.

Audience Member

Hey man, I enjoyed the stuff, it’s cool. You mentioned that you approach strings the same way that you guys would approach vocals. Could you elaborate on that? The second question is, you didn’t actually say what you used on... You said you didn’t really have much stuff but, I guess, in the post production primarily of the vocals because it’s really wide and lush. What did you use? What’s the plug-in?

Philip Owusu

The plug-in for the vocals? To get to your first question, I think... But then again sometimes we approach the strings in a different way and the way that we did it may not be the way that, that’s the right way to do it or something. The parts that I arranged I thought that I would do it the same way that I do vocals. Very often a melody at a time, sometimes you would hear, “Ah, that would be really nice if we could get that note in somewhere.” Then approach that note. It’s basically the same way that I would do a choir. Sometimes, it’s just there’s a different approach to each track.

Robin Hannibal

Also, sometimes strings can really trick you because something that might not sound good on a regular keyboard can really be interesting because of the analog or acoustic sound of strings. You can just mash chords or harmonies that wouldn’t sound interesting for some other instruments. As you said, sometimes experimenting, trying stuff that you wouldn’t do if you would sit and analyse it. Just try that and that can really give emotion. It’s all about sometimes doing what’s obvious, but putting something on top of it that it’s not, that can really get you somewhere that you haven’t been before. And regards to vocals, you better answer that. [addressing Philip] How we you get it to sound so...

Philip Owusu

Gear-wise, you don’t even want to know. We didn’t really use any plug-ins to clean up the sound or anything like that. Which is also kind of like, what do you call it? A decision we made early on, particularly with the “Blue Jay” track. The single vocal that sounds almost frail. There’s no delay or re-verb. It’s just right there. In a way, it seems very vulnerable. That can be pretty interesting. It can sound good.

Robin Hannibal

But you had clear ideas a lot of the times about how to pan them, or put them, to give that feeling of, as you said before, not an orchestra but a whole vocal group in some ways. That was pretty thought-of. It was well constructed. It wasn’t just by coincidence. Sometimes, maybe. I don’t know.

But we didn’t use any crazy plug-ins. A lot of it was, “Yeah, could be.” But a lot of it was just the plug-ins from the program, and some of it was a bit more interesting. We used to PSP. I can’t even remember what it’s called. It’s called limiter, compressor. We made our own mixes and then we went to San Francisco to master it. We really have to give the master guy some big credit also for really…

Philip Owusu

It was a guy called George Horn. We went to the Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. This guy had sat down with, like, basically, of jazz back in the days. Heavy jazz people. Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane and stuff like that yeah. They were masters, reel-to-reel tapes lined right in front of us with old Coltrane things.

Robin Hannibal

Really old funny guy. Really messy studio and he just had his whole own unique set-up. Running it through eight or nine different things that were just pumping.

Philip Owusu

Some of them were home stereo amps.

Robin Hannibal

Totally! Really crazy built-in speakers, and they looked like they have a mountain or rocks. They were built into the room, also. It was this crazy studio. He was the real deal in many ways.

Torsten Schmidt

Maybe tell us something about the “Outro” before we get a chance to thank you and let everyone off to lunch. Right before Henry can make his announcement.

Philip Owusu

I think this was the very last thing we did, eh? Was it? Or “Upstairs, Downstairs,” was that the last one? This was the last one I think we did. This is the first time Robin; he could sing lead. He had done other stuff earlier. After working on a year and a half, all of a sudden he sings this track and I think he does it really well.

Robin Hannibal

It’s called “Heaven Above Us.” It’s in Danish also.

(music: Owusu & Hannibal – “Outro”)

Torsten Schmidt

Owusu and Hannibal, everybody. Thank them again. [applause]