By 
Interview with Lydmor by Livingfash
With the release of her latest Album and busy tour dates, Lydmor a Copenhagen based electronic producer, composer, singer writer took some time to talk to us about herself and the new album.
I’ll have to say it was such a joy to listen to it. The album flows easily from song to song and it a bit mesmerizing and easy to relate to. There are some hooks in the lyrics that will wake you up if you happen to find yourself day dreaming.
With her spellbinding story telling, mixed with the beats of the songs are a perfect fit for relaxing either when you are dancing or just seating and looking at the sunset. This album is a great mix. it calms the mind.
1-Lydmor, could you please tell us a little bit about you and your background, i.e. where you’re from, when did you started wrinting music, how was growing up in your hometown etc.
I grew up in a small town on the danish countryside. The town in itself was rather boring, and people in it mostly just cared about football and reality tv. Fortunately I had a really creative family, many on my own age and we were kinda outside of all of that. I was very much a dreamer as a child. Actually, I still am. I daydream all the time. I did a lot of creative things, making small plays, writing short stories and playing the clarinet. When I became a teenager I got an interest in writing songs, and things just slowly evolved from there. Getting to where I am today has been a very slow organic process of discovery and experimentation.
2- Lydmor! Your artistic name. how did you come up with it?
Haha. It actually started as a bit of a joke. I was a part of a big project where I had a small DIY studio that people could record in for free, and in the project was also a girl who did free food. In Denmark we have this expression madmor (translates to food mother) that we use lovingly for a woman who makes food for us. People called her madmor, and then at some point they started calling me lydmor (sound mother), for fun, and it just kinda stuck.
3- Now, to the question on everyone’s mind. How did you end up in Shanghai?
Well I was going through some kind of crisis. Everything in my life was fucking up – at the same time. My lovelife, my creativety, my carreer. It just felt like I had no idea what I was doing, and I needed to do something drastic to change that.
The idea of moving to Shanghai kinda started creeping in on me. There was something mysterious about the city, the few times I had been there, and I felt like there was something I needed to DO there. I didn’t really know what. Finally the need to move became very insistant. So i moved!
4-What did you enjoy the most about your experience in Shanghai? and was there any interesting, awkward or just funny moment you remember from your days there?
Shanghai is a very interesting place. It is somehow the city of lost souls. And there is a darkness there as well, that I sometimes have trouble describing. You’ll have this moment, after a few months of living there. It’s sort of like a point of no return. You’ll climb to the top of the highest skyscraper you can find, and you stare wildly in each direction. Looking to find a place, where the city ends. It doesn’t. It feels like it is eternal. And you feel so small. But then, if you’re lukcy, the Shanghai realization hits you. And you start to get it. The skyline was a mirror. And because it was always there, then so are you. And that’s where it starts to get really interesting.
Now to the music.
5- The flow of the album is very nice and smooth, how long did it take you to complete?
A LONG TIME. I’m very particular with my solo project. It has to be perfect, it has to be interesting and I spend so much time turning every single sound, every single word, everything until it is exactly as I want it. This album is probably all in all, 3 years of my life. But it’s hard to put into a set timeframe because in the beginning I also did a lot of things that I didn’t end up using. But it’s like I needed those mistakes to be able to make the finished piece.
6-It’s rally fascinating how you used the novel 2666 by Roberto Bolaño as an inspiración for this album, what was the moving factor about 2666?
Bolano is a VERY interesting writer! He has a lot of a certain thing that I always look for in all art forms, be it movies or books or music. I guess you could call it mystery. But it’s more than that. It doesn’t feel like it’s fabricated. The mystery is real. And the darkness is real. In 2666, he keeps spiraling around the story in a way where it feels like it is more a circle than a line. I wanted to do the same on an album, so in story telling format, my new album is very much inspired by that.
7-Claudia is a really catchy complicated song. It’s not as straight forward or less complicated like Dim, killing Time or Shanghai Roar. could you give some insight into Claudia?
Claudia is a complicated song because it describes a complicated thing. It was one of the songs that took the longest time to make. Right from the beginning I knew exactly what it needed to do, but I also knew it would take a long time to get it right. It needed to be very street and make you think of a tough girl, but at the same time it needed to have a feeling of extreme fragileness lying under it, like a sharp ice shard that might splinter and melt anytime. And then it needed an extreme sense of anger in the end.
It was immensely satisfying when it finally was finished.
8-In the album, “ I told you, I’d tell them our story” who are you talking to, Is it about your adventure in Shanghai?
I am telling a story about a group of people in Shanghai. Atleast, that’s what it is on the surface. But like 2666, there are many layers. I’ve built a maze for you to get lost in.
Now, some fun questions
9-Are you currently reading any other novel or book?
YES! I am reading The Idiot by Dostojevski and I am SO SO EXCITED about it! I really didn’t expect to be so drawn in by a novel from 1800th century Russia, but I am like an addict, reading it all the time, every single minute I can spare I’m reading it.
10-If you have to move and could only take 3 items with you what would they be?
My computer, my keyboard and my microphone. So I could create things, music, write and so on.
Images provided courtesy of HFN music, image credit: neal mc queen
More on Lydmor at http://lydmor.dk/
