Orbiting around the Asteroids Galaxy Tour

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour’s Mette Lindberg and Lars Iversen have spent the last ten years moving through a succession of different bands, never finding creative happiness in any of them. The two outsize personalities felt cramped by the whims and idea of other musicians, and decided to take responsibility into their own hands. Focusing on the simplicity of pop music, they started on the path that led to the creation of the Asteroids Galaxy Tour.

Despite a ringing endorsement from Apple, a front woman seemingly plucked from an H&M commercial shoot and a six-date slot on the Electronic Beats Recommends club tour, the band lacks press polish: they answer most questions defensively and argumentatively, declare that lyricists are not poets, think most Danish music is too intelligent, and asking them to elaborate on the meaning of songs is akin into stepping into the unknown realms of Area 51 - some things are best left a mystery.

Which question would you rather I not ask, a) your fondness for a vintage sound, b) how “Around the Bend” got the iPod commercial or c) how you came up with your name? Or should I not be asking any of them?

Lars: Any of them. But it’s fine. Its just getting quite boring having to answer those questions over and over -- people really want to put us into a certain genre so they ask us ‘what kind of music do you play’ and we can’t really explain that.

I get a sense from your music and image that you want to be aligned with a free and eclectic sound rather than coming across as a straight pop band.

L: I can see your point, but we are definitely a pop band, and we definitely play pop music and have always enjoyed pop music. But at the same time we are ourselves onstage and backstage; we are not manufactured or designed by anyone and we are real people. If what you get out of it is some kind of bohemian, Moroccan eclectic jewellery style then it’s fine with us, but that’s just who we are and how we look.

Regardless, it’s a struggle in the pop industry to be who you want to be.

Mette: Lars and me are the main people in the Asteroids Galaxy, we do the music and Lars is a producer and everything was done by us. The artwork was a big part of that, we started our own record label, so in that way, we are in control of our music and no one is telling us that I have to show us my tits on the cover, so it will sell music. We are in control.

You once said in an interview “Many of our lyrics have serious or sad undertones, like loneliness and feelings like you don't belong to a certain group of people”. What do you find so sad?

L: We’re definitely not trying to make particularly sad music, but it’s just what comes out when we make it. We get a certain feeling of loneliness, especially when you’re sitting in a one-bedroom apartment in Copenhagen, certain thoughts come to mind, and certain songs express that feeling. We actually don’t like the question ‘what are your songs about?’ because it’s too hard to describe it.
M: The listener should discover the music; if we talk about it, it will we kill the experience. It’s so boring to talk about lyrics, and if we should, we would be poets or writers.

Well, you are in a way.

L: No. We don’t see ourselves that way. We see ourselves as music performers and lyricists are instruments just like a bass line, and that’s what we do. It’s not like we have certain agenda or subject we always write about, it’s all pretty random.

Are you guys together?

L: Sorry what is that? …. No, we are not, we are a couple but not in that way.
M: People never ask about that, I think they are shy? I think its crazy for people to be together; it’s not usual that couples play in bands. I have tried it though. It’s usually disastrous.

Some people have their whole lives wrapped around the band.

M: Well you know, we gave birth to this project Asteroids Galaxy Tour.
L: Without having sex. You can quote us on that.

You have mentioned that your [iPod commercial]single “Around the Bend” is about sex?

L: You could definitely say that, it could be about many things, about having a great time, or celebrating the perfect night out and going for what you want and having it.

Do you feel the same, Mette?

M: Both yes and no, sometimes that’s the thing. When you have music, it could be about ‘that’ kind of sex and love or it could be about another kind of sex and love’ it just depends on how you want to see it.

L: How do you feel about it? Do you masturbate to it?

Wow, you should be asking the questions. No, I don’t masturbate to it! I don’t think it’s about sex.

Smiles and silence from the band members.

The “Around the Bend” video looks like a Blondie video or a drug induced ‘80s video clip, which goes back to that struggle I was talking about.

I don’t see the struggle between the pop songs and our visual elements or looks. I think it’s because I don’t think the songs are bigger than any other one we have, we just see it as something as a whole for us.

I’m a fan of Danish bands like Choir of Young Believers, Alphabeat and Slaraffenland. Are you part of any Danish scene?

We are not part of that scene at all and that’s what we intentionally distance ourselves from. There is so much of that in the North and all the bands like you mentioned -- we don’t want to sound introspective, or super clever. I mean that’s cool and people are good at it, but we don’t want to be like that.

I wanted to go a bit deeper into your history and ask you: does Alex Puddu And The Butterfly Collectors ring any bells?

M: No! Not at all!! laughing
L: Alex who, Alex poo and the butt collectors?
M: No, you know I used to sing in that band and it’s still so different from us.

Because I heard some of the tracks and they weren’t half bad.

Sarcastic M: Oh yeah, ok sure.

And you were in a band called NU?

L: Yes.
M: People never bring it up, I don’t think it’s something we don’t want to be, but it’s so many years ago and we’re doing something else now and it’s strange to be compared to that.

I know some bands don’t like to talk about their past.

L: There’s always a sense as an artist moving forward and forgetting your past. We are not trying to hide it and we are proud of what we did, but also the general concept of the Asteroids Galaxy Tour is based on all the things we didn’t like from our previous bands. We had bad feelings being in a big group and deciding stuff and being cramped, so we wanted to keep it very simple with two people and have friends join us live.

What’s the most surreal thing that’s happened to you thus far?

L: We were on tour and we ended up in Amsterdam, where we played for 50,000 people. The story was, we were told we were playing a festival in Holland and we thought we would be playing the usual tent for a band as small as us. We expected maybe a few thousand people, which is great and always fun. But when we woke up from our sleeper bus and peeped through our tent, we saw this huge mass of people, big screams and we found out we were going on in half hour. It was such great gig!

Some of the bands that have had iPod commercial success in the past have come and gone quickly. I hope this is not a contentious question, but how do you feel about the outcome?

Cutting me off

L: There are bands like Jet, Franz Ferdinand and The Ting Tings, who are really big now from the iPod commercials. Which bands are you suggesting didn’t get successful?

Chairlift, The Caesars…

L: Well the two bands you mentioned, I don’t know them and I don’t really think about them. But this whole iPod thing was just a chance of getting our music out there. This is our music and this is our tour and album and this opportunity came along and we subsequently collected more fans along the way. I think the reason those bands didn’t work out was probably because there was probably a lot of people out there who heard the song, liked it, dug a little deeper and found there was nothing else to come for. Right?

I wouldn’t agree. I think Chairlift’s album was one of best of the year, but there were probably other factors that contributed that I don’t know about.

L: There must be a reason why it didn’t happen.

There are always reasons why people don’t connect to the music.

L: Maybe you’re one of the few that liked it. It has nothing to do with that commercial, the band has to tour and play and make good music. You cannot do it alone -- it takes super hard work. Of course it [the iPod commercial] has been pushing us in the right direction and opening doors for us, but it’s still very hard work and you have to play everywhere, but it’s good fun.

Awkward silence.

Thanks for your time guys.

Links & backgrounds

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour's MySpace

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Tags for this article:

Pop, H&M, Blondie, Copenhagen, iPod, Apple, The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Denmark, Indie Pop, Alphabeat, Choir of Young Believers, Electronic Beats Recommends

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text: Ari Stein