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When I first met Oliver Emmitt (trombone, vocals, lyrics) and Linus Kleinlosen (saxes and composition) from Molino, I was curious about this brass band so I asked them about their style. “Nobody knows what to call us. We never met any band that makes this kind of experimental pop music as well.” Lenius disagrees: “In some way it’s not that experimental, just that it has brass and electronics. It’s not like we’re trying to do anything that crazy, right? At the beginning we had a lot of experiments, and now everything is getting more simple and defined.”
Elsewhere: a musical culture
Music is their hobby, and they try to live from it. “We have side jobs, mostly music-related. A popular band from overseas is playing in Amsterdam every night. You’re competing with artists who’re either playing for free, or for a lot of money. People spoil this will for the choice they can get.”
The difficulty? “The Americanized way of living where money decides everything. Internet changed the entire industry, there’s nothing such as a Union. In our music, there are also some kind of criticism and political ideas to maintain this liberal left-thinking.” We talked about their single Stupid Things that proves their engagement.
The music has its own universe, a fantastic place. Things can happen in a song but could never happen in real life.
To avoid these problems, Molino told Tales from Elsewhere for their first EP and escapes this odd place. “We made up this story that we were from this world cut off from society, undiscovered for years. That was a way for us to describe our songs; it doesn’t have to sound like anything. The music has its own universe, a fantastic place. You can make everything more spectacular. Things can happen in a song that could never happen in real life.”
Molino’s collaborative process through changes
Oliver from New-Zealand & Lenius from Germany met at the conservatory in the Netherlands. That’s where they decided to create Molino. “In the beginning, we didn’t really know what we were aiming for. We just knew we wanted to make music.”
“It starts to be more like a collaborative process. This stuff in terms of production is new to us, it’s great to look at things from different angles.” Indeed, Molino’s composed of six players, plus the post-production workers. “We work with friends. It’s not a band, but a team. If it doesn’t work for somebody then we need to change it, because everybody needs to feel good playing music.”
The kind of music we were listening to wasn’t reflecting in the music we’re making, we wanted to change that.
There’s a shift in this band that wants to keep going after four years: ”When we started we were a surreal fanfare, but that was the last album. Now we’re thinking that it’s more dysto-pop *laughing* dystopian pop music, from a sort of miserable future. We started doing more songs with vocals. The kind of music we were listening to wasn’t really reflected in the music we’re making, we wanted to change that”.
They are inspired by new music like tUnE-yArDs, or fiction. “They’re just stories that didn’t actually happen. The music is not always comfortable, it should be challenging. We mix everything and that’s why people don’t always like it. But I don’t mind because I do,” Oliver told me with sparkly eyes.
“Everybody’s still really into the project. It’s not a commercial success, so the only reason why you’d play in this band is because you like it.” I could see in Oliver’s eyes that he loves what he’s doing. “I’m not playing in other bands that are bringing in money so you ask yourself ‘why am I actually doing this?’ Because I want to make something I like.” Lenius thought another way: “You express yourself and if you play nice music people enjoy themselves, they look at life in a different way. On one side it’s about you being able to say something, but on the other side is also the conviction that you’re doing something nice.” There’s an EP on the way, many projects and upcoming videos as they want to keep their audience on. Stay up-to-date…
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