This is a new thing for me on this blog. I have interviewed artists who were just starting out, but not from their very beginning. Ideofon, a collaboration between singer-songwriter Askil Fangel and producer Kevin Skaggs, released their first single, “Bright White Light” in March 2023. At the time of this writing, Ideofon only has one song and a website that is a week old.
Because Ideofon is in its early stages, this will be the shortest intro I’ve written for the blog. It feels more natural to me to let the conversation I had with Askil and Kevin tell their own story of how this group began. I do want to thank Nichole Peters-Good from Get Good PR for setting up this interview. And I want to thank Askil and Kevin for letting me tell what is only the beginning of this group.
Jeff Cramer: Whoever wants to go first, what got you interested in music?
Askil Fangel: I can go first, if you’d like. So, my interest started around the age of thirteen. And before that I hadn't really cared about music at all whatsoever. My dad was really into music. He tried really hard to get me into all these artists, and I just didn’t show any interest. And then one day he played a U2 record. I was like, "What are these cool sounds? What is this stuff that this band is doing?" I had listened to rock and pop, but U2, especially in the nineties, were experimenting with different genres and incorporating all these different sounds into their music. For me, it wasn't as much about the lyrics or the messaging; it was just like "Okay, here is this band that's got all these crazy experimental sounds incorporated into their kind of pop-rock sound." It made me want to try to create something that would inspire me in the same way as they did. I started listening to other artists and getting into loads of different genres and stuff. And it kept evolving from there.
Kevin Skaggs: I think mine started earlier than Askil's, to be honest. I have memories as far back as five years old. Of course, when you're a kid, you're simply hearing music—you're not necessarily making anything. I remember distinctly "Night on Disco Mountain" from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on 8-track cassette.
JC: Oh yes.
KS: [Laughs] But I was about five years old at that time. Fast forward a few years where I played saxophone in the elementary school band. Then I did choir in middle school and in high school, and during that time, I was experimenting with synthesizers 4-track tape recorders, cool Depeche Mode kind of stuff. It was all about Depeche Mode. Fast forward a few more years and I took that to engineering school. After engineering school, I moved to Los Angeles and was part of the whole movie industry and the post-production scene, all the while I was still doing music. Eventually, I ended up meeting people, as you do in Los Angeles, and started doing music professionally. But I think that's another question, so . . .
JC: How did you two meet?
AF: From 2019 to 2021, I lived in London, and I now I live in Tromsø, Norway. I had studied media in London at a university, and I got to meet some really cool people there who were doing lots of different stuff. One of those people was Secaina, and she did R&B, kind of rap, all this cool stuff that I wasn't necessarily doing myself, but she kind of introduced and brought me into that, and we made a song together. She knew Kevin, whom she had been working with on a previous project. Kevin heard one of the songs that we did, and I guess, Kevin, you can tell the rest of the story there.
KS: I had befriended Secaina and also worked on some of her material doing production and mixing. With Secaina, everything she does is so interesting and vibrant. I had remixed her track, and then I heard Askil's voice, of course, isolated with the microphones, and I fell in love with it. I immediately was like "Who is this guy? Where is he at?" And she put us together on Zoom or something.
AF: Email.
KS: Oh yeah. And yeah, long story short, I somehow convinced him to send me a demo of one of the things he was working on, and he generously sent it to me. I was excited and just started doing something over it. Basically, our trust in each other started when he liked what I did, and I had already liked what he did. So, we kind of met in a musical way.
AF: When Kevin first reached out, it was like some random guy just contacting me that I’d never heard of. Some random guy just sends me an email and was like "Hey, I like your music. Do you want to collab?" And I’m like, "Yeah, okay." At least that was my reaction, to just be like, "Yeah, sure. Uh . . . okay." Because I had no idea what to expect. I'm not very good at networking or meeting people, so to be honest, I came into it with a bit of skepticism. But like Kevin said, when I sent him my stuff and what he sent stuff it just elevated everything by a hundredfold. I was like "Okay, this is the real deal. This is a guy who knows what he's doing. He's got the experience. I've just got to jump on this and take that chance." And yeah, so we ended up making an album and promoting it.
JC: Where did the name of Ideofon come from?
AF: So, it's a Norwegian translation of the English word "ideophone." You can even say it like "i-de-o-phone." It’s sort of—I don't know if you’d say scientific—but “ideophone” a collective term for sounds that can be described, like "ooh" or "whoosh," like sounds that you can spell out. That's an ideophone, basically. I just really liked that name. It just kind of stuck. It's something I had in the back of my mind for a project for a while. And then, when this turned into something real, it was just like, "Oh, I need to give it a name . . . um . . . Ideofon. It seems important. No one knows what Ideofon means."
KS: I like the fact that in phonetic English it just kind of sounds like an idea over the phone. [Laughter]
JC: I was given a link to several of your songs. There was you and Kevin. Was there any else involved in this upcoming album Finder’s Keep?
AF: So for the most part, what you hear is just me and Kevin in our separate little bedrooms and home studios. I did the guitars, basses, keys—a lot of the keys—vocals, all that stuff. For the rhythms, it's a lot of drum machines, but we were lucky enough to get Jack Baker, who is the drummer for Bonobo. I don't know if you'd call them an electronic band . . .
KS: Stemming from electronica.
AF: Yeah, he is the drummer for the electronica band Bonobo. We were lucky enough to get him to play on a couple of tracks. So, on those songs, you hear actual real-life drums—that's Jack Baker recording stuff in a third separate space. It was all done remotely, mostly by just me and Kevin with some additional drums. Kevin, do you have anything you want to add?
KS: Askil had a soloist, a vocalist on one of the tracks. Her name was Rosie James, a friend from Askil’s music school days. She just collaborated on one track, so we have a guest vocalist on one of the tracks, "Fast Love." Askil?
AF: Yeah, we have a duet with one of my old classmates from uni on a yet-to-be-released single. And that's about it.
JC: Okay. Now, let's talk about the single that you've chosen to release, "Bright White Light." What made you decide to release this one first to the public?
KS: I'm curious about that too. [Laughs]
AF: On this album, there's a lot of different places. There's a lot of different sounds and influences from different genres. Like, we're kind of moving from cinematic piano music into rock into electronic stuff to orchestral stuff. I think we wanted to start with something that was more ground level, familiar, rock-and-roll-ish, folkish—guitars, drums, bass, that whole thing—but that still also kind of represents our sound and our vibe, and the story that we're trying to tell with this music. So, you're kind of getting in on the ground floor. And then as we release more singles, you'll get different aspects of the music and the different styles that we're going to present.
KS: I would like to add
to that "Bright White Light" is the second track on the album, but it
feels like a middle position because each song is a story in the album, which I
love because it's not that common to do anymore these days. I like the fact
that he chose "Bright White Light" because and I like how this part
of the story is almost seeking in a way. I don't know how to say that
correctly, but it's like the character of the story is seeking something and
following the bright white light sort of thing. [To hear “Bright White Light,”
click here.]
JC: There's two things I wanted to mention about it that I noticed when I was listening to it. One, that it's up-tempo. Out of all the songs I heard from you, this is one of the most up-tempo ones. And there's another interesting aspect—in the last quarter of the song, it's almost like Black Sabbath.
AF: I think that ending in particular is not really inspired by any sort of hard rock; it just kind of happened because it was supposed to be sort of a harder-hitting ending. I wrote this song on an acoustic guitar just by itself, and back then when I wrote it, I was just like "Okay, we'll go a little bit more heavy here, and I'll just use some power chords and it will sound cool."
KS: I think the Black Sabbath thing is my fault.
[Laughter]
AF: When I did the demo for Kevin, our process is that I usually record a basic demo, send it to him, he sends something back, and we go back and forth. I sent him a demo, and there was a little bit of a distortion in the guitars. There were some strings and cellos. I just wanted it to be big. And then he sent back this massive effing orchestra with huge strings, and there were trombones and distorted massive guitars. And it just ended up working even though it shouldn't have. It's so out of left field, but it sort of also encapsulates the sort of frustration in the lyrics. It really works as a climax, I think, partly because it's so unexpected.
JC: Right. And as I also mentioned, this is one of the more up-tempo songs. Did that play a part in you choosing that as a single?
AF: Yeah, I would say so. We wanted to choose something that's was engaging to listen to even when you first listen. The kind of standard verse-chorus-verse structure, kind of a hook and a chorus, because not all the songs follow that kind of structure. So, yeah, it's one of the more common songs, I would say.
JC: The link that was sent to me contained seven songs. Is that the entire album or is there more coming? Because I know the album isn't going to get released till November or October.
AF: That's the whole length of the album, which is kind of intentional, as it's an introductory album. A lot of artists, I think, start out with EPs, usually having three or four songs. I wanted to make something that was a little more substantial than just a short EP, but I wouldn't say that we were ready for a full album either. So, seven tracks.
KS: I think it was the material that dictated the amount.
AF: Yeah. Seven tracks kind of felt like enough to tell the story that we wanted to tell without any filler tracks. And you can sit down for twenty-seven minutes, get through the whole thing, still hear a lot of different stuff, and go through the story. So, yeah, it's definitely intentional as a short first course in the stuff that we're going to do later.
JC: What is the story that's going to be told in this album? I know you haven't released the album, but can I ask you about the story you're intending to tell?
AF: I wouldn't say it's a concept album in that sense, if you think about something like Pink Floyd's The Wall. We're not doing that. There's a sort of thread that runs through all the songs that deal with themes of isolation—both physical and mental isolation— because this was made during COVID, so we were all separated. No one was able to interact with each other. There’s also mental isolation, and the fear of being hurt or not meeting people's expectations. All those different reasons you might have for choosing not to interact with people.
KS: I just want to interject with the impression that I had from the beginning about that exact thing—the story of it—because the way you describe it is one element of it, but I also see it as this sort of journey. It’s a journey of a character, and when the listener is listening to the album, they are the character going on this journey, if that makes sense. So everything is being seen through the eyes of the character that Askil is putting together. And from the first song to the last song, you get imagery that includes the loneliness and the connection and the longing and stuff, but you're being led along and following along, from turbulent moments to beautiful moments, and it all seems kind of internal. It's like if you were to dive into somebody's head and then experience them falling in love, and also experience them feeling loneliness or seeing something that they can maybe get to. “Finders Keep," the next single that we're going to release, is one of my favorites.
AF: The album tracks that journey from just sitting there by yourself and feeling kind of hopeless or like you're not going to be able to accomplish anything or connect with anyone, and then there's a lot of self-reflection as the album goes on. It's based on a lot of my personal experiences. One of the songs, the duet one, "Fast Love," is kind of like, "Okay, why aren't my romantic relationships working out?" It's very introspective. The song is just like if you were criticizing yourself and figuring out, "Okay, what am I doing wrong?"
A different track, "Landfill," asks the questions, "Why am I pulling away from these people? Why am I moving to a different country and just leaving everyone I know behind?" And then, when you get to the end of the album, you're kind of opening yourself up to the idea of "Okay, maybe it's – maybe I can afford to let someone in just to see what happens. What if I do try to get close to someone? Is it going to hurt me or am I going to be okay?" You're opening yourself up to that at the end. So yeah, it's definitely a journey that it takes you on.
JC: So, this album isn't coming out until October or November. Is there anything you plan to do before releasing it to the public?
AF: We're definitely going to release "Finders Keep" down the pipeline just due out in May. And a couple months after that, we're going to release "Fast Love," which is the duet song that I talked about. Then maybe after that we might do one more single. We're not sure yet. Nothing's quite set in stone. So, there's going to be a steady stream of singles leading up to the album, but it's such a short album, so a lot of the album is going to be out already by the time the album is released. And then, between those singles we'll do some music videos—
KS: Live shows.
AF: Live shows for sure. We’re based in northern Norway—me and the other musicians in our band. We’re not that kind of central, so it's hard to go on a European tour. But we're looking at playing some gigs locally, maybe traveling to other places in Norway and Scandinavia. And then hopefully expanding out into Europe as well sometime in the coming year. Kevin, do you have anything?
KS: Yeah, you pretty much covered it. I don't think I would have anything to add.
AF: Askil here. Yeah, we're just getting started. So, this album was us learning how to make music in the way that we do. I feel like composing remotely, bouncing ideas back and forth—yeah, this is just kind of an introduction, and we have a lot more stuff coming as well.
KS: I also plan on going to Norway to do some production up there and tracking later on, probably late summer, maybe even early autumn. I'm not sure yet.
JC: Okay. So, I guess some final words. What would you say about this journey that's just the beginning? Do you want to add any comments on that?
KS: I'll start it off. I mean, personally for me, it's rare to find a musician who is as enthusiastic as I am about releasing and finishing and going forward. And the excitement I feel about what Askil is doing is creating music which is not the way that is most popular these days, where anybody with a laptop and a signal generator, or a beat generator, or a sampler is splicing together stuff and making soundtrack kind of music, where it's interesting and it's technically cool but it's not musically thoughtful. Ideofon has a sound, it has a thing, and it pulls you in.
AF: I realize that working in the way that we do has become a lot more common—really ever since the internet became a thing, but also during COVID where we all just had to learn to collaborate remotely. And for us it was definitely challenging to learn how to do that efficiently, but I feel like we also cracked the code on how to do that. Whatever we do next—if it's going to be a couple of singles or an album—we know how to make the most of the work that we do, how to do it efficiently, and also how to improve on what we've done before, where we can do all the stuff that works well with working remotely.
KS: That's what I was
alluding to earlier. Askil, you can do what you do really well. I can do what I
do, and you trust that. And going forward, we don't have to figure any of that
stuff out. It's all established, and we can just make music and really enjoy
the shit out of it. [Laughs]
