Stockholm, Sweden based trio Aquila Rift combine aspects of post punk and post rock to create a sound that’s truly all of their own on their latest E.P. “Ignorance”.
I caught up with vocalist/guitarist Mikael Moberg to talk about the bands early musical influences, how they started playing music and the making of the new E.P.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you all as kids and what artist or band did you all enjoy the most?
Mikael-Hi Dave, so fun you want to do this interview with us and I take the liberty to answer for all of us. Even if I’m sure that we have different ways and influences into music. Style of music when I was a teenager and what influenced me to pick and learn the guitar was metal music, maybe hard to hear in Aquila Rift, but they are still and will always be there somehow. Metallica was the band that got me hooked on music for real, and I soon got curious for heavier stuff, Sepultura was kind of the next step and then further from that to Death- and Black Metal and so on. I’m from Sweden (we’re based in Stockholm), which has a solid set of and been really influential in the Death Metal and the metal scene, also Norway’s Black Metal scene had a big influence on me.
Bands like Entombed, Mayhem, Satyricon and Darkthrone with many more, Carcass also blew me away and more classic hard rock bands of course like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden with many more. Later on and now days my influence span is way more broad and lots more of variety, mostly guitar based thou and I also play in punk/hardcore bands (Prisao, and Kitazato), the punk scene is a huge part of me, got really caught in that when I lived in Umeå some years ago. Which have had a strong history in punk and hardcore during the 90s. I lived quite near to Umeå when I grew up and it always was some kind of excitement about the music scene in Umeå, I saw Meshuggah a couple of times in my home town when I was a teenager and it did something for my music interest even I never got the biggest fan of them.
CMM-When did you all start playing music and writing songs? What eventually led to the formation of Aquila Rift?
Mikael-I picked up the guitar at the age of 14 and started more seriously writing music when I was around 17 I think, before that I played around writing som riffs and so but eventually I started collaborating with other people and making demos, from that I mainly have played my own stuff rather than play covers and others songs. Aquila Rift came to be from me wanted to do something more melodic and dark Me and Lovisa (vocals and bass) had another band, a punk/hardcore band called “ilska”, I knew she could sing and knew she played some guitar so I asked if she wanted to start some kind of Post Punk band with me, and she was eager about it. Then through common friends we came in contact with Hanna (drums), who played in Satirnine when she was younger, and later on she played the synth bass in Twin Pigs.
Hanna came up with the idea of the name Aquila Rift. Taken from a Sci-fi series called Beyond Aquilla Rift Hanna had been watching and just thought the name sounded cool. I had in the back of my mind a song I heard long before we started, “Drag Me Down” with Then Comes Silence, a Stockholm based band. Just that specific song with them had this impact on me when I first heard it and it somehow led to the start of Aquila Rift. I also did a cover of Joy Division’s Shadowplay when I was studying Music- and Sound Design which also influenced me to start a band like Aquila Rift.
CMM-The band recently released an E.P. called “Ignorance”. What was the writing and recording process for those songs like and what gear and instruments did you all use during the sessions?
Mikael-It has been a pretty slow process I have to say haha. But it always starts with me trying out some ideas by myself, and most often putting together almost a finished song and a draft idea that we later try out and discuss, and make some adjustments when we practice the songs together. All our recordings, including this EP “Ignorance” , were recorded at our practice place by me, we tracked everything one by one, we started with the drums with me playing a support guitar along Hannas drumming. It’s been a bit like a playground for me as well, trying to improve my recording skills and so on.
I record in Pro Tools with my Mac, for the drums on this recording we used a Zoom R16, for the rest of the instruments and vocals I used an Audient iD44 interface and Mikrofons like; Shure SM57s, Shure Beta 52, vocals was recorded with a Soyuz Bomblet, and also some Röde NT5 as Overhead for the drums. I played most of the guitar parts on my Woodo Guitar (Swedish brand, manufactured in Korea and Vietnam) Telecaster style, but I also used my Hagström HS2 from -76. For the guitar I used a Peavy Classic Head 50W and a 1X12 cabinet with a Celestion Vintage 30 speaker. Pedals, Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Nano reverb pedal, and some chorus. Lovisa plays a Gibson SG bass that we played through a Fender Bassman head, and Electro Harmonix Overlord distortion pedal. UnfortunatelyI can’t recall the brand of the drums, a kit we borrowed from a friend of Hanna. That’s basically all in short, nothing fancy, done pretty raw and simple, and I’m a big fan of DIY recording and culture.
CMM-If the band could compose a score for any film director, who would it be and what would the film be about?
Mikael-David Lynch have had a big impact on me, especially Twin Peaks, the score in that series have for sure influenced me in the music writing in Aquila Rift as well. What it would be about, I don’t know. I’m not a script writer, I even struggle with writing lyrics haha.
I’m from a bit far up north in Sweden and I’m now reading a crime novel that takes place not too far from my hometown, also a place where my relatives are from, and where I spent some time as a kid nearby. It’s a really small community with a certain kind of small town/country touch. Cute, weird and dark in a way, with many originals. So maybe a David Lynch directed interpretation of that book could be something, it’s about a person that is found dead in the bath of his house, and all the sudden his son shows up after been in jail for a previous murder, and the people in the village feel great scepticism towards him. The cop that investigated the crime also did grow up in the area. It’s called “Rotvälta” (Uproot) and written by Tove Alsterdal. I haven’t read that far yet, but I like it so far!
CMM-What do you all have coming up next? Any new recordings or shows?
Mikael-For Aquila Rift as a band I’m really not sure, this has always been a band that has been pretty low frequent, I always have some ideas for songs and have some drafts laying around that I want to record and release. It will probably be a bit different than what it was until now, and how we have been working together these years, maybe it will become more of a solo thing somehow. No shows planned at the moment for Aquila Rift but I play pretty frequently with my other band Prisao, we have something in Finland coming up during the fall, and also planning to record some new songs, and we have a new recording with Kitazato recorded and will release within a month probably.
I’m also a part of trying to establish a new venue here in Stockholm, for smaller shows. We had one run during the spring and we’re planning for a Halloween party with live music this fall, and a live debut might happen with one of my other new bands, Morsure (garage rock/punk). But we’ll see about that. That first show we put up we had a release party for a Stockholm band called Nära Döden and their record “Vilkorslöst”, with two other bands supporting, Bleak Streak and Alpha Pet, all Stockholm bands, really good. Check them out!
