Their name evokes Norwegian landscapes in which sun-drenched mountains plunge into gurgling waters, but the sound they create expresses the night-time soul of the metropolis: Sonnfjord, a bright new star in the Brussels pop firmament.
© Heleen Rodiers
Inside Brussels pop band Sonnfjord's creative space
"That strange croaking sound on your single ‘Dust and Shapes’, is that a... ” “Frog?” Maria-Laetitia Mattern looks at me, both inquisitive and mischievous. “We recorded part of that song in a holiday cottage in the Ardennes, above a sheephold,” the singer explains. “When we listened to the track, we suddenly heard this ‘brrr brrr’. We have no idea where it came from.”
“It is actually a mistake,” François de Moffarts clarifies, “but these are exactly the kinds of things that nourish us creatively.” “If you press your ear to the speaker, you will also hear fragments of conversation, horses, and rain falling in our new songs,” Maria-Laetitia smiles. “And a cuckoo that had made its nest in the chimney,” François laughs.
It is one o’clock at Rec’N Roll, a swanky recording studio hidden between a few unremarkable apartment buildings in a lost corner behind the offices of the public broadcaster in Schaarbeek/Schaerbeek. With some effort, the sun is trying to give us an Indian summer, but autumn is just around the corner.
The singer and bassist tell me about the long hours they spent here, endlessly perfecting their new songs. Along with her brother and keyboard player Aurelio Mattern, who did not join us today due to the fact that he recently became a father, they form the core of the five-member Sonnfjord.
“We slept on the couch here very often,” the singer laughs. “We recorded the tracks at various locations, including the holiday cottage I mentioned, and at Le Rideau Rouge, a little concert hall in Walloon-Brabant where François works. But we mixed the songs here. Not for the location especially, but because we wanted to collaborate with Charles De Schutter for the mixings. He’s a great guy, who was able to translate the sounds in our heads perfectly.”
Maria-Laetitia points at one of the many memorabilia in the studio. “You see that action figure? That’s Charlie. [Laughs] A musician had it made for him because he was so happy with his work. That’s how dedicated he is.”
City of lights
Sonnfjord arose from the ashes of the Brussels indie-pop bands Lucy Lucy and Paon. It started as a folk vehicle, but has developed into a full-blooded pop band. The proof is in “Dust and Shapes”, which they served up for us at the beginning of this year and which grabbed the attention of Sony, and the brand-new “Lights”. The two singles are giant leaps forward for the Brussels band. And they whet our appetites for the load of new songs that will follow at the beginning of next year.
“On an EP or an album, we haven’t decided yet,” Maria-Laetitia says. “We would like to release songs regularly and create some buzz around them with a concert or a music video, like we did now with ‘Lights’.” “Releasing music is very different now than it used to be,” François nods. “It is a question of grabbing people’s attention and managing to sustain it.”
If Sonnfjord reminds you of Sunnfjord, a lobe of the brain in western Norway, you would be completely right. “Our name is inspired by it, yes,” Maria-Laetitia tells us. “I studied in Finland as an Erasmus student, and afterwards I travelled across Sweden and the northern part of Norway. I became completely enchanted by the North. But I also like the sound of the word, it has a côté sauvage. I wrote many songs there, when I was still a folk girl with a guitar. Purely for the fun of it; I had no idea what I would do with them at that point.”
Unsurprisingly, Sonnfjord’s early songs often played with images derived from the natural world. “We’ve evolved away from that now,” Maria-Laetitia says with a laugh. “Since I moved to Brussels from the Walloon-Brabant countryside, our music has become ever more urban. We sound almost like two different bands, when you compare our old sound with the new. The song ‘Fever’, from the EP Up the Wooden Hills that was released two years ago, was an indication of that change.”
Their “urban” sound meant making things more minimalistic, François explains. “We jettisoned the acoustic guitars and build our groove with bass and electronic and analogue drums. The voice determines the melody and the keyboard adds colour.” The result? You might compare them to the Ghent band SX, but with more rays of sunshine piercing through the clouds.
“Dust and Shapes” is about the energy of the city and its young residents, Maria-Laetitia explains. “And ultimately, we all end up the same: as dust,” she says. “It’s a song about enjoying the time we have here as much as possible.” She grew up in Braine l’Alleud, but stuck around in Brussels after studying journalism at the IHECS.
“This is where I found my voice. Brussels is a small city, but here I discovered the freedom that I didn’t have in the countryside. So much is possible here, there are so many creative people. When I go home after a concert, I sometimes decide to cycle all around the city randomly. That feeling, of being by yourself in the city at night, had a deep influence on the new songs.”
This idea is expressed beautifully in the new music video for “Lights”, a song about breaking rules and indomitability for which Maria-Laetitia travelled to Hong Kong with the music video director Brice VDH. “Hong Kong is the city of lights. There too we felt very free, as if we were able to do anything. I loved the atmosphere, but it was very intense – the air was suffocating, I was literally gasping for air. We filmed at night, when it was a bit cooler. But also because the night time is the right time.”
> Sonnfjord. 29/09, 20.00, Atelier 210, Etterbeek
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