Recently, I was privileged enough to take up some of the time of busy Norway-based musicians Pål Nyhus and Knut Sævik, who are more popularly known under the moniker of Mungolian Jet Set. The duo have a new album entitled Schlungs which is due out October 10 via Smalltown Supersound, and were kind enough to answer some of my musical and not-so-musical questions via email:
PJDV: For those people who have never heard Mungolian Jet Set before, how would you guys describe your music in as few words as possible?
P: Quite schlungy with a bit of megalomania to it.
K: We usually move around in the genres of fantasy, munglore or discopop with a slab of mungishness.
PJDV: Humour is inherent in almost all of your tracks. Do you guys think a lot of music takes itself too seriously?
P: Well, we are not a comedy band, in fact we are quite serious. I think to an extent a lot of music is perhaps taking itself a bit too lightly. We take it seriously being a fun band, but not really for thought-out comedy, our sense of humor towards music is more of an absurd thing.
PJDV: There are a lot of instruments on both We Gave it all Away, and Schlungs, do you guys record everything yourselves? or is sampling prominent in your production style?
P: Everything is prominent in our music, it should be what it is, sampling or not. There are a bit less sampling on the new record and a tad more use of "normal" instruments like the guitar, the bass and the Kvigdraun which is a natural percussion instrument made out of the younger cows testicle-bones.
K: We are not really into having to play all the instruments ourselves. We will record whoever who can do a schlungy sound. If we find something thats fits in somewhere which already is recorded, we can just as well sample it. It can be a bell- sound, parts of a beat, a flute or whatever. We usually don't start a track by doing sampling. The sampled sounds are more a part of a orchestration process which comes in later. And then we also have a band who contributes at the recordings, and The Mungonettes as well.
PJDV: Are you guys working on a live show? If so will you be playing in North America anytime soon?
P: We do have a live show.
K: We do play live-sets and DJ sets on clubs. We also have a bigband. If someone invites us, we would love to go to North America.
PJDV: With so much music available on the internet, what advice would you guys give to up-and-coming producers/musicians to avoid falling into 'fad music' ?
P: I am not sure what "fad music" means, but I guess my advice to producers would be to make music more "fab" than "fad", probably "fag music" might be a selling point too.
K: Since there is so much music on the internet, an advice would be to put the music somewhere else. Don´t care about what others are doing, and don´t be afraid of melody either. And put some dancing shoes on.
PJDV: What is the most recent very funny thing that has happened to either of you?
K: This morning I saw an old lady which caught fire.
P: Well, I do live a rather A4-ish life these days, but I had a dream the other night where I got possessed, chewed and then swallowed by an Autotune. It was not really funny at all, quite frankly scary like hell…
PJDV: If Mungolian Jet Set were to record a track with Justin Bieber what would it be called and what would you ask the Biebs to sing about?
K: The track will be called "Get your schlungs out!", and Bieber would sing "Everybody get down!"
Schlungs is available for preorder now. It is a truly entertaining and remarkable piece of musical work. I suggest picking up a copy of it or Mungolian Jet Set's first LP, We Gave It All Away…And Now We Are Taking It Back–you won't be disappointed!
Order Schlungs at the following online retailers:
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