Olivia answers a few questions for us about her life as half of The Dø.
1. Why did you choose to write your songs in English?
English is my musical language. French is my academic language, and Finnish my intimate language. It's always been that way for me!
2. In many of your songs you sit on the boundary of childhood and maturity, bouncing between the two effortlessly. Do you embrace your inner kid outside of your music?
I suppose we do...but it's just about trying to get the fun out of any situation..do you know the Moomins? It's a Finnish comic strip, you should check it out. It's for kids and adults. It's poetic, comical and philosophical.
3. You have a fairly minimalistic approach to your music, would you ever consider including more instruments, particularly live?
We are planning to enlarge the family...The trio was a starting formula, it was an interesting challenge because we had to find new ways to play the songs on stage. We wanted to have a new approach to our music live. Now that the basis works, we can start adding new layers.
4. Are you working on anything new at the moment or focusing on gigging? I saw in one of your interviews you said you needed to "perfect" your live shows, are they perfect yet?
Touring takes 75% of our time, the remaining 25% we spend recording new stuff, and sleeping... It's not about being perfect on stage, that wouldn't make sense, but about perfecting something that was raw, immature, clumsy in the beginning. It's also about feeling good, more confident. Obviously, after a whole year of intensive touring, we can be happy and even proud of ourselves after the gigs, we're not slitting our wrists open if the gig went wrong... But we always end up adding some new parts in the arrangements of songs, little traps, so we avoid getting bored or too comfortable.
5. The duo dynamic is very popular in the electro scene at the moment. Why did you decide to be a duo? Was it for image reasons, or rather because your musical creativity works better with two?
Image reasons?? We never decided to be a duo, it just so happened that we'd never had such a fertile collaboration before! We're just enough for one another, in the creative process.
6. I love the contrast between tracks like "Stay (Just a Little Bit More)", distorted instrumental sections like "Coda", to the unexpected pop rap "Queen Dot Kong", poppy numbers like "On My Shoulders" and back again. Does your versatility come from a wide range of influences, and do you think you may focus on a particular style in the future?
We come from different musical backgrounds, and we grew up in quite different cultures too. Dan listened to Thelonious Monk, Coltrane, and later Bartok and Stravinski, while I was into anything that I could sing - Queen, Hole, Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Alicia Keys, Värttinä (Finnish folk music), and then a lot of hip hop. But I also learned classical piano and guitar, which I loved as well. When Dan and I met, we listened to a lot of WuTangClan and D12, and then some Mahler or Nina Simone. We were both very curious about what the other could bring. It's much more fun to work with someone who doesn't have the same influences. We've never settled or planned anything in our music, I don't think it will change, but I suppose the more we record, the more we play, the more personal our sound gets. But we don't want to be choking in boxes.
7. Do you have any grand ambitions? Where do you see yourselves in 5 years time? Will you ever play in Australia?
A musical would be fun to do. In 5 years time? Recording our 5th album..? Yes, we will play in Australia, real soon I hope!
8. If alphabet soup was magical, what would it spell out to you?
Free your mind, and your ass will follow !
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