Meet Adriana, Frederik and Francisco, a dynamic trio that goes by the name of Frangie. What started out as three friends singing Amy Winehouse songs after a few beers resulted in an EP filled with a unique electronic, melancholy yet extremely danceable sound. In light of this release, we decided to meet up for a chat about experimentation, leaving room for the unexpected and playing at the Nobel Prize after party.
Would you please take turns describing each other?
Adriana: Fredrik is that kind of friend you can bring everywhere, open to new things, new people and his energy is always sparkling. But foremost, he’s a person that I have come to call one of my best friends because he’s a true supporter, like the bigger brother I’ve always wanted.
Fredrik: Whenever Francisco is by the piano, he always manages to spark inspiration in me. We share a little bit of a similar musical background in some ways, yet it is also very different in many aspects – what I believe makes our musical bond so tight. He’s one of my closest friends, attentive, loving and considerate, which makes our work time in the studio fun and special. And since we both always put our relationship first, it makes it easier to agree when we disagree on some things.
Francisco: Adriana is a big inspiration to me. We have known each other for just a few years and during that time I must say she’s really enriched my perspective on artistic quality. She’s intelligent and has a great sense of humour! She’s a hard-working artist whom I think will inspire many people.
Fredrik: Whenever Francisco is by the piano, he always manages to spark inspiration in me. We share a little bit of a similar musical background in some ways, yet it is also very different in many aspects – what I believe makes our musical bond so tight. He’s one of my closest friends, attentive, loving and considerate, which makes our work time in the studio fun and special. And since we both always put our relationship first, it makes it easier to agree when we disagree on some things.
Francisco: Adriana is a big inspiration to me. We have known each other for just a few years and during that time I must say she’s really enriched my perspective on artistic quality. She’s intelligent and has a great sense of humour! She’s a hard-working artist whom I think will inspire many people.
How did you meet and how did your collaboration evolve from there?
We connected over an acoustic guitar, Amy Winehouse’s lyrics and singing Turn your lights down low, by Bob Marley (and a lot of beer). That same night, Fredrik invited us over to his home studio – and somehow it just worked. That night in the studio, we started working on a cover of Amy’s Valerie and ended up just using one phrase that we looped and built a track around it. For about a year, we would hang out jamming on that track and others at Fredrik’s apartment.
We didn't have any intentions of starting something. But then, in the summer of 2015, we went to the Garden Festival in Tisno (Croatia). Late night dancing sessions at Barbarellas and sunset experiences at the Beach Stage brought us closer together musically and, after the festival, we started to understand more what we wanted to do together in the studio. In January 2016, we decided to write music in a more focused way and the first song we made together was DDML.
We didn't have any intentions of starting something. But then, in the summer of 2015, we went to the Garden Festival in Tisno (Croatia). Late night dancing sessions at Barbarellas and sunset experiences at the Beach Stage brought us closer together musically and, after the festival, we started to understand more what we wanted to do together in the studio. In January 2016, we decided to write music in a more focused way and the first song we made together was DDML.
You are from Stockholm, do you notice a certain Swedish style in your music?
Maybe there’s a certain kind of melancholic touch to some of our music or a mixture between light and dark and a longing for sunshine in the cold winter times.
Could you enlighten us on your recording process? How does a track get from your minds onto Soundcloud?
It varies a lot. It can start with a beat, a loop, a chord, a word, a melody, or a newly found inspirational tune. From there, we nurture and stretch our best sides, playing around with different possibilities and dimensions. The process is like waves: our boat and captain is the dynamic sampler, the synthesisers and additional instruments are the paddles, and the vocoded voice guides us through the journey.
Electronic, house, funk, a little bit of synth-pop; your music crosses the boundaries of genre. How would you describe your own music?
Melancholic disco, maybe? It’s easier to let someone else do the interpretation.
You just released your first album. What did you want it to convey? What response do you hope people will have to it?
It’s our first EP, so the aim was probably just to share a small piece of our creative world and hope for a warm reaction – or any reaction.
Something that seems to come back into both your communication, style of music and lyrics is “to make room for the unexpected”. Could you further elaborate on this sentence?
Today our mind and body are in constant flux, always moving forward with little time to stop and reflect. Our creative process is, in many ways, a small vacuum – like a children’s sandbox where we enter to play and experiment. A place where we try to press pause, to give room for the unexpected. In other parts of life, it’s hard to find that time to just be in the present moment.
Next to the songs published on your album, you’ve also played a fair amount of sets. What is the difference between your DJ sets and your songs, if any?
What the sets will sound like depends on the situation combined with the mood we want to create. The ADE set, for example, was in the daytime, with a proper party crowd and a beautiful atmosphere with a view of Amsterdam. So we really wanted to create something for that particular setting and something that would work well as a warm-up to La Fleur, who was playing after us.
You can listen to our live set from ADE in October and compare it with the EP’s and probably hear that they are quite different; but that the live set is an extension of our sound. A few months later we were playing at the after party to the Nobel Prize and the extravagant space and the mood was more of a cocktail-entertainment-thing, so the set was much more jazzy vibes and disco oriented. In other words, the songs are our language and the sets are where we play around with it.
You can listen to our live set from ADE in October and compare it with the EP’s and probably hear that they are quite different; but that the live set is an extension of our sound. A few months later we were playing at the after party to the Nobel Prize and the extravagant space and the mood was more of a cocktail-entertainment-thing, so the set was much more jazzy vibes and disco oriented. In other words, the songs are our language and the sets are where we play around with it.
You played at the Nobel Prize after party? What was that like?
Absolutely crazy! Imagine us dressed in Rococo style, pastel coloured clothing, like Marie Antoinette’s personal entourage. Her house band in the centre of a room full of penguin dressed gentlemen and ladies in long dresses, chocolate fondants, oysters, a champagne fountain and it goes on. At 4.30 in the morning we had the crowd dancing on stage with us – a memory we will cherish for a long time.
What is next for you, after releasing your EP?
Summer gigs in Sweden and a new EP release, hopefully in the beginning of fall.
