Interview: Little Dragon

Your friend Brian Butler created a comic book about Nabuma Rubberband. If you could be any comic book superhero, which would you be and why?

Umm, ah that’s a good question! Two things come to my mind - either the Silver Surfer or that girl in “Kick Ass”. I don’t know if she’s in comics. I think she’s from comics originally, but yeah she’s pretty cool.

A lot of inspiration from this album seems to have come from other music and artists. Where else do you find that you draw inspiration from?

I mean, honestly I think it’s a lack of hearing what you want to hear. It’s also just bits and pieces from other artists like say you really like and then you just want to do something similar to that and put that idea to an even further instance. Or just a lot of times I’m inspired by the others in the band like I think we push each other pretty good.

I heard that you like A Tribe Called Quest?

YEAH! Love them…

If you could have been there to work with them on any one of their tracks, which one would it be and why?

To work with? Oh damn! [laughs] Their songs are just kind of perfect. I don’t know what we would do to… I mean it would be fun to play some of their songs and stuff but I don’t know what we could do. Maybe we could reproduce some songs in a new way, like in a more futuristic way. Do like a remix of it. I really like their song called “The Hop”, it’s on one of their later albums.

For the recording of Nabuma Rubberband you moved your studio – still in the same building but a new surrounding nonetheless. Would you ever think of moving your studio and whole writing process to an entirely different country all together?

Yeah! I mean I actually had a studio in Berlin for a while when we were recording Nabuma! I don’t have it anymore but it was good. It takes time to get connections and build it up but yeah I think that we would definitely move to have a studio somewhere else if we could – maybe in a warmer place [laughs].

As a band, you speak about ‘vibes’ a lot. How important are vibes to you when choosing songs for your album?

I mean vibes are essential but the funny thing with vibes is that they tend to change – one day you’re feeling this and then another day you’re feeling that, but hopefully it will stay on a kind of similar scale if you know what I mean. But yeah, vibes is crucial! [laughs] 

A lot of electronic/house/dance type of music comes from Sweden, for example Lykke Li, Avicii and of course Swedish House Mafia. There’s obviously an electronic sound to your music too. Do you ever see yourselves coming away from this or trying a completely new genre?

Yeah I mean I think that it’s not so much the electronics that’s interesting, I think it’s the sound that’s the more interesting thing for us and electronics has the possibility to do a lot of different sounds. I think we’ve been talking lately about doing some acoustic stuff next year even kind of orchestrated stuff. Not the classical instruments but a bit more like using acoustic instruments.

As well as being popular for electronic music, Sweden is known for its death metal too. These are very different genres, so what kind of genre mainly dominates the radio in Sweden?

It’s really poppy – bands sing in Swedish and they sing in kind of a similar way. It’s kind of like a mix of Indie, Pop and Electronics, yeah.

I heard about this project with Soundgarden where they will play personalised versions of your songs on a boat? Is that true?!

[laughs] That’d be great! Um, let’s see, yeah it might be! Let’s hope so!

How did this idea come about?

Because we are on the same label as them in the US, a label called – Loma Vista, and I know that the label is always keen to push stuff to make it more commercial as labels want y’know [laughs] so that was how they got the idea. Yeah I think that could work really good as well.


You can grab tickets to their European Tour here, it won't be something you want to miss! If you're not from Europe or nearby, keep track of them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud and their website.