Review Fix chats with Ask Carol’s Ask T. Borgen, who discusses the band’s origin and new track, “Run With You.â€
Review Fix: How did the project start?
Ask T. Borgen: This project started when we, Ask and Carol, the two members of Ask Carol, became friends right after high school. We where studying music in southern Norway. We were always talking about starting a band, but it would take about 7 years before we finally went through with the idea. The summer of 2015 we stayed at a cabin in the Norwegian mountains, with no electricity and no water, far away from people and civilization, only a few sheep outside the windows. That’s where our first songs were made, and where the seed to what would become Ask Carol started. One more year went by before we started for real, and Ask Carol was officially born, in 2016. Our first concert ever was at a small blues club in Seoul, South Korea, called Strange Fruit. At that point, Carol was already a somewhat known guitarist-for-hire in the Oslo music scene, and had never ever sung in front of people before, or at all for that matter. That’s why we wanted to try out our music and hold our first concerts far away from our hometown. After thinking hard and long about the band name, with many pretty good suggestions, we ended up with the simple band name Ask Carol, the first names of our two members, Ask and Carol, put together. Ask is a real Norwegian name, coming from Norse Mythology, the Viking religion; Ask was the first human being, created by the God Odin, out of a piece of Ash-wood. You can read all about that story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Ask_and_Embla
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Borgen: We usually start out with the ideas separately, and then later on in the process we get together to finish up the songs. We often do the songwriting and production process in parallell, but it all varies very much. At the moment we are in two separate locations, so we use the internet and the cloud to send ideas back and forth. The most important thing is to get the initial ideas down as fast as possible, cause those often tend to slip away if you don’t get them our of your head and down on paper/computer/phone/recorder.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?
Borgen: Of the ones recorded we like the last one, «Run With You», cause it is the first song we produced fully ourselves, but got professionally mixed (in The Village Studio, LA). The song was written long before these challenging corona times, but lately the song has come to mean something more to us. We feel it represents a longing for just going away, to get away from it all, a feeling that has grown more intense as we all have to stay home for such a long time…
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2020?
Borgen: This year is the strangest and craziest year in a long time, for everyone. The music industry is turned upside down, along with many other industries. None of our touring or concert plans will happen, so we will focus on recording, writing new material and making merch, videos and other stuff. Our goal for 2020 is to finish our debut album, which is slated for release in 2021. At the moment it is very hard to say where this year, 2020, will take us and the world, so it is important to keep an open mind these times and be open for changing goals and plans pretty abruptly.
How do you want your music to affect people?
Borgen: If our music could be in the soundtrack to peoples lives, mean something to them, help them through a difficult time. Make them forget the stress and worries of everyday life. That would make us happy.
What’s next?
Borgen: At the moment we will continue focusing on recording and other stuff, at our studio/ workshop in Auma. We’ll also keep an eye on the situation, to see when it makes sense to start booking a new tour. We miss the touring and traveling and hope to get back to it soon.
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