Ecovillage (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part I)

The first words of Ecovillage hype descended upon me as summer’s sweltering days announced itself and their debut album, Phoenix Asteroid, lives up to that parallel; a humid haze of elegantly warped pop music. Its makers, Peter Wikstrom and Emil Holmstrom, delve into their favourite recordings of the past year while hinting at Ecovillage’s next phase.

SCQ: What have been some of your favourite records of 2009? Gush away!

There have been many great albums this year, but we think Jonsi & Alex - Riceboy Sleeps, Fennesz - Black Sea, Manual - Confluence and Syntaks - Ylajali really stand out from the rest.

Jonsi & Alex debut album have got a lot of bad reviews and we find that very terrifying and disturbing, it seems like if you trying to create pure beauty like them without any "hipsterness" you get bad reviews...It seems like its too pure for the society we live in today.

SCQ: Be it from the radio, lost on Myspace or from your label, what song(s) could you not stop spinning?

The music of William Basinski and Stars Of The Lid is good examples of songs you never get tired of.

SCQ: Seldom celebrated but crucial to The Album’s identity is cover-art. Can you offer any shortlist of personal favourites from the past year?

Its hard to single out any specific cover-arts but the art-work from Syntaks/Jakob Skott and Jon Wozencroft are always looks amazing.

SCQ: When you look back on what transpired this year, what will stand out as your most memorable professional moment(s) of 2009?

Well, of course it was a great moment to finally release some of our music since we've been doing this for such a long time, but working on our next release called "Alella" is VERY exciting since its by far the strongest songs we've ever made.

SCQ: Most of us probably haven’t thought as far as New Years Eve plans but still, looking forward, what do you have on the horizon for 2010?

Its hard to predict the future, but our aim is to release two albums next year, "Alella" and "The Quest And That Magic Summer", been working on both of them since 2006. Hopefully we will do some tours abroad as well.