"Clock With No Hands," by Danish band Vinyl Floor, is a vintage-sounding song that can transport you to different times and sway your mind away from today’s worries.
Vinyl Floor is an alternative rock group that was founded in 2007. The Danish band's fifth full-length album, "Funhouse Mirror," finds them returning to the experimental and symphonic expression they first found on the albums "Peninsula" (2012) and "Vaudeville" (2014).
The 10 songs on this album were all written by Thomas Charlie Pedersen and Daniel Pedersen, and both brothers take turns singing the lead on each song. The tracks were captured live by the band and Swedish producer Emil Isaksson at Studio Möllan in Malmö, Sweden, during the summer of 2021.
Vinyl Floor has chosen to go for a warm, nostalgic tone in both Funhouse Mirror and their most recent hit, "Clock With No Hands." It has a distinct and subtle modern song production with a focus on melody and lyrics.
All voice-overdubs and mixing were done at the band's home studio in Copenhagen, Denmark. The album was mixed at Studio Möllan in the last quarter of 2021, and Ted Jensen handled the mastering at Sterling Sound in Nashville, Tennessee, in the first quarter of 2022.
Slow-tempo song "Clock With No Hands" explores various issues and facets of the current status of the globe. The harmony of the guitar, drums, and vocals creates a really calming yet ominous song you will enjoy and want to repeat.
Welcome to BuzzMusic, Vinyl Floor. Can you tell our readers a bit about your journey as a band?
Thomas Charlie Pedersen: Our band only has two permanent members. My younger brother Daniel & I. We have played music together all our lives but didn´t really play in bands together until around the year 2000. The band was actually formed in 2001. We called ourselves ‘Guernica’ and had a core of four members. In 2007 we did a new version of the band and decided the name should be ‘Vinyl Floor’. All the music we released ever since has been with Vinyl Floor. I also do some solo material outside the band, but my main love is and will always be Vinyl Floor. We´ve had our ups and down like everybody else. Changing members, etc. But we still like doing it, and there are still new songs coming to us. During the making of our new album, ‘Funhouse Mirror,’ our third member, Rasmus, decided that he needed some time away from the band. He had different reasons for this, and he was about to become a father for the first time. We understood and fully supported it. He has been with us since the beginning, so he´ll always hold a special place, and he might do something with us again, just not as a permanent member anymore.
What inspired the lyrics to "Clock with No Hands," and how does that relate to society?
Well, it actually started out as a love letter to my wife. One day I sat at the piano and quickly came up with something I felt was a super cool chord progression that sounded like something someone like Elliott Smith once might have done. My wife is older than me, so I thought I would try to explore the concept of time. And I wanted to try and write a happy song about being grateful. I don´t write a lot of happy songs and find it difficult to write one the right way. At some point during the writing process, I sort of just came to the conclusion that time is irrelevant to us and doesn´t affect the relationship. So I thought, why not inject some subtle nods to modern society instead? I did that quite a lot with the lyrics on the entire album. That´s probably partly because of the lockdown situation we found ourselves in while working on the album but also because I sometimes have the feeling that I´m not really a part of the world, you know? I often find it very strange and peculiar but, at the same time, not necessarily able to point my finger at what exactly I´d like to change or don´t like about it. All I know is that I don´t like the hourglass running faster & faster, but when I´m with my wife, it feels like time’s standing still. She´s the clock with no hands.
What message would you want to convey to society in your most recent album and the project you're working on? What does "Clock with No Hands" mean to you?
My lyrics never judge anything or anybody. As a songwriter, I always feel like an observer, and that´s it. But I clearly felt like I didn´t really belong too much as I was writing the lyrics for ‘Funhouse Mirror’, and I think, if there´s a concept to be found in this album, then it´s a kind of warning about communication because everything moves so fast nowadays. It´s easy to set foot on not very solid ground. People quickly judge each other. Especially on social media. The title ‘Funhouse Mirror’ basically says: Be careful what you do, be careful what you say, and to whom. You can easily end up presenting a distorted version of yourself. The song ‘Pretty Predictable’ explores people's need to destroy things they invented. The title track is about a circus coming to town and quickly starting to change people's behavior and way of thinking. The interpretation is all yours. ‘Clock with No Hands’ holds more personal meaning, obviously. But I think it fits the mood of the record well, even though I think the second half of the record is generally a bit darker.
Can you describe the creative process that took place to create "Clock with No Hands?"
As I said previously, I don´t have too many happy songs in my backlog, so I kind of wanted to challenge myself a little bit. The song had been lying around for a few years ‘cause I was unsure what to do with it, unsure about the direction. But when we got Bebe Risenfors on board to do the horn parts for a new album, it all fell into place. He was the missing link. He was the one who could underscore the feeling of gratitude in the song. Together with my lyrics, I hope.
What's next for you?
We have a release show coming up this month. It will take place on a boat in Copenhagen on release day. Then we think about doing some acoustic shows. I hope we´ll do some. And then there´s new material. We still have songs waiting to get worked on.
