Junior’s Cave Golden Isles Online Magazine is a huge fan of big bold sounds, catchy hooks, strong vocals, and melodic tunes, and Slim Loris delivers on all count. What we are enjoying the most about this band is how their music tends to incorporate various genres into brilliant tunes one after the other. Mattias and Robert of Slim Loris spoke to our publication about the band’s music and their personal and professional journey of bringing their music to the masses. Here is their story.

Isaac: It’s an amazing time to be a DIY artist/performer/band/musician. What do you enjoy the most about being an indie performer?

Mattias: To have full control over your music and to be able to create and decide your own sound. The only limitation is your own head

Isaac: If you had an opportunity to sign with a major label, would you sign now knowing you may have to give up some of what you have built up over the years about you in the process?

Robert: It all depends on what kind of deal you get. As long as you still have a say in how the music sounds and how you´re portrait, I would be interested.

Mattias: If they want to give you a full make over and turn you into something you´re not comfortable with, then no but if they´re interested in you enough to offer you a contract hopefully they see something that they like in what you´ve done up till then and want to keep building on that. There are quite a lot of good indie labels though that I would rather sign with if given the opportunity.

Isaac: I remembered Simon Cowell from American Idol talking about the “it” Factor that makes a musician/band stand out. What do you think is your “it” factor that makes you stand out from others in the music business?

Robert: The song-writing. We put a lot into writing the songs and try to make each one unique and stand out on its own.

Isaac: Why should music fans listen to your music? Describe what they are going to get when they listen to your music?

Mattias: They´re gonna get a mix of 60s pop/rock with a bit of Americana and pinch of Swedish melancholy. Especially the songs with violin on them has a sound sprung from the deep Swedish forests.

Robert: It´s music made from the heart.

Isaac: Briefly describe your humble beginnings that led you to where you are at musically now.

Mattias: We´ve been playing music since our early teens. Robert and I went to school together and spent quite a lot of our breaks in a small rehearsal room set up for the students. For a while, we also had a band together back then called "Pillowtalk" that played "red hot chili peppers" style music.



Robert: After that, we played in several other bands but never in the same one until Slim Loris. I had a break from music due to a broken arm and Mattias had recently split up with his band and we felt like starting something new. It begun in my old apartment in Stockholm where we sat down and worked on writing songs and have evolved from that.

Isaac: You have some strong iconic influences. Of these influences, which artist/band do you relate to the most and why?

Mattias: I was brought up on my dad’s Beatles collection and that has influenced all music I´ve done ever since. They´re brilliant songwriters and I like the progression of their sound and songs over the years. You should always try and evolve as a musician and songwriter.

Robert: Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam because of their ability to connect all the elements of their music to a perfect harmony.

Isaac: Do you feel that Indie music gets the respect it deserves? Why or why not?

Mattias: I think that there is lots of great indie music out there that´s earned tons of respect. "Bon Iver" played for a jam packed stadium here in Sweden just a couple of weeks ago and bands like "Archade Fire" and "Fleet Foxes" has made it big and I would consider all of them Indie bands from the start. Unfortunately, there are too many great bands who never get the respect they deserve. I saw a British band called "Turning Green" play live in a small venue in London a few years ago and that was one of the best gigs I´ve seen but they never made it that much further and last I heard; they split up.

Isaac: If you could change one thing about the music business, what would it be and why?

Robert: It should be more about the songs and the music and less about image but the growing DIY scene is slowly taking the music industry in that direction.

Isaac: Do you think in the near future that DIY artists/bands will be the norm and big record companies will be very limited?

Robert: Yes.