Edvin Muratovic - Northern Lights Interview
Tell me about growing up in Sweden? What was your childhood like? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Were these things that were relevant around your household growing up?
Growing up in Sweden was special, as a poor kid you grew up in the suburbs with other kids from different parts of the world, other foreigners. It was fun and new every day. That's how me and Anton met, on a slide playing. We lived a few apartments away. We were 5-6 years old. Me and Anton fell in love with music in around the same period in our teenage years. I guess when you hang out with one person so much, you can't help it but to share new toys, hobbies, findings, thoughts, feelings etc. My parents had parties and friends over all the time. They sang Bosnian songs loud with a passion. Didn't get much sleep from that. I don't know if that rubbed off on me. Anton’s dad had some records laying around we used to listen to. He had some rock n roll and blues records. I think that was my first introduction to that sort of music. A tune that comes in mind was "Summertime Blues" with Eddie Cochran. Antons mother is from Bulgaria so she had similar passion as my parents, but from her culture. She always loved to talk to us and teach us things. About food, music, culture, religion, life. Very gentle and loving lady.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert? When did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music?
When we were like 12-14 we used to skate and watch skate videos. So we were surrounded by good music even there with those legendary skate parts like Girls' "Yeah Right", Flips' "Sorry, Really Sorry" and all the Baker videos of course. Genres from hiphop to punk, to hard rock was there and it grew on us. We still love it all. But later on we gave up skating and the music part took over fully. Around at 17-19 we would mostly smoke weed and hang out. Listen to music and watch different movies. We would meet every weekend and come with new stuff that we heard. That's where it all became about digging after music on youtube. Record collecting became the biggest thing after that. I guess being around music so much made us want to create our own. One became curious. We were getting tired of doing nothing and wanted instead to be productive. Shows we went to gave us inspiration also, witnessing bands/artist making things happen gave us a glimpse of possibility. Showing us that anybody can do it and of course the technology pushing forward showing literally that. It grew more and more on us and It tought us to use creativity as a coping mechanism. Anton started writing and recording songs at home. He was always ahead of everything. He tought me a lot about recording. I would later catch on and we would show each other our songs. We did stuff like that from when we were learning how to play guitar from the very beginning. Everyday we would show each other what song we had learned. We started bands together, but nothing that really stuck. Going through different phases and stages, circles and cycles we always kept doing music. Later years separate or in Antons case, with other friends. Who he's still playing with currently. Me on the other hand tried with some of my friends and that didn't work out. So I started recording in a studio where I could hire musicians that could help me get out my material. That's currently also active.
How did you guys initially meet and what commonalities did you guys share outside of music? How did Northern Lights officially form and what was the overall vision for the duo when first getting together? Anything else you’d like to further share with the readers?
Northern Lights came about a year ago when Anton wrote this beautiful song to his father. I didn't know that at first, but I felt a strong connection to it reflecting on the lyrics and what it meant to me. I think everybody can put their own meaning into it and feel something from it. I was just mesmerized by it and told Anton we should record it. I didn't want it to be another home recording or something that would go with all the other songs he piled up. The vision became to do the best song we could possibly do and give it the justice it deserved. We ended up recording it at the studio I was doing my solo project. I was so inspired by doing this new thing that I wrote a B-side to this single. It will be released this August. Ever since we kept at it and now have material for two whole albums. So the plan is to keep working on the other songs and record them. We just want to write and stay creative. If people like it you're more than welcome to join us for the ride.
