Interview with Martin Bjerke

7 Days In Alaska's latest album, ‘’Dancing With Ghosts’’, was released on December 14, 2018. Their album got a pretty right rating from me, and I was curious to find out more about the album and the band itself. You can read the review here. The band consists of three guys from Norway: Martin Bjerke behind the mic, Christer Gundersen as the six stringer and Simen Sandness behind the drums. I got to do an interview with vocalist Martin!

‘’Hey! How are you doing? Thanks for doing this interview with us!’’

Martin: ‘’Hi! No, Thank u for writing about us. Appreciate it.’’

‘’How would you describe the last couple of years for the band? ‘’

Martin: ‘’Interesting. We spent a long time on dancing with ghosts and it has been a wonderful experience taking the songs to the stage and seeing how the audience react to the album as a whole.‘’

‘’How did you come up with the name of the band?’’

Martin: ‘’Christer and I wanted something with a hidden meaning as well as something that represent Where we come from. Norway is way up North and it's usually cold, and at least how we've seen alaska in movies etc, it felt kinda similar.’’

‘’How would you describe your music to someone who doesn’t know the band?’’

Martin: ‘’Big sounding, cinematic, pop/rock music.’’

‘’We are all influenced by different things as we get older and experience more. For you, what has changed as a songwriter and how you approach the music?’’

Martin: ‘’Great question. A lot of things. When you spend a lot of time in the studio and write music, you(hopefully) explore new things, and learn new things all the time. In the beginning you kinda have a general idea of who you are musically, but it takes time to get to that place where u go in and know exactly which areas to go to get that sound that your all about. I think what has changed since we finished our first album is that we are much more open minded. Not afraid to do exactly what we want and to take our time exploring new areas.’’

‘’What do you think is the unique selling point of the album?’’

Martin: ‘’The artwork done by a guy called Kyle Kerr (hahah, seriously, check him out on Instagram). No.. If you like arena rock, i think the listener has come to the right place.’’

‘’How important is chart success to you?’’

Martin: ‘’7DIA has never really been about the charts. Obviously, we wouldn't mind a top 10. But that's not what we're about. We wanna write and perform songs that we want to put out there, charts or no charts.‘’

‘’The last Facebook update of 7DIA included somewhat of a teaser.  What can you tell me about it in terms of lyrical content, musical styles / influences and production?’’

Martin: ‘’If your talking about the tour status? Yeah. We find it quite amusing to tease every once and awhile(haha), and if your leaning towards new stuff with that question, we don't wanna say too much just yet. All we can say, is that we will take our time to come up with something we find interesting. We won't rush a single or anything like it. We do think that the listener will appreciate that, in the long run too.’’

‘’Are there new themes or new sounds you wish to experiment with in the future?’’  

Martin: ‘’Absolutely. We won't make the same record twice. Thats utterly boring and I hope someone on our team gives us a good face slap if we give them demoes sounding exactly like ''Dancing With Ghosts''.‘’