Lemaitre On Making A Living From Your Music Without 'Selling Out'

As we all know, it can be tough to ‘make it’ as a musician – to build a fanbase, and to make a living. But there are often avenues that are overlooked by bands that, if pursued effectively, can help them find the sort of success they’d only ever dreamed of.

One such outfit is Norwegian electronic duo Lemaitre, who have made plenty of shrewd moves along the way that have helped taken them from a fledgling act dreaming of playing with their heroes Justice or taking to the stage at Coachella, to an international act who have managed to achieve all of that and more.

Beyond the basics of honing their craft to a razor’s edge, they’ve also recognised the importance of collaborating with other artists to help them polish their music, and working with a team of management to help them utilise that music wherever possible – from Apple commercials and Facebook campaigns, to the soundtrack of the iconic FIFA series of games.

In Australia especially, bands can be reluctant to pursue the goal of seeing their music used in commercials – selling out a show or a run of tee shirts is a dream, but having your song in an ad is ‘selling out’ in the wrong way. Similarly, while some music communities pride themselves on their collaborative nature, our isolated little corner of the world tends to feel the need to do it all on our own, grinding away in the studio rather than bringing others onboard to help. Now staying in Dr Dre’s former LA home-turned-studio, living and recording with fellow producers, Lemaitre are the poster boys for the modern recording artists.

With Lemaitre bringing their new EP Afterglow to our shores this year for Falls Festival and a couple of sideshows, we took a moment to speak to them about the points of difference that have helped them get a step up in the industry, putting them squarely on festival stages around the world – as well as everyone’s Facebook feed.

Chatting with one half of the duo, Ketil Jansen, we were keen to talk about some of Lemaitre’s recent success. The instrumental version of their track ‘Cut To Black’ was used in the enormous Facebook Friends Day video campaign, for instance, and they’ve just kicked a goal by landing a spot on the soundtrack for one of the highest selling video game institutions in the world, FIFA 2017, with their single ‘We Got U’ feat. The Knocks. Has being exposed to these huge worldwide audiences given the band a sudden boost in popularity?

“Sort of,” Ketil ponders, “but it feels slow and steady to me. Not slow, but rather a natural and really steady increase in our fanbase over time. It doesn’t feel like any one thing we did caused a massive surge, people are just following more and more, and that feels really good – like on some level it’s a safer way of growing.”

The FIFA soundtrack is one of the most coveted placements of all, and having a song playing behind those menu screens can really help to cement a band in a player’s head for years to come. It’s a feeling Ketil can definitely relate to.

“I played FIFA ’98 – that was the time I was most into FIFA – and I distinctly remember ‘Song 2’ by Blur because of that game. It’s always going to be stuck in my mind. So it’s always been a thing you aspire to do, like playing Coachella – they’re all parts of your musical bucket list.”

Playing Coachella, of course, was one of those indefinable experiences.

“It was a dream,” Ketil says, seemingly a little over-awed to this day. “Everything about it was even cooler than I’d hoped… I have nothing to say about it. Perfect!”

The band have also seen great success in placing their tunes in various adverts – known as an ‘ad sync’ – a strategy that more and more bands are placing importance on. With their music even being used by Apple, Lemaitre believe it’s something that should be a focus for all artists – although there are some caveats.

“I’ve discussed this quite a bit with a few people, as we do more syncs than a lot of other bands, and it seems like it’s a thing that you can’t really choose – I think our music works really well for syncs, and we’re really lucky in that regard. Not every piece of music fits for advertisements.”

“We have a lot of instrumental hooks that are memorable, I think at least, and we have a great team that works really well with syncs. I would recommend every musician try to get syncs, and try to see if you can find people in your team that are good at placing your music, but unfortunately some types of music don’t sync that well. We’re lucky in that regard, and have the greatest sync team ever in my opinion.”

The pair have always made a point of avoiding samples, instead recording their own from scratch – mostly. Incidentally, by avoiding the use of samples, they also avoid having to cut in an array of other artists when they receive the cheques.

“Actually, we have a couple of micro samples here and there,” Ketil admits, referring to the process of repurposing very minute snippets of sound. “We’ve used parts of old records to base our kick drums on, but theres not really any sampling of other people’s work in our music.”

It wasn’t necessarily by choice, though, as there were also factors of practicality at work.

“It started out because we couldn’t clear anything!” Ketil explains. “As a band starting out, almost all of the music we listened to had used samples – like old Röyksopp and Daft Punk, they’re all based on samples – and we didn’t have any sort of stature to clear any samples. So we figured let’s just try to make it, try to recreate that sound that old samples have. Obviously in the process you don’t get it 100 percent – you end up sounding more like yourself than anything else.”

Sounding like themselves and nothing else is something the band continue to emphasise as their music changes over the years, heading into a direction that is a little more ‘pop’ than before. But was it a deliberate move to nab a bigger following?

“I think it’s just because people’s taste in music drifts over time, and I think you always have to make exactly what you want to make. I can see why a lot of bands change over the years, because it quickly gets boring doing the same thing over and over. If you keep doing the same thing, and you don’t really feel inspired to make those types of songs anymore, it’s not going to be any good – it’s just going to be a poor imitation of yourself back in those days.

“So we’ve always had the mindset of let’s just make exactly what we wanna make, and not worry so much if people like it or not. Obviously we love it if people like it, but it gets really hard if you constantly chase people’s approval, ’cause then you’re going to second-guess every little thing you do with your music. You’ve just gotta follow your personal instinct on what’s good and what’s not.”

Those personal instincts have also led them to collaborate with a variety of other artists. Co-writing is something that can still be seen as a dirty word in Australia, frequently relegated to the realms of manufactured pop singers and not ‘real artists’, but that’s something that certain Australian industry figures like Unified CEO Jaddan Comerford have rallied against. Jaddan recently pointed out that co-writing is a common practice overseas, for artists of all genres, and that Australia needs to open its mind to the idea, as it ultimately results in better music.

“Definitely,” Ketil agrees, “and I can see it happening in Norway too. Which is nice, because when we left it felt solitary to be a songwriter or producer there, but now when I go back there’s a scene for it. It should be like that everywhere, there’s no reason for it not to.”

Those collaborations have included working on a track with Porter Robinson, and the list of names for future dream collabs is still a mile long. Thankfully, living in LA, Lemaitre feel that they’re in a prime location for musical team-ups.

“There’re so many, I can’t even name a quarter of them without spending an hour,” Ketil says of his remaining collab goals. “I think music, especially in LA, is a really fun and collaborative environment. Everybody works on everybody’s songs, and it’s very… free.

“Even just in our house. We have three studios in our house, and we live with another artist, Coucheron, who’s worked on mixtapes with Kehlani, for instance. It’s super quick to just run up to show him tracks, and he can just throw out an idea, and then you go back and forth like that – and let your managers and publishers work out the technical side!”

That house, incidentally, is actually Dr Dre’s former LA home of all places. Is it as baller as we’d expect?

“It’s actually quite humble,” Ketil claims. “I suspect this is one of the first things he was able to buy with his cheques – he lived here in ’95. It’s still pretty nice, but you would expect big things from Dr Dre!”

One Australian artist who hasn’t been shy of collaborations, and has seen massive success overseas as a result, is of course Flume, whose set at this year’s Splendour in the Grass blew everyone away with the number of guests he brought out onstage with him. Lemaitre have praised Flume very highly in the past, and now rate him as one of the most influential artists in the industry.

“I think he can be credited for basically starting the really dope, trappy festival sound. I don’t know how to describe it, but everybody does it now, from The Chainsmokers, to us, to everybody. I don’t know any other source for that style than Flume, and that’s just a crazy achievement. He basically sparked an entire genre that people just got crazy into – and still are.”

Lemaitre also feel that they too have been ahead of the curve in some ways. With some describing their live set as an “EDM rock show” due to the extra live instruments they pack onto the stage, they’ve been able to set themselves apart from more the average electronic act, and get a head start on the acts that followed.

“We sort of wanted to do it because nobody else really was, that we knew of at least. A few other people we’d seen trying to do live electronic shows had been very much relying on tracks, or they sounded bad. We very much from the start wanted it to sound like a DJ set, but to still be doing things live.

“It definitely didn’t always sound good live, but we always made an effort to try to steer it so that it sounded the way it does on record, without being purely playback. Now that people have started doing live electronic shows, we feel like we’re in a good spot, because we have more experience than most other bands that do the same thing.”

Considering they’re about to bring that live energy to Australia for Falls Festival, are there any other Aussie acts that Lemaitre want to shout out?

“I feel like there are,” Ketil says, “I just don’t remember at any given time who’s Australian – but I know there are a lot. One of my very favourite bands are from Australia: Hiatus Kaiyote – they’re a super dope band from Melbourne.”

A great pick from Ketil there to ingratiate Lemaitre with Aussie crowds ahead of their trip here, but it won’t be their first brush with our festival scene.

“We did Future – no, Stereosonic!” Ketil tells us of their last visit in 2013, where the duo were stoked with the reception. “It was quite early [in our careers], so we weren’t as big as I’d hope we are now, but it was really cool to see that – even on a festival that EDM-y like Stereosonic – we still managed to pull a crowd, which was a really cool thing to experience.”

You’ll be able to catch the Coachella-slaying duo and their live band on the Falls Festival stage at the end of the year, as well as playing a couple of side shows, dates below. Until then, give their brand new EP Afterglow a spin – or play a few games of FIFA.