What have you been doing lately?
- We were done with the recordings after the summer, but were going to remix some stuff. We were mastering lately, but the recordings have been ready for some time.

How was it working together with Mike Hedges?
- He has done a lot of funny things in the 80's, Marc Almond and stuff from a completely different niche than our thing.

Did you let him rule the whole thing?
- It's a little like bringing in a new bandmember for a period. We made some songs with him, and continued ourselves. You want a producer because it is as fun to build as to destroy, and part of the recording you just want to destroy, which you also succeed with sometimes. It's a producers job to push you out when you're done with the album. I never look forward to others hearing it, you do it for yourself.

Did you ever feel that you wanted to throw him out?
- Now and then, it's as if there is someone hitting on your girl. Atomic Swing has made two albums, I don't know how many albums you can make under the same constellation. This time it was fun to have someone who could look at us from above, we were living in England. He came to us and said that this was the strangest he had heard in a long time, he seemed like a funny guy, the biggest personality I've ever met. He looks like some old king, big and redhaired with 'devil's-curves' (strange word, don't know how to translate it, heh) and a hell-of-an appetite on life. We were invited to his chateu down there, the recording is a little as the environment around it. It was wine and calvados in the evenings, that's important. It felt a little as it maybe did for Stones with "Beggar's banquet"

Have you been thinking more of producing others?
- I've never really taken Atomic Swing seriously, I've always seen it as if you're your own guinea-pig and that you do things you want to learn. That's a pretty good tool, to try things, go abroad, everyone should be in a rock'n'roll-band for a while. I think you learn most things, Atomic Swing is a little of that guinea-pig to me, and what turns out good you can applicate on other things.

So it doesn't mean everything for you?
- Something that bothers me is that when we released our first single I began feeling like Dag Finn (singer in ShaBoom, a band from Norway that had some big hits and was popular for a short while. Haven't heard anything of them ever since). That wasn't the intention, we had big hits and so.  Well, it was a while ago, we have tried to wash that away a little. People who have listened more than to the radio and the hits have understand that Atomic Swing is something more than just a ShaBoom. This thing with Popsicle, that they asked me to produce them under our least hot era, that felt good...

Have you had more offers?
- Unfortunately it's so that if you've done something it comes 100 other cassettes that want to sound the same and you try to sift those. It can be beginners-luck for me in particular. Skill and talant has it's worth when you play together and record but I think luck is the biggest factor when you do new constellations, unexpected things. How does that work together? That's the only time it can be good! I've tried that each time, that we took Hedges because he was as far from rock'n'roll as possible, he had only made synthgroups as Associates and such. I knew it would be a hit, the question was what kind of hit?

Do you make any money?
- No Cardigans-sums, we've made pretty well in periodes, awfully much after the first album. Pay back your debts, have some round-the-world-trips... Pretty girls, money and fast cars are motive-forces as good as any. A lot of good music has been done that way, but it's mostly for peace of mind you're doing it. Then it's nice to be able to pay your rent. You've been standing there having grammy's in your hand, but I've never felt so gloomy as under that era, I've never coped with the picture of me toasting in champagne. I love adversities as long as it is not unhealthy, it gives a thrill. For a guy such as Eric Clapton it's not about success, it's about artistry. It's a curse and everyone who has it knows it, it's a much more amusing life to be a hired professional with halftime-job on an insurancecompany and show off at the town-hotel, I cannot see anything wrong with that. Sure you want tanned topquality-girls but they will probably not have you. It's glamorous to play sometimes, I shouldn't complain. There is a feeling of ridiculousness over everyone who is in the papers, it's not everyone who wants to sit and file quadrates to triangles.... that's a little how it was for us. Like that scene in Apollo 13... we've got this and that, what can we make of it? So we managed to get an album together on a limited number of ingredients. It was a challenge, it had been a lot easier to change names and so. I think that if we can get this together we can put anything together, it was a challenge...

How was it really with the other album?
- First and foremost it wasn't that bad, but it was also we ourselves who were tired of answering the same questions and we felt that we gladly let it disappear on purpose. Noone worried about it. But that it was a crisis, that's something it never was. Each of the members was able to live a richer life without Atomic Swing, I have lots of offers all the time, but we wanted to row this thing into land and do it well. To be overexposed involountary is a quite boring feeling, let people have Brainpool and Broder Daniel. Nothing bad about them, but when you feel inactual you're the first one to know it yourself, it's a big machinery to stop. It is your diplomatic sense you have to suffer for!

Is it a good life, rock'n'roll-life?
When you're in the middle of it it's absolutely no good life, but later... note by note is not music, but when you play the whole it is. It's like doing the service: not fun to do it but it's good when you've done it. I've been possed, since the age of ten, to do really great music, lying sleepless a lot. It's the feeling when you mix it down and there's harmony in the speakers and you feel that you never have to sleep with an ugly girl again, that's some nice seconds who are really worth all the hard work.

Do you play others' songs sometimes?
- No, not a lot, it's hard to play other peoples' songs. We're not the kind of a jam-band, the four of us together, our arrangements are quite broken. In this band you do what you're supposed to do, and people have other bands where you can play around.

Expectations now?
- I feel that the tour is going to be a good one. I guess we're a little to the swedish Japan-wave what Stone Roses were to Manchester. I get a lot of letters from people who want us to come over and play, so I guess we're gonna do that too.

Will it be a 'Live at Budokan' perhaps?
- I don't know if we fill it, it doesn't matter. When you play it's about getting the same feeling out of the speakers as youhave in the body, at least I've got some motive with life...

Do you hold back a lot as guitarist?
- Well, yes, my favourite word of wisdom is from Scarface: "don’t ever get high on your own shit". As a guitarist you shouldn't get high on your own playing, sometimes there's room for a guitarsolo... sure, but I have the ego-trip home in the livingroom.

Are the other members replaceable?
- When we met we weren't the worlds greatest musicians, but there was some kind of chemistry. It sparkles about the band. It's some kind of a freezone to write those silly songs in this constellation, it's a hole to breath through... I guess you have your hours of darkness, but that you sometimes just want to entertain with the surface even if there's more under it.

Ho do you make it sound old?
- Part of the secret is to let the instruments sound as they're supposed to do, there's a reason that a cymbal was made in a certain way. Of course you colour it to make a soundpicture, but I think that a drumkit without microphones is the best sound for a drumkit. You try to imitate that as much as possible. I still don't think we're identic to the music of the 70's, it got very lighted since the music and the fashion happened to come back at the same time. But I think to ride a trend you actually have to be part of starting it. It takes to so long time to make albums and write songs, that retro-talk has never really worried me.