Victor Furbacken is a versatile and highly in-demand Swedish musician who has been heard regularly in a wide range of musical contexts, both with artists from Sweden and abroad, in recent years. Furbacken is currently starting his debut solo project. Stripped down and acoustic in the classic singer-songwriter tradition, following in the footsteps of artists like Nick Drake and Nina Simone through Elliott Smith and Steven Stills. With his own sound and lyrics, Furbacken captures and reflects the frenzy, changeability and volatility of our time.
This is a key week for Furbacken’s debut as a solo artist, as he is releasing the brand new video for “Jane II.” The photographer Johan Westerlind filmed it, and Furbacken was happy to give him a free hand:
I have great confidence in Johan and his work, and I thought it was especially exciting to work in this way. The basic idea was to give Johan Westerlind free rein and let him work based on his own experiences of the material. He got a few different songs from me, and after quickly choosing “Jane II” he took over and shaped things in his own way. My only contribution was, together with Johan’s girlfriend Sofie Alm, to sometimes hold the boom, make coffee or sit together in some scenes. We had fun when we worked closely, and that is the point of doing it together.
Furbacken says that songs are based on and evoke certain feelings within himself, but he believes that such a feeling is different for each one. The interesting thing, in this case, was how Westerlind felt the music and what it led to visually. According to Furbacken:
I have, as long as I can remember, been fascinated by film, particularly in combination with music. For whatever style and content, I think almost always that the association between sound and image leads to something exciting. The video has no concrete themes, and sometimes the abstract is more dominant than the concrete, but all are welcome to create their own interpretation and their own themes around what they see. Then it becomes something else – a bit like an exchange.
Victor Furbacken on Facebook.