Celebrating 10 Years of Perception

The Sonic Dawn's debut album, Perception, just turned 10 years old. Join us on a trip down memory lane with photos and stories from when it all began. Perception changed everything for us.

Before Perception: The Years of Becoming

Released on 31 Oct. 2015 via Nasoni Records, Perception was actually a couple of years in the making. We were just puppies then, and as the old folks say, it was a different time.

Back in the early 2010s, rock music wasn’t only for the few. When bands like Foo Fighters or The Black Keys released an album, the world listened. But more importantly, really good albums by less conventional groups came out left and right.

Bands like Graveyard, Baby Woodrose, The Black Angels, and Dean Allen Foyd, showed us that you could make it as a band without compromising musically.

Meanwhile, we – Emil, Jonas, and Bird – had been writing songs and rehearsing seriously for some time. We drifted naturally towards the rock sound of the late sixties and early seventies, which we had been interested in since childhood. Having no desire to simply copy our heroes – or anyone else, for that matter – we were searching for our own voice, mostly in private. Looking back at it now, it was a crucial time in early adulthood, that would define our lives.

The Context: The 'Psych Wave' and Finding Our People

Do you remember the Psych Fests? Around 2013–16, most major cities seemed to have one, modeled after Austin Psych Fest. A few still exist. They were a celebration of underground music, and the programs usually centered around shoegaze and neo-psych bands. In our hometown, the quite successful Copenhagen Psych Fest featured The Telescopes, White Hills, Moon Duo, Black Mountain, and many more, as well as a plethora of Danish bands that sprung up from this suddenly fertile underground.

Today, this watering of the local psych seeds seems like its most important accomplishment. A new wave of Danish rock bands like De Underjordiske, Narcosatanicos, The Wands, Fribytterdrømme, and – you guessed it – yours truly, found themselves and our audiences here.

Without these experiences and the people that we met during the so-called psych wave, Perception could have become a different album. We’re quite happy that things took a psychedelic turn, however.

Creation: A Journey, Not a Session

The songwriting for Perception was done by all of us collectively, most of the songs developing out of jam sessions in rehearsal, and then molded to their final shape with Emil’s arrangements and production. We all participated in writing the lyrics as well, with the majority coined by Bird, and then adjusted collectively.

The basic tracks were recorded during 10 days in February 2013 at Skovagergård, Majbølle; a farmhouse in the far countryside of Denmark. To say that this was unusual for Majbølle would be an understatement. So much so that the local news press sniffed us out. Both the daily and weekly newspapers as well as the regional TV station came by to cover the psychedelic goings-on.

We owe it to Bird’s old man, Erik, for letting us take over the entire place. Fortunately, he was kind of hard of hearing, because we worked around the clock for those 10 days. We engineered and recorded everything ourselves live in the room to capture the feeling of a band playing together. Some dubs were laid down, most notably Henrik Steen Jensen’s epic sitar track on The Mustang (he had studied sitar in India), but there was still a lot of work to be done when we packed up, as we would come to realize.

Arranging and recording all vocal tracks, and inventing and recording all additional guitar dubs, took a whole year. Not what we originally had in mind, but the inspiration kept flowing and the tracks kept improving, so we kept going further. This somewhat ungrateful job fell heavily on Emil, who in turn just grew and grew with the task. Later, we got much better at expressing what each song is and then capturing it, but we were still very much learning.

Keys (Hammond B3, Fender Rhodes, and clavinet) were recorded by Erik ‘Errka’ Petersson in his studio in Stockholm. We had met him when he played with Dean Allen Foyd and immediately recognized his immense talent. They all were crazy good. He really, truly is one of the best organists we have ever encountered, so it felt like asking your secret crush to the school dance when we approached him. Still, nothing could have prepared us for what he brought to the record. It was magic hearing the songs with him on them for the first time, such as his Rhodes contribution on Watching Dust Fall.

Years later, Errka, now our close friend and steady studio member of The Sonic Dawn, told us that this session for Perception had haunted him like a brain ghost, because of the way everything just came together. As every musician knows, it can take some processing to get your part right, but the strongest ideas tend to simply happen. The formal addition of Errka in 2024 is the only change to the band's lineup in our history, by the way.

Visions: More Than Sound

It’s funny how your first steps can define the rest of the journey. Just like our collaboration with Errka became a huge part of our sound, a similar thing happened visually.

The psychedelic cover art for Perception was designed by Robin Gnista, with whom we also continued to work on all subsequent albums. He designed every band t-shirt and several posters as well, and today we consider him a visual extension of the band. He understands our music like few others. In later years, Robin has designed for artists like Patti Smith, The Who, and Bob Dylan, but he still joins our studio sessions when he can, where he starts imagining what the music looks like. It’s a real trip.

Finally: Record Deal and Album Release

We mixed the finished album tracks at Media Sound Studios, situated directly under our rehearsal, in collaboration with producer Peter Brander. He has worked with everyone and their grandmother here in Denmark, from MC Einar to Sort Sol. The mastering was done on 1/4-inch tape, also by Brander.

We then shopped the album around and thus landed our first international record deal with Nasoni Records, based in Berlin, who released Perception worldwide on yellow vinyl on 31 October 2015. Soon after, Nasoni reissued the LP on blue vinyl.

Later, we got Perception remastered by Hans Olsson Brookes at Svenska Grammofonstudion Mastering, Gothenburg, and had the lacquers cut at Abbey Road Studios, giving the LP the premium treatment we couldn’t afford at the initial release. This mastering was issued on black 180g vinyl LP via Voks Records (2017) and good ol’ black vinyl (2019).

We celebrated Perception with a reception on the release day at our go-to bar at the time in Kronborggade, Copenhagen.

Next Stop: Creating Your Own Future

Shortly after, we embarked on our first longer international tour, taking us to Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. On 26 May 2016, we opened the legendary Freak Valley Festival in Germany, sharing the stage with Graveyard, Baby Woodrose, Dead Meadow, and White Hills, among others that day. Video from Freak Valley Festival 2016 here. We smoked a doobskin with Baby Woodrose and watched Graveyard’s show from the side of the stage.

It felt like we had poked a hole through the thin skin of reality. What before was impossible was now true. Everything was moving fast, and we were right in the middle of the maelstrom, riding the wave. And here we are?

Let’s end it there.

Thanks for reading along. Catch you all in the next chapter.