“My biggest hope for the future is to make an impact with our music.” We sat down with self-proclaimed ‘ambitious’ indie-rock band, Iffy Orbit to talk about their debut, Slow Times, not being Tame Impala, and something about a dead pig.

Cramming together in a sofa stall at Westerdals, one of Oslo’s creative schools, Iffy Orbit seem both excited and nervous of the prospect of this interview.

After some banter we move on to the story of how these five boys came together as a band. Having grown up in the same area, the band shot speed as they started studying music together in high school.

“It took like three weeks and then we had our first song, ‘The Fourth Dimension’. We released that song, and we suddenly had to write many more songs cause it caught on” – drummer Teodor Dysthe Lyngstad tells.

Lead singer, Kristoffer Robin Moe Severinsen, continues that: “I would say that we, Iffy Orbit, came to be this band that we are today during that song. ‘The Forth Dimension’, that was when everything fell together in a slightly untidy but still neat way.”

Having grown from high school boys into aspiring indie darlings, the band still appreciate the glory of their early work. Guitarist, Eirik Aas Grove states that: “We have evolved pretty seriously in terms of musicality and how we play our instruments. We’ve gained more experience, but then again, in the last part of our career we find ourselves writing songs and longing back to how we wrote ‘The Fourth Dimension’, and trying to get that same feeling.”

Teodor elaborates that: “We kind of tried to collectively not play a lot of things that’ve we’ve learned cause we’ve focused more on trying to invent new stuff and it’s hard when there’s so much input from the world.”

As for the album, Slow Times is in many ways an unexpected debut. Whilst containing a well-balanced spectre of indie-hooks, the record surprises with ballsy moves exceeding the expectations one usually have for a surfacing guitar-band. Lyrically, Eirik ponders that: “it has become an album about the classic topic of growing up or entering adulthood. We tried to do it in the most real way that we could, and write songs that were truly about what we experienced entering adulthood, not just like ‘oh baby’.”

“That was the situation that we found ourselves in when we wrote it.”

“We decided to drop everything and just go 100% in for making this band work and releasing an album”, Teodor tells.

There’s a lot of fear on the album

Though the fear of trying to make a band work had an effect on the album, the frustration of a creative process might have affected the title, Slow Times.

“I felt like going 100% in for making an album with these guys, it gets kind of frustrating sometimes cause you have so much in your head you want to do, but it goes so slow,” Teodor admits.

“I also thought of it as a metaphor for that exact period of someone’s life. It’s moving a lot quicker on the outside than on the inside”, Kristoffer adds.

“Each year I feel like time moves a bit faster, that’s also the topic of the last song,” Eirik ponders, before continuing that: “When you look back upon the moments that mattered the most in this difficult growing up time, you get the sensation that those times have more weight then the rest. Also if you’re in that very moment, you might feel like you’re stuck in that moment. Time moves slowly. So, in my opinion, ‘Slow Times’ is representing those topics.”

As we move on to the topic of inspiration the guys quickly confess: “we realised that we had to actively fight to not become Tame Impala.” Despite the active effort to not be “a band that already exist”, the guys list both Dan Croll and MGMT amongst their darlings.

Having played together for five years, Iffy Orbit surely have some stories up their sleeve.

“I don’t think my parents would be too glad, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with. I’m over 18 now, mum!”, Teodor says.

After a bit of back and forth a story including a story of some underwater filming gone wrong, a story from a song writing retreat comes up.

“We were in this cabin in Valdres. That was nice but one night everyone got invited to a party, and yeah, I can’t tell the rest because I didn’t attend”, Kristoffer starts.

“It includes a dead pig, some neo Nazis and drunk driving. But we survived. And Teodor hid all the knives in the house”, Eirik sums up.

“That was a culture shock.”

As for their future hopes and dreams touring seems high up on the list. “I hope we go to Japan. And the UK and Germany, and the US.”

Teodor states that he’d like to “make an album that’s really true to ourselves, and to really detach ourselves from everything.”

“I would say that maybe my biggest hope for the future is to make an impact with our music.” – Kristoffer sums up.

Iffy Orbit’s debut, Slow Times, is out now via Toothfairy.

Photos: Aurora Henni Krogh