Bio

Bio

The story of Lilou & John is not only the story of an indie band but also a story of growing up in Sweden. It’s the story of coming from destructive family patterns and trying to fit into an extremely formal society where people pretend to be progressive.

Another integral part of the story is the mix of Lilou’s dark alto voice, unique for female singers, with John’s eclectic and heterodox poems that constantly evade all genres. Finally, it’s the story of revolt against the entire system and culture that one day pushed the duo too far.

They would hate to do the same music over and over. They are easily bored to death if they don’t move on from project to project. “Constant development makes life more exciting”, Lilou says.

Revolt and change are indeed two significant traits of Lilou & John. From the first album the band has been through much turmoil. Their first EP 100 Faces (altrock, 2016) was dark and introspective, followed up by four socially poignant albums Dissidentica (neofolk, 2017), Patriot Child (punk, 2018), Airing from Kolyma (neofolk, 2018) and Iconoclastic (EDM, 2019).

Those albums and EPs were followed by three years when they hardly released any material but two singles, Gospel X (EDM, 2019) and Stray Wolf (shadowband, 2020), and an album Malaise (shadowband, 2021), that pointed in a much darker and deeper direction.

It took them another two years to release Midnight Oracle (shadowband, 2023) that continued down the abyss opened up by Malaise. “We had no name for the experimental combination of electropop, esoterica, revolt, forbidden poetry and doom”, John says, “so we simply called it shadowband”.

100 Faces – The first year

100 Faces was a project of trial and error. It started off with Lilou considering a multitude of producers and finally deciding that Riverside Productions was the one.

The band decided that the producer would play all instruments for the album as it would make the process faster and cheaper. The duo had no experience from being in a studio”, Lilou says, “so when he suggested that he would do all the instruments we agreed. It seemed better at the time”.

“I felt a bit left behind”, John admits, “in that I only contributed with the lyrics for that EP, but when I look back I am really proud of what we achieved together. Some of these songs are still my absolute favorites”.

“We wanted a radio friendly sound”, Lilou says, “but when we contacted people afterwards we realized that the sound was too odd for many and only people who were on the lookout for new music were interested. My deep voice scared off some because it sounded like nothing they had ever heard before. It’s sad that music business is so conformist and everything must sound the same way. But in the end it makes us more unique so it’s good too”.

“We filmed our first music videos around Borås”, Lilou says. “Our youngest son had a pair of headphones and I told him to dance through town to the sound of ‘100 Faces’. He did it so well. We drove around for half a day before we had the entire movie. Late at night we filmed the last scenes with me walking with hawkish make-up”.

“For ‘He Broke My Neck, Joséphine’ I had found an abandoned haunted house where the upper floor was the perfect place for a video. Our oldest son played a ghost child and I tried to focus in on the darkness of that house. I wanted it to feel like a place where no living human ever enters but only the ghosts remain in loneliness”.

Dissidentica – The punk years begin

100 Faces had been a great debut EP in terms of recognition. The album had been played by radio stations and podcasts in 10+ countries. But things were about to change during the winter of 2016-2017.

The band have always been fierce supporters of free speech and as such they had contacted numerous media outlets of all religious, ethnic and political leanings. Their belief that all people should be treated with the same respect if they show the same respect back is perhaps best reflected in Lilou’s famous quote: “we are nice to everyone who is nice to us”.

Their support of free speech did not go unnoticed and the band quickly began to feel the pressure of discrimination.

Lilou had gotten into contact with a Swedish Radio employee who invited them to play live. Five minutes before the broadcast the producer cancelled the show unless the duo agreed to answer a number of questions regarding their opinions live before the show. Lilou asked the producer if all artists had to answer the same questions and when a sufficient answer wasn’t given Lilou & John left the building. They both recall that was the very moment the album Dissidentica and the dissident duo was born.

“All contact with that employee ended at once”, Lilou says, “and a contact I had who wanted us to participate at some festivals never wrote again. We tried to fix a base guitar player and a drummer for the next album and I think we lost three or four of them, one after another”.

The album was finally recorded in a studio owned by an old-school Marxist. Dissidentica quickly became legendary as a unique collection of songs, where the band set off on a journey to explore society from “underneath”.

“The Girl from Antarctica” is a story about a woman from a background of incest and abuse, “Via Dolorosa” is about the frailty of love and how painful a divorce can be, “Solferino” is about the battlefield that saw the birth of the Red Cross, “Next Year in Jerusalem” is about the Jewish diaspora, “9/11” is about genocide and mass murder, “Bataclan” is about Islamistic terror, “Spirit of America” is about American Conservatism and “Payback Day” is about the infamous “Nazi” slur during the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

“I had bought some masquerade masks earlier that I thought we could use for a video and now they fit perfectly for ‘Via Dolorosa'”, Lilou says. “We borrowed a nerf gun from our youngest son for ‘Payback Day’. I directed John for an entire day at Bockaby former military training grounds outside Borås.”

“In a way our image as rebels was created that day at Swedish Radio.” John says. “It is hard to overestimate the impact of their decision and we both decided to make at least one song about free speech on each album until we had raised enough awareness for other artists to follow us.”

Eldbarn – The darkest of novels

Lilou & John continued to grow during the summer of 2017 when Vávra Suk, head of book and news publisher Alterna Media decided to publish their novel Eldbarn.

The duo had been writing the book for two years when Perra Winberg, journalist at the newspaper Nya Tider, introduced the novel to Mr Suk. Lilou & John participated at the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2017 together with Alterna Media where the book was released.

However, Alterna Media’s strong stance for free speech was not seen with friendly eyes and much turmoil surrounded the book fair. Lilou & John were questioned for their decision to publish their book through Alterna Media.

“We were asked all kinds of wicked questions from a journalist who thought we were planning to spark an armed ‘Nazi’ revolution in Sweden”, John says, “and we had another round of trying to convince people that we had no intention whatsoever to conquer Abyssinia or declare war on Poland. It was just a totally awkward situation”.

“The book isn’t even about politics”, Lilou says, “it is a story about a girl who is abused by her father and her struggles to survive. But some people desperately want everything to be about politics when it actually is about artistic freedom”.

“The journalist asked us how our colleagues at work would react when they heard about the book fair and we answered that they put safety pins in their noses and sang ‘Sheena is a punk rocker'”, Lilou & John recalls. “We thought there was no reason giving serious answers to stupid questions and the journalist actually published the answer so a colleague later said that friends of hers had asked her if she really HAD put safety pins in her nose?”

“They had to smuggle us out from the Gothenburg Book Fair”, Lilou recalls. “A large violent crowd had gathered to stop us from participating. An old man fell ill and was lying on the floor. He needed to get to hospital but nobody could get out. People from Nya Tider told us to be careful because we were easily recognizable and therefore targets for blind hate.”

The book was no commercial success but it was praised by critics. Åke Blomdahl wrote that “Lilou and John are also musicians and their narrative style is a densely poetic prose. With nature metaphors and adjectives, the authors create a compelling mood with a few sentences, as in a song.” Joakim Andersen wrote that “the language is extremely poetic, something that is not necessarily noticeable during the reading because it has been made subtly.”

The dark aspects of the novel also caused some different interpretations as the newspaper Nya Tider argued that young people should NOT read the book due to the risk for suicide. On the think-tank Motpol is was however suggested that it was “an excellent book for the younger reader who already appreciates urban fantasy, but also the adult reader has a lot to look forward to”.

The couple also revealed in a 2017 interview in Nya Tider that they both came from dysfunctional families and the effect it has had on their lyrics, music and general approach to life.