Life With A Good Year
Life With A Good Year
It all started with a shared notebook, which they filled with paintings, drawings, collages. Stuff like that…
Copenhagen-based friends Albert Hildebrandt and Tobias Laust are the duo behind A Good Year, an open-ended project where music, film and visual art exist on equal terms. Built around a collaborative approach, the project has no fixed roles or lead figure. Instead, the two move freely between music and visuals, inviting others into the process and letting each project take its own shape.
We met the duo in their new studio in Copenhagen to talk about visual and musical landscapes, how their 2024 soundtrack album, Sofina, began as the score to one of their own films and evolved into a work about sorrow following the passing of a close friend, their creative process, childhood memories and feelings of wooooow, Rihanna, Justice and Daft Punk. Breezy-breezy.
Text by Thea Søholt Holmboe, Photos by Johanna Hvidtved
Hi Tobias and Albert. How are you on this autumnyyy afternoon?
Tobias: Very good. Thank you.
Albert: Yeah. I’m good. A bit slow today, but I’m feeling good.
What have you two been up to today?
T: Actually, today we’ve been to the studio together for the first time in a while. We’ve been making music and slowly starting to build on the new album. It’s been super nice.
A: It’s been nice to finally get inside and start making music again. It’s been a while since we’ve created something new together.
How did you two first meet?
T: The first time we met was through my old band, Liss. Albert was a good friend of Søren, the lead singer of Liss, and you made a video for us. I think it was for our single “Talk to Me.” Søren and I went to Grøndalscenteret with Albert and filmed the music video.
A: Yeah. It was a really fun experiment. Then I met the other guys, and we did multiple videos together and eventually became friends.
What’s your first memory of each other?
A: You and Søren attended a party at my old flat in Nordvest. We went into the courtyard really drunk and fooled around at the playground. I have some really good photographs of you and Søren sitting on small cars and inside a playhouse.
T: I have no memory of that. I think my first memory was at this festival in Birkerød, where I played with Liss, and all of a sudden you were just there.
What was the first thing you really got excited about together?
T: I remember you talking about the film director Terrence Malick.
A: That’s true. Film was definitely a shared interest of ours. The whole vision of a movie, including sound, moving images and storytelling. From the very beginning, it was very easy for us to understand each other’s references.
T: We were both part of this shared atelier space behind the café Dzidra in Nørrebro, where we would spend a lot of time together. At the time, we were both going through a kind of confusing period in our lives. We were both looking for something, and neither of us knew what it was. In that sense, it was nice to just do stuff together.
A: One day I brought a book, like a notebook, and I said to Tobias, “Let’s just put stuff in here that we like.” Like a small visual diary. We wrote our names on it and filled it with paintings, drawings, stuff like that. Yeah. I still have that book at home.
Albert, you studied art in Bergen, while Tobias, you’ve been making music from a young age and have been part of the band Liss for many years. How do those different backgrounds come together in what you’re creating with A Good Year?
A: The first project we did together was Sofina, a film that grew into a soundtrack album. It’s a film about landscapes, about movement through landscapes, which ended up becoming a work about sorrow and mourning in the light of the passing away of Søren. The focus evolved around landscapes, inner landscapes, and how a physical scene or landscape can express something internal. Then we started experimenting with other projects, sharing diaries, references, drawings, paintings, film and music. Eventually, we started making a bit of music together. Back then, I wasn’t a musician in that way.
T: I’ve always been interested in the visual side of music. I’ve always made the album covers and stuff like that. For me, it felt very natural to create music with a visual baseline, and vice versa. It felt very natural to enter that space. A: And I always wanted to make music. I always wanted to be in a band, but I never had the so-called abilities to join one because I couldn’t play an instrument or sing very well. For a long time, I was just around all of my friends who played in bands, and I would contribute to the visual side or identity-related work on their projects. For me, it felt natural to create music with someone who cared so much about aesthetics as well.
What does design mean to you, and how do you see music and visual aesthetics coming together to create a cohesive identity? In the 00s, there was a clear shift towards visual expression becoming an integral part of an artist’s identity, from groups such as Why? and cLOUDDEAD to Karen O. Are there any specific examples or artists that you draw inspiration from when it comes to creating a strong aesthetic connection between music and design?
A: Gorillaz had this album connected to a video game, where you could drive around in this cartoon world. The soundtrack was just playing in the background, and I didn’t really understand if it was a band or what it was. It was very insane. Like, a very extraordinary online game that you could just play.
T: I have a really clear childhood memory of this neighbor who was really into music and had this crazy vinyl collection. He showed me the film linked to the Daft Punk album Discovery. I was maybe ten years old, and I watched that movie, which is like an anime, and I was just like, wooooow.
How do you work creatively together? Do you create the music and visuals together from the beginning, or do you naturally take the lead in different areas?
T: Sometimes an instrumental element sparks the idea for the visuals. Or it can be a video that Albert has made. Often, we sit in the same room, with Albert editing the videos and me mixing the music.
A: It’s a really interesting room to be in together. The music and the videos naturally influence each other. Like how the editing should be and how the pace should be.
Your new studio is in a shared building space among friends and colleagues. Some are visual artists, some are musicians, and some work outside these categories. What is it like to build this space together, and what opportunities does working side by side with close friends bring?
A: It reminds me of being in school and having classmates in a way. It’s a very socially giving thing. I like the idea that it’s possible to do something creative together. Not that you need to do something together, but more the possibility of it. I like the idea of the possibility itself.
T: I’ve always envied people who studied at the conservatory or an art school. Schools that have these classrooms where students can show each other art pieces or new music and talk about it. I’ve always been very jealous of that space, and it feels like we have kind of created that space together. I like that you can always show projects that you’re working on to people who are close to you. And people that you admire. That feels really nice.
Rihanna, Pavement, Radiohead, Justice or Daft Punk - which three would you choose?
A+T: Rihanna, Justice and Daft Punk.
If you could choose any city in the world to live in, would Copenhagen still be your first choice?
A: As a permanent place to live, I would choose Copenhagen. I would like to try living in other places for shorter periods of time. To me, being in Copenhagen feels a bit like being in the countryside. It’s so easy to get around and to be alone without the city feeling crowded in any way. It’s so easy to find a quiet spot.
T: I’m always drawn to other cities. When you travel a lot, you always kind of dream about what it would be like to live in the cities you visit. Like, what would it be like to live in New York or something like that? But then, after a while, it’s also kind of nice to go back home to Copenhagen. It’s kind of a safe space. A: I lived in Bergen, in Norway, for three years, and I really missed being in Copenhagen. In Bergen, it was nice being outside. Like, really, really outside. Being in Copenhagen kind of feels like being inside, in a way. There are built interior spaces everywhere. Like the parks. Also, there are no horizons or anything, and in general, I am really drawn to being inside
