Under The Influence with Carbon Based Lifeforms

Chillout and ambient electronica legends Carbon Based Lifeforms (CBL) are Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Vadestrid, both born in 1976 and based in southwest Sweden. They met when both 15 and are still, amazingly, working happily together over 25 years later. CBL itself was formed in 1996, as an offshoot from other projects, but it soon became their focal point, culminating in their first release on ‘mp3.com’ in 1998. Their music has been extraordinarily well received by connoisseurs within the ambient scene and they have actively participated in successful collaborations with several other artists, including Magnus Birgersson of Solar Fields.

Johannes and Daniel aim to combine earth and space in their music. Using the combination of nature and technology as the main inspiration for their work, they like to represent both the positive and negative effects that this collaboration can lead to, including the negative impact that incorrect technology can have on the environment. Johannes often creates the building blocks of sounds and harmonies and could happily tweak sounds forever, whereas Daniel develops the rhythms and sculpts the ideas into tracks. It remains unclear which of them derives the greatest pleasure from manipulating the distinctive, squelching sounds of the Roland TB-303.

The band have produced seven official full-length albums with their most recent Seeker released independently in June, 2023.

<a href="https://carbonbasedlifeforms.bandcamp.com/track/seeker" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Seeker by Carbon Based Lifeforms</a>

Regarding the new album Seeker the band tell us that:

Since we couldn’t work together during the pandemic we started making tracks separately which led to songs going off in multiple directions and there was no coherent theme. This led to us deciding that it would be better to focus on making drones, which, for us, is way better suited for remote work. Daniel could start out a track and then Johannes took over and added some elements, back and forth, this led to us releasing Stochastic instead.
Once the pandemic started dying down a little and vaccines were available we could start working together again on a more regular basis. We scratched a lot of tracks and developed the ones we both liked together. This led to the album becoming more homogenic.This will be the second album that we release completely independently, Stochastic being the first. We tend to gravitate to themes of post apocalypse and what comes after.

We wanted to know what music has inspired the electronic duo during their 25 years together so we asked them to choose four albums that have been huge influences on their unique sound.

Solar Quest – Orgship

This is the album that really got us into producing ambient music. Johannes’s sister picked this album up at random at the record shop because she liked the design, and once we had a thorough listen to it we were totally floored. The textures and mixture of soft vocal snippets, flutes, drums and the occasional use of the 303 were right up our alley, and it’s a style we pretty much still adhere to.

Makai – Millenium

There is no secret that we are huge fans of Acid music but we’ve also been huge fans of Drum and Bass ever since our first listen to this album. There have been many late nights at clubs dancing to Drum and Bass. You can probably hear some D’n’B ingredients on all our albums – the most prominent thus far being ‘Proton/Electron’ from World of Sleepers, and the most obvious now on Seekers ‘. . .And On’.

Air – Moon Safari

Like everybody else we were floored by the beauty of this album when it first came out. It’s also a good representation for the grittier sounds that we love. Bands like Air, Portishead, Morcheeba, Zero 7 influenced us a lot and we believe it’s notable in tracks like ‘Gryning’, ‘Frog’, ‘Derelicts’ and ‘Starfish’.

M83 – Before The Dawn Heals Us

This album was a huge inspiration for us, especially during the time we wrote Interloper. It’s a beautiful mix of ambient and huge majestic songs. A big inspiration behind tracks like ‘Nucleator’ and ‘Rymden3000’.