White Birches started working on the album in the summer of 2016 and from early on it was clear the duo wanted to look even further into the dark world of their debut album. Words like dystopia, powerlessness and apocalypse was
always present. What if Trump would win the American president election? What if Europe is succumbed to the populists of the far right? What would the world look like then? White Birches wanted to paint a distorting mirror of a world where despots rule and those who do not fit in perishes. A dystopia. In the fall of 2016 Donald Trump won the election.
Now, to just create a soundscape talking of doom and destruction felt irresponsible, Fredrik Jonasson says. We had to take another route. On the album the duo remains in the end-of-the-world-mode they had created but in the center of the story stands an underground resistance movement. A movement of poets and witches, of the rural queer, of anarchists and lovelorn rebels.
After the American election hate crimes against transgender people, people of color and against Muslims are on the rise.
This is no coincidence. When the official hate increases so does the violence, Jenny Gabrielsson Mare says. But marginalized people will resist. We have no other choice.