Over the course of nearly two decades, Denmark’s Vinyl Floor has quietly built a catalog that refuses to sit still. From the DIY immediacy of Do You Still Dream through the conceptual ambitions of Peninsula, the harder edges of Vaudeville, and the reflective clarity of Funhouse Mirror, the band’s evolution has been less about reinvention and more about a deep commitment to melody, harmony, and emotional honesty. And at the center of it all is a distinct, harmony-driven vocal identity, one that has remained a constant even as the surrounding sound has shifted and expanded.
Their latest release, Balancing Act, feels like both a continuation and a widening of that arc. While rooted in the same soil as Funhouse Mirror, Balancing Act is more expansive in scope and confidence than anything before it. The album also finds brothers Thomas and Daniel Pedersen leaning fully into the instincts they’ve honed over years of songwriting, collaboration, and persistence.
Rather than reduce that journey to soundbites, I figured I’d give Vinyl Floor the space to reflect in full, uninterrupted form. What follows is a freaking fantastic long-form conversation with Thomas Charlie Pedersen about melody, evolution, frustration, brotherhood, and the ongoing urge to keep pushing forward, even when the path isn’t always clear.
Generation Mixtape (GM): Looking back across the full arc of Vinyl Floor, from 2009’s Do You Still Dream through Funhouse Mirror in 2022, the band has explored a pretty wide range of sounds, from dreamy pop to more hard-charging alt rock moments (Vaudeville’s “Shift” immediately comes to mind). One thing that’s always felt like a constant is that vocal identity. Was that a conscious decision early on, to build the songs around vocals and harmonies first, or did that emphasis evolve naturally over time?
Thomas: I’d say both, really. It was definitely a conscious effort right from the beginning to center our songs around melody and harmony since that’s what has always moved us whether the songs turned out to be slow or fast. Melody and harmony is king so that’s always been at the core of our songwriting. A new song always begins with a melody and some chords strummed to go with it. And we slowly build from there.
Also, I’ve got to be honest here and say that especially during the first couple of records none of us were really that confident taking the vocal leads. We weren’t really born frontmen any of us so we sort of covered it up by layering the vocals, adding two-part, sometimes three-part harmonies. Over time it kind of evolved naturally, as you point out, and became some kind of trademark to our sound, I guess. So, yeah, a bit of both. I’m very glad to hear that the vocal identity has remained a constant all the way through. We try to leave that certain Vinyl Floor imprint – whether it’s for a quiet ballad or a guitar-driven rock song.
GM: Each of your releases feels like a snapshot of where the band was at creatively and personally at the time. If you’re up for it, could you briefly reflect on where Vinyl Floor was during each album cycle, and what you were chasing or reacting against with each release?
Right. I don’t know if it’s age, the fact that we now have a somewhat decent backlog or the fact that we are now only Daniel and I left in Vinyl Floor, but I have reflected a lot on these things lately. I’ve been very hesitant listening back to our past work because I almost always find things I want to do differently today. However, I’ve come to the realization that these albums indeed sound like what they were supposed to sound like given the time and circumstances of each period.
I think these albums, flawed as they might be in a few spots here and there, have great songs and a certain youthful energy that would be just about impossible for us to reproduce today. That’s the charm and that’s great. Also, it’s important to remember that past members of the group contributed immensely to those records. Each album of ours is indeed a snapshot of a certain time and mood.
The first album [2009’s Do You Still Dream] was very DIY. We set up mics at our rehearsal space and recorded everything ourselves. We played a lot live and had plenty of songs to choose from. We toured Japan, got national airplay in Denmark and it gave us the confidence to up the ante for our second album. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite get along with our bass-player who probably didn’t share our ambitious approach toward the new material.
Thus, the rest of us booked a studio in Sweden called Möllan (we still use it to this day) brought a new bass player in and together we laid the foundation for the conceptual album, that is Peninsula. But the storyline and the concepts of Utopia and Dystopia seemed to throw some people off and we didn’t really get any radio support or anything which could have brought us further.
We knew we were on the right path creatively, though, and so we soldiered on with Vaudeville, which was, perhaps, a bit directionless compared to the previous album but nonetheless was very enjoyable to make and consisted of new songs amidst some ‘Peninsula’ leftover material. Our fourth album Apogee was not a very good time for us. Internal disagreements within the band took their toll and we wanted to self-produce which, perhaps, wasn’t the best idea in hindsight when no one really had the surplus to steer the ship. We were a bit disillusioned about the general lack of interest and other results of our intensified, promotional efforts. We honestly felt a bit trapped in a country where the interest in us mainly seemed to come from abroad. Born of frustration I suppose, we wanted to make this no-nonsense, grand rock statement and the result was underproduced, rough and half-hearted. Interestingly, some people actually liked this new-found ‘sod it’ approach and I will still defend it somewhat ‘cause there WERE some good songs hidden in there.
Unfortunately, in the aftermath, we lost our sweet buddy Rasmus who, thankfully, agreed to help us record our next album, Funhouse Mirror. That was a much more focused record, we got some great musicians on board and we decided to carry on, just the two of us. And here we are, promoting a new album Balancing Act. That wasn’t very brief, sorry!
GM: Balancing Act feels stylistically very connected to Funhouse Mirror, but also more expansive, both sonically and thematically. Did you see this album as a continuation of that chapter, or did it feel like a deliberate step forward into something bigger?
It sure started out as a continuation. We felt kind of refreshed making Funhouse Mirror and we felt that our songwriting and arranging abilities were back in full swing. Plus the Covid lockdown gave us the time and urge to really dive into this realization and try and make something worthwhile out of a strange situation. It was a fruitful period which also resulted in a solo album of mine. When songs were brought in for Balancing Act we instinctively knew from the get-go that we had to continue from where we left off. The new songs are crafted from the same soil. We use some of the same musicians. But at the same time it does feel more expansive, a bit more daring and a bit more playful. I think we’ve gotten better and more confident at what we do. It feels like a step forward into something that I’m not sure what is. Something even more daring or experimental, perhaps. But for now, I think this is our best album.
GM: There’s a real sense of range on the new record. I hear melodic rock foundations, touches of progressive and symphonic elements, and moments rooted in alternative rock from different eras. When you’re writing, are those influences consciously in the room, or do they emerge later once the songs take shape?
The ‘taking pieces from this and that’ approach stems from a great desire to not repeat ourselves too much. A reviewer recently half-accused us of picking out elements from our record collections that we like and turn them into our own songs and he’s not wrong. I mean, we sure aim stylistically for the sound of the ’60s and ’70s pop/rock and a bit from the 90’s as well but we try to modernize it and we actually pride ourselves on variety.
I can honestly say that the songwriting process is always very innocent and clean. Just a melody suddenly popping up from seemingly out of nowhere and it appears like no outside influence is seeping in. Or so it seems. It may sound a bit naïve but I think it’s when we start playing around with it – when we kick ideas for arrangements back and forth – that we suddenly go ‘ooh, it would be great to have a Procol Harum-sounding organ entering the picture in “Mr. Rubinstein” right there’ or ‘where would Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues take a song like “Jacaranda Blossoms”?’ to ‘what would “Back of my Hand” sound like in a Tarantino movie’ or ’where would Radiohead have taken the song “Balancing Act,” and things like that.
GM: The vocal melodies on Balancing Act feel especially central, not just as hooks but as emotional anchors within the songs. How do you approach melody writing at this stage in the band’s life, and has that process changed from earlier records?
Melody has always been integral to us so that process hasn’t really changed. Maybe the approach has. I think it lies in the interplay between lyrics and melody. It’s important to me that a lyric has a melody on paper. More now than ever. It should read in a musical way just by recitation. I tend to spend a lot of time on the lyrics, in fact more than on the vocal lines. The melody is nearly always the first thing to come, maybe a few words to go along with it and you have the basis for a song. I don’t know, maybe I’m getting too conscious about it. But I really hope to get it right since my own heroes work magic with the way their lyrics and melodies are interwoven and breathe together.
GM: Lyrically, is there an overarching theme or emotional through-line running through Balancing Act, or did the songs come together more as individual statements that later revealed a common thread?
The latter, for sure. As was also the case with Funhouse Mirror, the songs are brought in as individual little creatures and at some point during the process some kind of theme usually reveals itself. It’s funny in a way, because we never do anything in particular to try and find it. This time it seemed to be the title track which told us ‘oh, maybe that’s it’. Maybe all these songs are about balancing life somehow. Sometimes the meaning of the songs come later and sometimes in context with other songs. It’s really strange!
GM: You collaborated with several guest musicians on this album. How did those collaborations shape the final record, and were there moments where a guest performance changed the direction of a song in unexpected ways?
We probably sound like control freaks when I say that everything is usually thought out, arranged and written out as scores before even asking anybody to contribute. There are mainly three reasons for that. One is that we have usually already created the demos of our fully intended vision and we write all the parts ourselves. Another reason is that these pros are very busy and play with a ton of different people so we need to record their parts smoothly and in a timely manner. Finally, it’s a question of money, really. We do not have the means for too much fooling around and trying things upside-down though that would be quite interesting, indeed. However, the great Bebe Risenfors comes from the jazz world primarily and has a very intuitive and often improvisational approach. Also, he doesn’t like to do too many takes. Sometimes he just goes off on a tangent if he feels for it and you gotta let him. Sometimes we keep it and sometimes we don’t. But the guy needs to have fun with it and that’s one of the things that makes him great.
GM: Vinyl Floor has always been a project rooted in the relationship between two brothers. How has that dynamic shaped the band creatively over the years, both in terms of collaboration and longevity? Is it a Noel/Liam friction or an Angus/Malcolm symbiosis?
Oh, that’s a good question. Again, mostly the latter. There’s an unspoken, mutual understanding in nearly everything we do which makes for a very peaceful atmosphere within the band. Of course we can disagree, but it rarely turns into heated arguments or anything like that. We are on the same wavelength, we share the same musical ambition and I think, had we not been brothers, we probably would have disbanded before creating Funhouse Mirror and this one. We are the two of us left because we’ve been the ones who cared for this project the most, but I’m also sure that it must have been tough for others to work around our vision. Even though I really feel that we have done the best we could to encourage past members to bring in their own ideas and be an important part of the group.
GM: After six full-length albums and nearly two decades as a band, what still excites you about making records together, and where do you feel Vinyl Floor is headed next?
As long as the songs keep coming I think we will always be excited about writing and recording and just playing and working together. Artistically, I could see us experiment more and dive into unknown, unexplored waters. I think we are close to having taken our current expression as far as we can. We want to evolve.
What can be a pain in the ass sometimes are all the challenges surrounding it. Everything from running our own label to exhaustive, promotional work which sometimes takes up more of our time than the music itself. Thus, I can see us slowing down in some areas or at least try and find new ways in order to do certain things differently. Should we lose the spark then that would be a big issue of course. But we never have and so far there’s still an urge to make good music.
Balancing Act will be released on February 27 2026 (streaming/download/CD/vinyl)
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