The Sound Veil Society: ‘We will always aim to be as honest and raw in our expression’

The Sound Veil Society‘s debut album “Things We Kept” is built around an unusual kind of intensity. The record rarely reaches for aggression or dramatic excess; instead, emotional weight accumulates through restraint, space, repetition and the careful relationship between voice, electronics and silence. That became even clearer to me after seeing the duo at E-Only before spending more time with the album. Live, the songs seemed capable of becoming physically larger without sacrificing the intimacy they carry on record.

The Swedish-Norwegian project brings together Erlend Eilertsen and Hans-Olof Mattsson, two musicians with extensive histories in Nordic electronic music, but “Things We Kept” does not sound like an exercise in accumulated experience or genre expertise. The more interesting question is what happens when experience becomes instinct: when musicians know enough to stop demonstrating what they know and instead concentrate on what a song actually needs.

Released on 11 September 2026 through Progress Productions, “Things We Kept” is the duo’s first full-length album. Its title becomes more revealing as the record unfolds. What we keep is not necessarily what we consciously choose to preserve. Memory, grief, unfinished conversations, attachments and previous versions of ourselves remain present long after circumstances have changed. That tension between movement and emotional permanence runs quietly through an album whose apparent delicacy repeatedly turns out to carry considerable force.

The Sound Veil Society interview

Karo: I saw you at E-Only before hearing “Things We Kept”, and what struck me was that the performance generated enormous emotional pressure without relying on aggression or theatrical excess. Is restraint something you consciously build into The Sound Veil Society, or is it simply where the two of you naturally meet?

The Sound Veil Society: It’s the natural way for us to express ourselves, and TSVS is the outlet where we can give these feelings and emotions free space in our performance, both on record and live.

Karo: “Things We Kept” is a debut album made by musicians who are anything but beginners. Does starting a new project after years of experience give you greater freedom, or does experience make it harder to surprise yourselves because you already know too well what works?

The Sound Veil Society: Good question! In a way, it gives us more freedom, as we use our experience together with what we have learned over the years to create something new. But it might just be the circle of life, as we evolve through different phases in our lives, with new experiences and so on.

And it would be boring to repeat ourselves, so to trigger creativity and motivation, we just do what we like and hopefully someone else likes it as well.

Karo: The album feels remarkably coherent across music, lyrics, photography, videos and the physical booklet. Did you think of “Things We Kept” as a complete world from the beginning, or did that visual and emotional language gradually reveal itself while the music was taking shape?

The Sound Veil Society: We did have an idea from the beginning to be very visual in what we do as TSVS.

The album itself is a result of our journey in making it. After a year or so of making a lot of demos, we decided where we wanted to take our sound, and after that everything just fell into place.

“Things We Kept” became a complete world through the process and, indeed, there is a thought behind the booklet, videos and music completing each other.

Karo: There is something almost paradoxical about this record: it sounds delicate, but never weak. I kept thinking of tempered glass: transparent, apparently fragile, yet internally capable of carrying enormous force. Where does that balance between vulnerability and strength come from in your writing?

The Sound Veil Society: Really like your reflection of the record!

It reflects quite well who we are as people, in a way, as both of us are emotional beings, with our share of struggles both in the past and present. But that can also be used as a strength, because you need a certain amount of strength to deal with the challenges in life.

So for us it is a very natural process and nothing we “try” to do. It just happens that way.

Karo: The lyrics repeatedly return to movement: leaving, running, waiting, returning, searching for air. Yet emotionally, many of the characters seem unable to escape what they carry with them. Were you consciously interested in the difference between physically moving on and actually changing?

The Sound Veil Society: Not really. It is just our way of describing thoughts and feelings that are close to us, or stories and reflections that have inspired us over the years.

Karo: The title “Things We Kept” becomes more interesting the longer one spends with the record, because what people keep is often not something they would consciously choose: grief, unfinished conversations, versions of other people, even destructive attachments. What does “keeping” mean to you in the context of this album?

The Sound Veil Society: We think that everything we experience, be it good or bad, stays with us to some degree, even when we have almost forgotten about it, because it shapes us into who we are right now. Without all the experiences we go through in life, we would not be the same people we are today.

Karo: Erlend’s voice is very exposed in these songs, but the arrangements rarely try to underline every emotion he expresses. How do you decide when the music should support the voice and when it should deliberately leave it almost alone?

The Sound Veil Society: It’s all about the feeling, really, and nothing we think too much about when we make music. To express ourselves the way we want, it just tends to become like that.

Karo: One thing I noticed both at E-Only and on the album is how important space is. The songs are not afraid of air, pauses or sounds that are allowed to remain isolated. In electronic music, where it is technically very easy to keep adding layers, is knowing what to remove as important to you as knowing what to write?

The Sound Veil Society: In a way it is, but the most important thing for us is to write a good song and express the feeling we want to express with it. We do use quite a lot of layers, but they are often subtle and just there to emphasise the sound.

Since we have some years behind us making music, we have learned that sometimes less is more.

Karo: The visual material often uses roads, water, landscapes, silhouettes and people partly disappearing from view. They feel less like illustrations of individual songs than fragments of memory. How closely do you work on the relationship between image and sound, and what can an image express that you deliberately leave unresolved in the lyrics?

The Sound Veil Society: It depends on the idea of the song we are working on, but we often get visual ideas while making music. An image or a video clip itself is a great way to describe emotions, and combining sound and visuals simply makes a story more complete.

Karo: Your musical backgrounds give you access to an established electronic vocabulary, yet “Things We Kept” does not sound interested in demonstrating genre knowledge. Was there anything from your previous projects that you consciously had to unlearn in order for The Sound Veil Society to develop its own identity?

The Sound Veil Society: Not much, really. The only thing we have been trying to do is shorten parts, as it is easy to keep things simply because they sound good, but in the end they often just make a track less interesting.

Other than that, everything else just fell into place during the making of it.

Karo: At E-Only I had the impression that some of these songs actually became larger through performance without losing their intimacy. Has playing the material in front of people changed your understanding of the album, perhaps shown you emotional qualities in certain songs that were less obvious in the studio?

The Sound Veil Society: It can happen, but we often already have an idea of how a song will work live when we make it.

So most of our work is made just as much for the live stage as it is for a record, actually. Of course, before the first live show, we didn’t know how our vision would translate to the audience, but after these shows we really feel that we get a special connection with the audience.

Karo: “Things We Kept” establishes a very precise emotional and visual identity for a first album. Looking ahead, does that identity now feel like a foundation you want to deepen, or something you already feel tempted to disturb? What are you curious to discover about The Sound Veil Society next?

The Sound Veil Society: In a way, it is a foundation to build upon and is, in many ways, the core of our concept. But we do want to evolve and make something new along the way, so we don’t yet know what it will become.

But that is also part of the fun: exploring new sides of a concept. We will always aim to be as honest and raw in our expression.

About The Sound Veil Society

The Sound Veil Society is a Swedish-Norwegian electronic duo formed in 2024 by Erlend Eilertsen and Hans-Olof Mattsson. Eilertsen is associated with Essence Of Mind and Lights A.M. and joined Xenturion Prime in 2024; Mattsson co-founded Code 64, later established Xenturion Prime and has also been involved with Essence Of Mind.

The project debuted with “The River” on 24 April 2025, followed by “OK” on 22 August 2025 and “Hunger for Light” in March 2026. Their debut album, “Things We Kept”, was released by Progress Productions on 11 September 2026. The standard edition contains eleven tracks, including “Voices” featuring KÅRP; the CD adds three bonus versions, while the album was also issued on black-and-white splatter vinyl and as a limited MiniDisc edition.

The duo performed at Nocturnal Culture Night and E-Only Festival; a live video for “Nothing to Say” was recorded at E-Only in Leipzig in March 2026. The Sound Veil Society are already confirmed for Eastside Festival in Halle (Saale), Germany, on 2-3 July 2027.