Lights & Motion is a Swedish cinematicpost-rock musical project, founded in Gothenburg 2012 by Christoffer Franzén.
The band has so far released seven full-length albums, Reanimation, Save Your Heart, Chronicle, Dear Avalanche, The Great Wide Open, The World I Remember, and Wonder, a Bloom mini-album series, a mini-album While We Dream, and a live album Live at Offside Festival, all released through the American independent record label, Deep Elm Records. Franzén gained worldwide recognition when his music was featured in Google's commercial at the Oscars in 2013. Music from Lights & Motion has been used in many film trailers, commercials and TV shows, including an Academy Awards ceremony and Super Bowl. In 2015, Apple featured the band's music in their global iTunes Campaign, "Latest Films. Anywhere, Anytime."
Christoffer Franzén (Swedish pronunciation:[krɪˈstɔ̌fːɛrfranˈseːn]) is a Swedish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Gothenburg. He is known for his Lights & Motion, in which he plays all the instruments and writes all the music.
He is responsible for lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, keyboards, synthesizers, organ, glockenspiel, samples, orchestration, production, and percussion. Franzén has been a long time user of Fender Guitars. He has used the Telecaster, most notably, the 72 deluxe reissue and the thinline.
In December 2013, Lights & Motion was voted as "The Best New Artist" in the annual polls by Post-rock on Facebook, the world's largest post-rock community.
History
Formation
Lights & Motion was formed in Gothenburg, Sweden in early-2012 by Christoffer Franzén. Originally meant as an outlet during a period of insomnia, the project was supposed to reflect the sense of a dreamlike state in which a lot of the first album was written in.
However, the project quickly garnered attention online, mainly in alternative and post-rock communities, which led to Franzén being signed by American independent record label Deep Elm Records. Originally a guitarist, Franzén started to experiment with writing and recording music by himself in 2011 and 2012, and soon came to the conclusion that just writing with the guitar was too limiting.
I would try all these different instruments and record myself over and over in layers, so that I could make it sound huge and not just like one guy in a dark room. I just had such a need for control and I knew exactly what I wanted, so I ended up doing every single thing by myself. I learned all the instruments I needed for what I could hear in my head, and I recorded and recorded and recorded until my ears bled, and slowly I got better at it.
—Christoffer Franzén in an interview in 2013.
A self-taught musician, Franzén also learned how to produce, engineer and mix his own works.
Reanimation (2011–2013)
Reanimation was written in a period between late-2011 and December 2012, and was then released worldwide on January 16, 2013 through Deep Elm Records. Although setting the tone for the band's future releases, Reanimation features more prominent guitars. The song "Faded Fluorescence" was used in the 2015 Super Bowl trailer for Furious 7, and "Home" was used in the TV spots for the film Collateral Beauty.
Save Your Heart (2013)
On November 12, 2013, Lights & Motion released their sophomore album, Save Your Heart. The album contains 11 songs, and it was written and recorded during 2013. When compared to its predecessor, Save Your Heart is based around piano and synthesizers.
Franzén can be heard in several interviews talking about how he can "hear sounds as colors", and he has stated about the new album; "I wanted Save Your Heart to have more of a blueish or violet color in terms of sonic identity. In comparison, Reanimation had more of a yellowish tone'.
The opening song of the album, "Heartbeats", was used in the trailer for the motion picture Concussion.
Chronicle (2015)
The band released their third full-length album called Chronicle, on January 13, 2015, through Deep Elm Records. The album contains nine songs and ranges in style from Post-rock/ambient, to feature elements of film music. This record is considered being the band's most cinematic accomplishment to date.
2016
In 2016 his song "Stardust" was featured in the trailers for the film Rules Don't Apply.
Dear Avalanche (2017)
In the summer of 2016, the band announced on their Facebook page that their fourth full-length album would be released in early 2017, through Deep Elm Records. On November 17 Lights & Motion released an Official Trailer for the upcoming album, where they stated that the record would be called Dear Avalanche, and would be released worldwide on 1/20/17. Later the same year they released the single We Only Have Forever (Quiet), which featured a minimalistic and slowed down re-interpretation of the song, played on the piano. In 2017 Apple chose to include two of the band's songs in their Memories Function available on all Apple devices globally. The song "Anamorphic" was heavily featured in the trailer for the film Skyscraper, which premiered during the 2018 Super Bowl.
Bloom (2018)
In late-2017, it was announced by Christoffer Franzén that he had spent the better part of a year writing a new mini-album set to be released in the early months of 2018. Called Bloom, it consists of five songs tied thematically to long, Swedish winters.
While We Dream (2018)
Lights & Motion released their second EP, While We Dream, during the fall of this year, following the previous EP Bloom. It came out in October and consisted of six songs.
2019
During 2019 he scored the film Sea Fever, directed by Neasa Hardiman, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The Great Wide Open (2020)
On May 15, 2020, Lights & Motion released their fifth album called The Great Wide Open.
Google used "The March" for its commercial that aired worldwide on television during the Academy Awards 2013, featuring all the oscar nominated films of that year.
American NBC used the track "Home" in their promos for the TV-show The New Normal.
Lights & Motion provided additional guitars, keyboard, string arrangements and programming for Australian metalcore band I Killed the Prom Queen's third full-length studio album Beloved.
Their song Heartbeats was used in the promotional trailer for the filmLa Vida Robot.
"Drift" was used by Sky Arts in their promotional trailers for Playhouse Presents.
"Departure" was used by GoPro in their "Line of the Winter" video.
"Faded Fluorescence" was used in the 2015 Super Bowl trailer for Furious 7. The trailer by Lights & Motion was awarded "Best Of Show" and "Best Action Trailer" at the 16th annual Golden Trailer Awards in Beverly Hills, Hollywood.
