little central Denmark port of Nyborg. Since then they have been working intensely to make the world outside aware of its talent potential. With the addition of a new guitarist and a keyboard player at the end of 98, Saybia found its own structure and style. The group itself financed two early EPs: Dawn Of A New Life (1998) and Chapter 3 (2000) records sold at concerts and today in high demand among fans (though almost impossible to get your hands on). On New Years Day 2000 the band moved to Copenhagen. Saybia now has its base there and more importantly its rehearsal studio, where the band spends most of its time creating music that is the offshoot of the collective talent of the five musicians. The toils of the rehearsal studio and the more than 100 gigs played in the past two years alone can be heard in the debut album and at shows, where youll meet a tight, cohesive unit of a band with its own sound and its own universe.
The two singles Fools Corner and The Day After Tomorrow really paved the way for Saybia. The songs were on the bands first commercial outing, the EP Saybia, released in the autumn of 2001. The Danish Broadcasting Corp.s radio station P3 placed the songs in almost infinite rotation, meaning Saybia was able to reach a larger audience and play its way from being a favorite of its faithful fan base into a rock act with tremendous potential. In December 2001 Saybia received the coveted P3 Award from the Danish Broadcasting Corp. in recognition of the groups music and as a signal that this was the Danish band to watch. Then when the music magazine Gaffas readers voted Saybia the Best New Act of the Year in January 2002, it became evident the public had latched on to Saybias luscious brand of intelligent, emotional rock styling. To top it off, Saybia would beat out some of the top names in rock to become the dark-horse winner of the Danish Music Award for Best Rock Album an unprecedented honor earned on the merits of the bands eponymous EP!
Saybias long-awaited debut The Second You Sleep arrived on 21 January 2002 and everything changed in a snap. It became the first Danish rock debut to jump directly into the number-one slot on the Danish sales chart and suddenly it was a new dawn for homegrown rock. With 11 tracks filling 53 minutes and seven seconds, its an album loaded with longing, searching, dynamism and a quest for beauty and clarity. Saybia sings the songs of the exposed soul seeking the elusive answers to lifes questions. The music is driven by the bedrock belief that life may pose a series of hurdles to overcome, but the balanced blend of dreams and faith sustain the notion theres someone out there who wants to share that dream.
Saybias sound is the composite of eclectic inspiration, but its their own. The songs reach their musical arms to the skies, and the tightness of the band delivers a melancholic beauty to the music. Saybia is the sound of a band with international ambitions, but clearly stemming from a Nordic source as if the band had an extra musician in the form of vast Swedish forests, springs gushing from bare mountains near the Polar Circle, granite cliffs jutting from the seas or the shadows of an autumn dusk in Denmark.
Saybias first tour at home right after the release of the debut album was marked by stoplights everywhere shows werent simply sold out, they were totally sold out in no time! And the band delivered a series of hard-hitting concerts that clearly demonstrated Saybia was not by any stretch of the imagination an overnight sensation, but a tight fluid band formed by years of work in rehearsal rooms and on the smaller stages around Denmark. Things have changed a lot since then: the stages have gotten a lot bigger, the tour log includes lots of gigs abroad and the band has become more polished as a unit. But the cornerstone remains the same; to pull the audience into the moment with music created by strong human emotion. The future has just begun.
Saybia is: Søren Huss vocals, Sebastian Sandstrøm guitar, Jess Jensen keyboards, Jeppe Knudsen bass, Palle Sørensen drums.
