Interview with Eivind Aarset

Wojtek Krasowski: Tell me about yours beginnings with music education, when do you start a interests of music?

Eivind Aarset: I got an intense experience when I was 11 or 12, hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time, before that music wasn´t really on my mind, and from there on music became a big part of my life. I think my intrest for sounds also partly is from Hendrix. In his playing sound, tones, harmony and rythm is totally integrated in my opinion.

 

WK: You've recorded albums with many musicians. Who is your favorite partner?

AE: Oh it is really difficult to choose because it is so different with different musicians. Nils Petter Molvær is very special for me because, I got the room over many years and hundreds of gigs to rediscover my own voice. But also I was working with Marilyn Mazur, Bugge Wesseltoft, Jon Hassell, Dhafer Youssef, Arve Henriksen and Bendik Hofseth has been very important

 

WK: How do you start working on an album or a track? Do you start by collecting sounds or ideas?

AE: Most of the time I just start fooling around with my guitar, and suddenly a chord idea, or a line, or a sound pops up, or maybe a combination of everything.

 

WK: Tell something more about your label – Jazzland Recordings. How do you get there?

AE: I was there from the beginning, Bugge had this idea of having a label and he asked me and some other guys to make records there. And I am very greatful for this, because I doubt that I would have been able to get my things together if he hadn´t given me a push in the right direction.

 

WK: Dhafer Youssef – I think this person has changed your musical taste. Can you confirm that ?

AE: No actually Dhafer haven´t changed me that much I think in terms of sounds and tunes, but I have been much better to play in odd meters! And it is also a real joy to be on stage playing with him; he is an unbelivable musician with an incredible and positiv energy.

WK: You've worked with Jacek Kochan. “New Expensive Head” was recorded by many fantastic persons like you Cuong Vu or Skerik. What do you remember from this session?

AE: Actually I recorded everything in my home studio alone...

WK: Come back to your solo carrier. When we can expect new album?

AE: My new album will be released in september. And I think it will be really good...:)

 

WK: Do you know a Power Trio as they called : Możdżer Danielsson Fresco ?

AE: No I don´t, I will try to find out about them. I guess it is very good?

WK: They're just brilliant - believe me:) What are your musical interests? What are you listening to?

AE: Very many different things. The Books, Fennesz, Nels Cline, Erkan Ogur, Daniel Lanois, David Torn, Brian Eno, Tortoise, Arvo Pärt, Djavan Gasparian, Salif Keita, Murcof, Meshuggah, Michael Brook, Bill Frisell and always Jon Hassell and 70´s Miles.

 

WK: What means music for you?

AE: Music is a big part of my life, both in sense of spending time rehearsing, travelling ,studio and stage, but also as a way to experience my surroundings and express myself in a diffrent way than I can with words.

 

WK: I’m out of questions. Thank you for your time.

AE: Thank you! I am glad and greatful for your interest!

Interview was made in March 2007

Interview with Johann Johannsson

Wojtek Krasowski: How did you start writing music?

Johann Johannsson: I've been writing music probably since I was about 14-15. I started playing my parents' home organ when I was about 9 and then I studied trombone and piano. I soon began improvising little tunes and chords.

WK: What was your childhood like?

JJ: Very happy. It was a sheltered and very protective environment. When my family moved to France when I was 7 my life changed a bit and I became more introverted. I started spending more time on my own, reading and constructing fantasy worlds. When I returned to Iceland my friends said I'd changed. I think I matured a lot and developed a quite melancholy disposition. I went from smiling to somber in 3 years. Perhaps all teenagers are like that. I was only very quietly rebellious though. There were no big dramas.

 

WK: What inspired you to do your entire new album based on IBM Computers?

JJ: The story of how my father and his colleagues at IBM programmed music on this ancient computer and how they decided to preserve it on tape as a document of this machine's "life" and "work" was very interesting to me. It suggested a lot of different themes and associations, thematical, philosophical etc.  That was very fascinating to me and pertinent to a lot of things I was thinking about at the time. I've always been very interested in the relationship between machines and humans and the philosophical and moral implications of artificial intelligence. How we define humanity and how we relate to our artificial creations, how much "humanity" we give them.. I'm interested in the emotional bond that people develop for their machines and what this implies.  The piece's origins are covered in detail in the essay I wrote which is on the album web-site www.ausersmanual.com

WK: I want to ask you about 4AD Label. When you moved there, were you going to have full artistic control over the music and art direction?

JJ: Of course, the label basically let me do what I wanted within a certain budget.  They suggested using V23 to design to cover and I've always been a fan of their work, so I was very happy with working with them. I've always loved 4AD, they really have a defined aesthetic as a label, both musically and design-wise, very much like my old label Touch, and I'm happy to be working with them.

 

WK: What are your plans for the future?

JJ: I'm touring quite a bit in the next few months. I will record a new album this year. I have a lot of material written and it's slowly taking shape. I've got some collaborations coming up, one with Laetitia Sadier, from the group Stereolab. We will do a concert with new material together in Iceland. I'm also doing some work with the Italian group Larsen. My other project, Apparat Organ Quartet, will most likely record a new album this year as well.

 

WK:  Do you prefer making music or playing it out to an audience?

JJ: I enjoy both. They are very different things. I think it's necessary to play music for an audience to get a reaction. I'm playing a lot of the new stuff on tour and it's really great to get feedback from an audience before you record. Live, we use visuals, which I collaborate on with my friend Magnus Helgasson. I'm interested in how this adds another layer to the music and I'm interested in the types of juxtapositions and counterpoint that's possible between the music and visuals.

 

WK:  What do you exactly get from the music?

JJ: I get a lot of pleasure from playing and writing. Seeing a project take shape is a great joy. It's one of the things that make life worth living, frankly.

 

WK: All of your solo albums have had such a distinct sound and feel to them have you consciously tried to make each one it's own little world or has it been a natural progression of sound to you?

JJ: It's been a fairly natural process, although the album  Dis is more a by-product. I made music for this film and suddenly there was enough material for an album, so I made one, but it was still a very natural thing to do. I do like records that are self-contained worlds, little universes you an sink into, like novels. I try to do that with each record, simply because those are the kind of records I love myself.

 

WK: What kind of music inspired you early on? What music inspires you now?

JJ: In my teens it was Jesus and Mary Chain, Suicide, Stooges, Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, Neu. I also loved The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen.. Cocteau Twins, Birthday Party. I still love all that music. Now, I listen to a lot of electronic music from the 50's and 60's, Xenakis, Parmeggiani, Tod Dockstadter, Raymond Scott. I love Baroque music, Purcell, Zelenka, Haendel, Buxtehude. I love Beethoven and Shostakovich. I like 70's progressive rock and synthesizer music from the 70's. I love Alvin Lucier and The Hafler Trio. I listen to a lot of film music. I love Italian film music from the 70's, mainly the horror stuff. I like some newer bands, like Final Fantasy and Sunn O))). Also Boris from Japan. One of the musicians I've met that I've been most impressed by recently has been the harpist and singer Baby Dee.

 

WK: Where would you like to play where you haven't played yet?

JJ: Poland! I've never been and I would love to go. I'm a big fan of Polish music, Gorecki, Wojciech Kilar, Penderecki, Preisner.

 

WK: Tell something about Iceland.

JJ: Iceland is a very young country. It's not full of tradition like a lot of European countries, in a way it's more like the US. It's a strength, but it can be a weakness too. We don't really have a strong musical tradition, so things feel very open, it's like there a no rules in a way.  We have an old and deep literary tradition, but in terms of the other art forms, the scene is quite young. It's also a place

 

 

Interview with Brian McBride of Stars of the Lid

Wojtek Krasowski: Released in April, are seventh album of Stars of the Lid. On album we found 18 new songs. Tell something about recording session.

Brian McBride: Our recording sessions are really not that interesting. We typically do most of our recordings apart from each and then get together a couple of times to talk through and make sense of what we’ve done. After awhile you can only withstand so much online cryptic conversations about this sounds or that melody. It helps to have the other person in the room to have more detailed discussions of what’s occurring. 

Wojtek Krasowski: Yeah...I want to ask you about that because You live in Los Angeles, Adam in Brussels. How you works?

 Brian McBride: I think it’s great. I like it for a lot of different reasons, actually. I think if Adam and I lived in the same city, I don’t think that we would collaborate as well. I think the differences between us make the time we interact more special. And the reason is: instead of inviting somebody over to your place and saying, “Okay…This is what I came up with. Listen to it. React to it right now. Come up with a part this next week”. You know, by virtue of the postal service, and just the impossibility of getting together immediately after you have something… You have more time to mill over something. You have more time to sit there and listen to it. Instead of, “Okay. It sounds like C & D sharp. I think I kind of have an idea”. You have more time to play. You have more time to listen. Over and over again, in different contexts and different environments. 

Well, I can’t really say if distant recording works poorly for other bands, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I can say that it helps if each of the artists are motivated. You have to send stuff back and forth on a regular basis. You often need deadlines. You gotta talk about what you like and don’t like no matter how abstract and obtuse it is. Talking about the minutiae of music is real difficult from far away especially with our music. The most comical thing in the world is for us to try to describe certain sounds that we like to the other person, eventually we got smart enough to just talk in time, “I like that melody at 2:15 – 2:50” I think Adam and I are just used to it really. Neither of us are so invested in our particular way of doing things that we’re going to stomp and stammer because we didn’t get our way. But each one of us also does have a sort of peculiarity to what we hold on to. Like I could send Adam a track, he could add a part, and then something about it will click and he’ll get this extreme attachment to it. For me, I could be totally ambivalent about the particular track in question, but I know that’s the way we work. You need to be okay when the other person hits the gong and also when the other person champions something as their favorite thing on the planet. And then lastly, you need time to dwell on what you’re doing. You need time play around with ideas and for us it often helps that the other person is not around when we do it. Usually when we get together we’re not as productive with the material act of recording. We may make some good headway in mentally cataloging what we have or we may even make a conceptual breakthrough or two. With another person in the room you expect too much too quickly. I know for me, I don’t want them to have to endure the 100 times I’m going to play or perform something over and over again. So we spare each other that and go off in our separate little laboratories.

Wojtek Krasowski: Which stuff you use to make these strange noises? I think about keyboards, programs, instruments. 

Brian McBride: Most of the “strange noises” are just guitars, strings and horns recorded in different ways. I have a tendency to record a bunch and then just sample parts of what I’ve done. It’s all about laying instruments and making new instruments out of the combination of different instruments’ decay and timbre. But the important part for me is that everything is real. I don’t use any sound banks or keyboards. I do have a midi keyboard but it’s just for playing my own sounds.

Wojtek Krasowski: If you could arrange collaboration with one of the artists who would you choose and why? Steven Wilson, Robert Fripp or Preisner these are my propositions. 

Brian McBride: It will be difficult to choose. On one hand I have listened to so much Harold Budd that I feel as if I could enter into the relationship with more ideas. On the other hand, I would want to be a spectator with someone like Bryars, Preisner or Desplat that I fill like I could soke up so much. Even if fantasy land, it’s hard to choose.

Wojtek Krasowski: Zbigniew Preisner & Henryk Górecki – I knew you love this composers, that’s a big pleasure for me! Tell us something more about your influences.

Brian McBride: Early on I think we where inspired more by what not to be. We were living in Austin and we were filled with a lot of purposeful distancing for the blues-meets-boogie rock-styling’s of all the Stevie Ray Vaughn prodigies. I was also inspired by the ending of songs, the 10 seconds of decay where the songs of the grunge years would fade out. I guess you could also say I was imprinted by my father’s love for classical music in a roundabout way. I didn’t really care for his music when I was growing up, but I did hear a lot it seep through my walls over the years. So in the times between listening to my own music, I’d probably be falling asleep to this wall-filtered classical music. I’m sure that traumatized me into some kind of musical disposition. 

Wojtek Krasowski: Maybe we turn back time, when you’re a child. How looks your childhood? I mean, when you interest of music.

Brian McBride: I didn’t start making music until my early twenties. I’ve never had any musical training. When the time came to make music I think I was really mentally prepared. I was sort of a sound junkie, bursting at the seems with inspiration. As far as listening to music when I was child, I had a plastic beige radio next to my bed that would turn itself off. I feel asleep to music all the time. But as far as what I listened to, I listened to pretty normal stuff: The Beatles, Kiss, heavy metal. It was my father who was the classical music fan. I was just a punk kid with a penchant for staring blindly at corners while listening to music.

Wojtek Krasowski: David Lynch – it’s a next important person in music of Stars of the Lid. I might be wrong but judging by the titles of tracks, it looks like you’re a big fan of him.

Brian McBride: Their was so much about Twin Peaks that hooked me: the score, the show’s dependence on the score, their love for coffee, Cooper’s intense celebration of everydayness, the over-the-top drama, especially Grace Zabriskie’s character. And then there’s the fact that this thing was on broadcast television. I mean, what was it doing on ABC for all to see? You have to admit is was this incredibly weird crack in mainstream programming. From what I can tell, Lynch loves to take in his environment, and that’s something I can definitely relate.

Wojtek Krasowski: When I look into history of music, I wonder, why ambient and electronic music is so ignored? Brian Eno, Steve Reich or Holger Czukay – these people changed music in 70’. But now young kids called this music - BORING. How to change this situation? Do you have any ideas?  

Brian McBride: I wouldn’t say electronic music is really all that ignored. It depends on what someone does with it. Electronic dance music seems to have quite a lot people who flock to it. It sort of depends of the function of the music. If the people use it to get up or maintain energy, it seems to be more of a favoured medium. People need rock and dance music to satisfy a certain need, it’s kinda like a drug. That’s why Led Zeppelin is always going to sell more records than Eric Satie. I’m not trying to be disparaging about it. I recognize it. I used to think in terms of the “tyranny of the up”. But I don’t really mean that bemoan. There is no doubt that rock seems to have more use than classical music if you judge that sort of thing on the amount of people who consume it. But if the situation was reversed Stars of the Lid might not be here today. The fact that we didn’t hear anything out there in the musical world that ultimately satisfied us was in part an explanation for why we started making music. If you walk into grocery stores and feel surrounded by Stevie Ray Vaughn songs, you may want to go home and record on your four track if only to jar Stevie out of your head.

How do we change the situation? I’m not really concerned by that. Steering culture is kind of a fool’s game. It seems like the more you try to push it a direction it slips away from you. I don’t really want to know what the kids know as long as those damn kids stay off my lawn. Do what you do because t matters to you not because other people should.

Wojtek Krasowski: You released only one solo album. Do you think about another one? 

Brian McBride: I do. It’s in what we call the nurturing stage. Given that the previous record was concept heavy in the sense that it was kinda a scrapbook through a particular time in my life, I have quite a bit of music that is not apart of that time. At the moment, I’m sort of looking for the missing musical sock. I have so much stuff recording that I’m cataloging a bunch of what I can still listen to.

Wojtek Krasowski: SoTL have 14 years…Do you still remember the beginning of collaboration with Adam Wiltzie, the first meeting?

Brian McBride: I saw Adam eat this taco once, I mean like fast. Like maybe three bites fast. Then a couple of hours later I heard these deep rumbling noises coming from the room that Adam was in. I came into the room thinking he was playing some music, but I found out it was just his stomach. Right then, I knew. I mean I knew this guy had digestion issues, and I thought, that’s the kind of guy I wanted to make music with.