Posts
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Like millions of other boys I got into playing the guitar by listening to Metallica in the late 80's. I was about 10 years when I got my first guitar and started figuring out the different parts to songs like "Fade To Black", "One" and, eventually, all the songs on the black album. After that it was all about music and bands. I played guitar in a local cover band called "Jokke Roses" (Jokke from the Norwegian band Jokke & Valentinerne and Roses from Guns & Roses of course). We played at school dances and stuff like that, but after a while my music taste changed quite a lot and I started to get more in to bands like The Band, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Beatles etc. As well as more contemporary bands like Pearl Jam, Live and some other Norwegian Bands. I started writing songs when I was about 14 and around that time I also started a band where we only played our own material. I studied music at school from age 16 to 19 and I had some friends who had moved in to a kind of "hippie collective" around the same time. They were not really hippies, but more like computer nerds with a keen interest in making music, cooking and porn. It was around that time and in their house I started to learn how to record and produce music on my own using a mic, a Soundblaster card and a recording and an editing program called Acid. This opened a whole new world to me, as we had previously thought that recording music meant that you would have to go into a studio and pay a shit load of money. Now, we were just sitting at home, recording and learning how to produce and make things sound good and the way we wanted it. And that's basically still how I work, even though the gear has changed a little bit.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
What started the whole process and ran as a red thread through the whole record was the inspiration and influence I got from a book called "Unweaving The Rainbow". It's a book by UK's most prominent and profiled Atheists, Richard Dawkins. I had long been a fan of Dawkins and "The Four Horsemen" (Dennet, Harrris, Hitchens, Dawkins), for taking the gloves off when confronting organised religion, its place in public life and its butting in on scientific areas where it shouldn't be. The book was so beautifully written and so clear that it took me back. Not to go into detail too much, but the book mainly deals with the false assumption that, when explained, nature and its many phenomenons and strange occurences lose their beauty and mystique. Dawkins just want people to know that, if they have the time and take the effort, they will find that the true explanations for the way nature works are even more fantastic than the false, mysterious "reasons" presented by cult and religion. Because the world and nature is fantastic in the way it is organised and works. So I think I can trace the whole process back to that book.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I'm slow... I usually wait around for a really good idea to pop up. This can of course take a while, but I feel I'm getting better at spotting what's actually a good idea, rather than some blinged up jamsession. In the studio I don't necesserally wait for the structure of the song be finished and locked before recording. Most of the time, I start recording whenever I have good ideas and the structure may change lots of times as the approach resembles that of a jig saw puzzle. Having worked the way I have over the years, with producing, mixing, recording and writing all so intertwined, it's like the lines between them have dissapeared. So in that sense, I am far from a purist when it comes to songwriting. Then again, I have never labeled myself a singer/songwriter, others have.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Gillian Welch, Arvo Pärt, D'angelo, Bob Dylan, Serge Gainsbourgh to name a few.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I would shut up.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your debut album, and for the future?
Like always (almost, anyways) I would like for it to reach as many as possible and hopefully we can connect with enough people to start touring here regularly. It's very healthy for an artist to have as big a playpen as possible I think, so you don't end up treading the same route and places all the time. Not that there's anything wrong with playing the places we play at all, but it's always good to come back with new experiences and views on things. Keep the mind fresh and maybe even keeps your old songs alive longer by rethinking them at times.
No comments:
Post a Comment