Name: ORKA
Members: Francine Perry, Jens L. Thomsen
Interviewee: Jens L. Thomsen
Nationality: British (Francine), Faroese (Jens)
Current release: ORKA's new single "Bird" is out via Kervið. A new full-length album, their first in 6 years, will follow later in 2023.
Recommendations: I think I'll recommend Epitaph by Nico Niquo. I have it on cassette and it might be among my most listened to albums. I believe he's from Australia and I relate to the way that he references UK club music, but seen from a distance in what seems like a romanticised or fascinated way. He introduces these elements as fragments and pieces them together with progressive cyber aesthetics. It's a brilliant album.

I could perhaps recommend Mark Fisher's Ghosts of my Life – Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. What immediately spoke to me when I first read it was how Fisher managed to put in to word what I couldn't express myself - not only about music and pop culture but also about specific artists and songs. But Fisher of course does much more than that. He has an immense knowledge and is able to articulate his thoughts and connect them in a larger picture; and has a unique way of safely navigating the reader through his web.

If this ORKA interview piqued your interest, visit the duo's official homepage and their profiles on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud. We also recommend our previous conversation with ORKA's Francine Perry about technology, and production.
 

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?
 
I do to some extent experience synesthesia when listening to music and it triggers different senses. I see colours and textures, often as part of an abstract landscape, and I typically also somehow taste the music; it can be savoury, bitter, dry.

Depending on the setting, I listen with both my eyes closed and open.
 
What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?
 
The first mildly successful band I was in was called Clickhaze. We must have existed for around three or four years, but the impact it had on us was immense. Most of us, including lead singer Eivør, are still working within the music industry and I still reference and live by some of the philosophies and strategies we came up with then.



I feel this isn't different from most other musician's first band. It's where a seed was planted which we since have cultured through our work.
 
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?
 
Like most teens I was like a sponge.

I immersed myself in music constantly, all aspects of music. I would find new bands with friends, discuss music, play in bands, learn to play instruments, hang out at the record shop, write songs, read about music, borrow CDs from friends and from the library. I listened to anything I could get my hands on, and listened all day long, most nights I fell asleep listening to CDs on my Discman.

As to what has changed: In my teens I would engage in everything music related at the same time. Today I oscillate between periods where I listen and read; I see this as a time of gathering or collecting. While in other periods I immerse myself in creating and developing a sound or concept.

But Sunday mornings or days off I will normally dive into my vinyl collection and listen and talk about music with my girlfriend or friends. These are among my most cherished moments.
 
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?
 
The core of my approach to art and music was in many ways formed when I recorded ORKA's first album Livandi oyða from 2005 at my father's farm on the Faroe Islands.



We followed a dogma which dictated that we were not to bring instruments to the farm. In order to record the album we therefore had to start by building instruments out of objects found at the farm. This approach came to influence the work I have done since. The art is often site specific and limited by the characteristics of a specific place or area. Conventional instruments are typically not used, instead all sounds need to be designed, built or found.

Over the years my motivation to creating art has in many ways become synonymous with my approach to creating it. My focus is on creating art that is in dialogue with its environment; art that listens and speaks to the environment it was created in.
 
To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?
 
I see the initial phase of an idea, the inspiration, as discovery. It is typically a variation of what I or someone else has done before. But at this stage my ideas are typically neither robust nor unique.

I then develop the idea, sometimes over years, before it takes its final form. I see this latter part of developing the idea as creative. Musical ideas can therefore be both. Either discovered or created.
 
Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?
 
I, too, listen to the whole when I listen. Of course I sometimes focus in on the interplay or dialogue between certain elements in order to understand or repair something. But to me it's as a finished soundscape that I hear and understand a piece of music.

And my sound is very much about working towards a completed sonic picture as if it were a painting. The individual elements are chosen and designed to create the finished piece.
 
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?
 
When we recorded ORKA's debut album Livandi oyða we had all of our equipment set up at the machine hall of my father's farm on the Faroe Islands. Throughout the recording session, there were starlings that flew in and out of the machine hall and they can be heard chirping throughout the record as a background bed or drone.

I worked on that record for a couple of years and the sound of the starlings is somehow imprinted in my sonic consciousness. If I remember correctly we jokingly credited them as doing backing on the album cover. But it as at same time true. They played a role in creating the sound of that album and their part was definitely “musical”.
 
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?
 
One of my favorite tracks on ORKA's upcoming album All At Once is called “Bird”.



We started working on this track in Francine’s then studio deep in an industrial part of Peckham. We wanted to gather some gritty samples to use as percussive sounds from the building sites around the studio, but strangely all we managed to get was samples of birds. The recordings were of no use but the name stuck; Bird.

We continued to work on the tune which was turning into a disjointed avant garde take on Gqom which we were listening to a lot at the time. We then called up long-time collaborators Will and Si from LV (Hyperdub, Keysound, Brownswood) who helped solidify the beat and synth lines. We couldn’t get enough of the track at this point but felt that it needed the drive that we add to our songs when we play them live.

Soon after we were doing ORKA shows with Yann Tiersen, Quinquis, Kári Sverrisson and Ólavur Jákupsson joining us on stage. We had a few days off between shows and decided to record live overdubs with ORKA’s original self-built instruments at Yann and Quinquis’ studio. The result is a complex track that oscillates between throbbing Bass Music and disjointed avant garde.

[Read our Yann Tiersen interview]
 
Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?
 
I have an MSc in Acoustics and the science of sound plays an important role in how I create and compose music. I try to consider all aspects of acoustic sound when I assess a piece of music.

My scientific background is at the same time a toolbox that I can go to when I need to build or repair creative ideas. My work is often a conversation between science and art and it is in this dialogue that most of the experimentation takes place.
 
Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?
 
There are so many pieces of music that speak to me in different ways and have done so in different periods of my life. If I have to choose one I'll choose one which like the Vangelis song you mentioned above is ambient and has fragmented lyrics.

I have often returned to “Limerence” by Yves Tumor. It's a minimal track with a synth chord progression, an ambient aching melody, and a recording of a phone conversation between two lovers, but you only hear one person speaking.



By the void left by the missing part of the conversation the melody is given significance and the listener becomes part of filling in the missing pieces; it's as if the tune and the listener work together to create the song.
 
If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I am seeing that artists are trying to make true connections with the people and places they are creating in or touring to.

For instance my good friend Yann Tiersen whom I've toured and worked with the past many years. We did a couple of shows together on the Faroe Islands last week at the G!Festival and at Sirkus Föroyar. Yann and his wife Quinquis are on a low emission sailing tour and they came to the Faroe Islands on their sailboat. They are taking their time, stopping for days at each town and are connecting with locals communities.

I also see musicians friends all over the world taking their time to invest and work in their local communities and I think this is a healthy trend which I would like to be a part of.