Part 2
Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?
Oh, my days vary a lot, but I’ll try. First of all I need to get up at 6.00 AM to make my kids breakfast, make packed lunches for them and send them to school. Then, I’ll feed our hens. Then I have about seven hours of work before they come home.
I’ll often start my workday with a cup of coffee, emails, maybe listen through some music and plan my day. I live on a farm on the beautiful countryside of Grimstad, Norway. Here I have my studio in the barn. I’ll bring a pot of coffee to the studio and start working on whatever project I need to get done.
Besides Rural Tapes, I`m in different groups such as I Was A King, The No Ones, Grand Union and a bunch of more. I work with songs, record stuff to send over to the others, do some mixing and so on. Sometimes I produce other musicians, or compose music for a theatre piece, a dance performance, a short film, a podcast or whatever.
The hours usually fly away pretty fast, and when my kids come back from school, I need to make them dinner, go through homework and take them to whatever leisure activity they do. I spend the afternoon with my family and maybe do some more studio or administrative work in the late evening hours.
Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?
My breakthrough project was playing with the powertrio Heroes & Zeros.
We were friends from a small town called Lillesand, starting up when we all moved to Oslo back in 2004. We were lucky to be in the right place at the right time and got a lot of attention, especially for our live shows. To achieve attention like we did with your best friends, tour the world and record albums together, that was simply the best thing you can experience when you’re in your twenties. We received three Norwegian Grammy nominations, toured the US and Europe over and over again and had a good reputation. This band opened many doors for me, and ever since I’ve always had the pleasure of taking part in different bands and collaborations.
Other highlights for me have been to perform with Led Zeppelin`s John Paul Jones, start the jangle pop group The No Ones with Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Frode Strømstad and to be able to work as a composer for different purposes, such as theatre and dance performances.
There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?
Before I got kids, I worked all the time, and I preferred working at night-time. I could easily work for 20 hours and then another 20 after four hours of sleep. Now that I have two kids, I need my eight hours of sleep every night, and I have to grab the opportunities I get through the day to work.
But I’ve gotten used to it, and I have no trouble being creative at 8.00 AM if that`s my opportunity. If I have an hour available to spend in my studio Monday morning, I can easily enter my creative zone to do whatever I need to work on.
Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?
Well, there is music for all occasions. Without needing to go into any exact examples, I have of course experienced music that both helps and pains in different parts of life. But I’m not a person with a very pompous emotional register, and in my music I have no need to communicate obvious, big emotions.
I'm not a fan of heart-breaking ballads and huge choruses. I rather need a solid dose of resistance in the music I listen to, to be touched. To put it that way, Sonic Youth touches me more than Adele. Of course, music is emotion, and there is tons of, let’s say, melancholy in the music I make. It's just that I often lose interest in music and art that are being too explicit.
But ok, if I needed to heal by listening to music in my state of mind now, I would probably put on something such as Steve Reich or maybe Neu!
[Read our Michael Rother of Neu! interview]
[Read our Michael Rother of Neu! interview about improvisation]
There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?
Well, of course, everyone is inspired by other artists. If you do it right, I guess you can create even greater art from being inspired by others in the right way. But a copy is seldom better than the original, and it can be a difficult exercise to stay within the "rules" of what is a copy and what is being inspired.
My method is to simply not seek out the things I know I can be too inspired by in my work. I never put on a song to hear what kind of drum sound I want. I try to work it out myself by experimenting. And along the way, I mostly find something else I think is cooler.
Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?
Maybe a bit too big of a question for me, haha. But I am fascinated by how much physical experience one can get from music. Both the fact that you can feel the sound physically on your body if you go to a sick loud concert, or that you can get goose bumps when you hear something beautiful.
But I’m in no position to speak of how our senses work by this. In that case I’d at least need more time to think about it I guess.
Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?
Yes. For me, it is important that art can be a purpose in itself. For example, I do not feel the need to express myself politically through art, I would rather have a good political discussion. When I go to a concert or see an exhibition, it is important for me to be allowed to just take it in. I can think it's nice, I can think it's boring, good, bad. But I do not always seek a bigger meaning in what I take in.
I don't feel the need to describe everything. I hope the same can be experienced in my music. People can mean what they want about it, it doesn’t affect me at all. I hope some can just listen and think it's good music for no further reason. If they experience something greater, or find the reason why they like it, that`s great! But you don't always need to analyse everything you hear or see.
That said, there is probably a bit of musical politics in what I do. I never make any compromises in my music to make it sell more, or to make anyone "important" like it. I respect all artists, also in the mainstream world, but I want to be an alternative to mainstream music that you are chased by no matter where you go. I want to make music that people actually want to sit down and listen to instead of being part of a mass-produced backdrop to a hectic everyday life.
If I could be the option some people chose instead of a superficial political debate or a reality show on TV I would feel that I had produced something very useful.
What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?
I really don't have the answer to that.
