Name: Guro Skumsnes Moe

Nationality: Norwegian
Occupation: Composer, improviser, bassist, vocalist
Current Release: Guro's band MoE has two new collaborative albums out via ConradSound: Skinwalker with Bruxa Maria and Saint Vitus Dance with Escalantes.

[Read our Bruxa Maria interview]

Over the course of her career, Guro Skumsnes Moe has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Lasse Marhaug, and Mette Rasmussen.

[Read our Lasse Marhaug interview]
[Read our Mette Rasmussen interview which also includes Guro]



For many artists, a solitary phase of creative development precedes collaborative work. What was this like for you: How would you describe your own development as an artist and the transition towards your first collaborations?

From my starting point as an artist, I was so humble, to the most extreme sense and not really recognizing my own work as good enough for any collaboration. Yet collaborations were the core element from my beginning, working mostly with improvised music, noise music. Perhaps the same relationship as a sailor to the ocean.

I have been driven by doubt for as long as I can remember. The development has become more rooted and deep towards what I am, what my music is. And being comfortable about this, who I am, I have found the true inspiration in allowing this unknown development that alway happens in collaborations.

Tell me a bit, about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others? Are there obstacles and what are potential solutions towards making collaborations easier?

Electric bass, electrical guitar company custom mustang version after my favorite bass, a 1969 fender mustang. Rat and mosfet pedals and an octave pedal. That's the base for my bass and I use the preamp Vocoloco, and BOSS chorus, fuzz and reverb for my vocals.

Vocoloco has made my life easier for sure. I can relate to it as my sound so I interact as me. I can get stuck in my own sound for good and bad. I did a collaboration recently with Farida Amadou where I put up a whole new sets of pedals, which I didn't know. I think at times I got a bit mysterious as I worked on the sound perhaps more than the collaboration, but it gave a good energy and I like that free flow as well! I really liked how our sound turned out.

What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?

I was early on ruthlessly starting new collaborations because I had these songs I wanted to play. The will to create was always so much stronger than my doubts.

I had a duo from 16 years old with percussionist Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen. We made our own songs with vibraphone and bass. We recorded an album even ourselves. It's incredible to look back upon, how our creative restless minds got together and made this music just because we followed our ideas. Art-pop I think our music could be called. We still have a lot of collaborations, not as a duo, but different projects.

Dancer Astrid Groseth I also collaborated with from an early stage and still do. Same with Yngvild Aspeli who I still work with through composing for her figure theatre company Plexus Polaire. I have from early on had the need to collaborate cross-disciplinary, which has been .

Besides the aforementioned early collaborations, can you talk about one particular collaboration that was important for you? Why did 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?

It's like I want to say Mexico. Mexico has been a country of unknown sources of creativity. I don ́t think MoE would have been the same band without our first tour there in 2013. At least not for me. I didn ́t know the strength in our music before meeting Mexico. And I was not prepared for the world that opened from this first meeting. And from then on our motivation was clear for how we worked. We went where we could find energy, where we could grow. Where our music could develop and also where we could feel our music made a difference.

I think also to meet the band The Observatory, from Singapore, at the time we did, was crucial. In musical ways, logistically as a band and as human beings. We had a number of tours together, inNorway, Europe and South East Asia and two release collaborations. When I look back at it, this connection helped us shape the path that we preceded on. It was a safe playground and a surely effective one, where everyone worked their asses off to make great music, tours and records.



What are some of the things you learned from your collaborations over the years?

Trusting oneself and the ones you collaborate with.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

I have understood myself as interacting differently amongst others than operating on my own. I listen differently. Yet my strongest influence in creating music comes from noise music, equal layers of sound creating a whole from all these sounds being nothing but what they are.

So I also in collaborations open up towards my individual voice, even though I listen differently, I listen to the whole of what my voice is a part of.

That's how I want society to be and also what I search for in creating music together with other people. I believe so much in the individual voices, individual voices creating a whole. So I always strive for the freedom to interact through my own voice and logic.

There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming via producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?

Producing in the same room feels like the most challenging and fruitful in some ways, as you have time as a tool and the possibility of stretching your ideas much further than in a jamming situation or live performance. Yet the execution of the moment in a live performance can bring out some unique material as well.

Sharing files becomes another kind of collaboration which I think doesn ́t require the same from you as the two above. Sharing file-work can stretch for quite some time and it ́s in a way more risky because it's more demanding or unreliable, to be actually following the same creative process this way. So much distraction in every persons life. But it all depends.

Is there typically a planning phase for your collaborations? If so, what happens in this phase and how does it contribute to the results?

To me it is different for different projects. Many collaborations have just occurred and followed the flow, the energy often on a tour, having a day off, let's meet in the studio. Like this release with Bruxa Maria.



It feels like a treat to be able to document our common energy on this tour, and make our many year long collaboration and interest in each others music have a physical outcome. Grateful that Gill and the others where in touch with this great studio, First Avenue Studios, through the amazing Lovely Wife. And also to have a plan on a day off is so much more fruitful than tourism.

We were supposed to only play something like one song, improvised on a riff Dave made up there and then. That was the starting point. There were for sure more music to be found and we just went there. Both me and Gill had some texts made during the tour, and if anyone had an idea we recorded it. Then again some collaborations have been talked about for years until they one day can be realized.

The split release we did together with The Observatory, Shadow, where we record on each others tracks, was a unique experience.

What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with or those where you have more differences? What happens when another musician take you outside of your comfort zone?

That's a hard one to answer in a way. Those collaborations where you work with people with many differences than you, tends to be the ones initiated by others. Differences are super important though to create a broad musical understanding and trusting yourself.

It's I think always good to find yourself outside the comfort zone. It's essential! As long as the navigation is clear, to create great music. If people have other agendas that precedes the creative outcome, it can become a shitty situation.

Do you need to have a good relationship with your collaborator? Or can there be a benefit to working with someone you may not get along with on a personal level?

I have learnt that music has its own ways so that a good relationship is not the crucial element for a good result.

But as already said, knowing the navigations for allowing the music to go where it has to go, is absolutely crucial. If it's based on someone's ego it's wrong no matter where you turn it.

Some artists feel as though the creative process should not be a democratic one. What are your thoughts on the interaction with other musicians, the need for compromise and the decision making process?

When I compose music it is so important to me that I have made the connection clear with the other musicians as towards where the motivation for the music comes from. It's just the same but still totally different. If that makes sense.

I urge to make the foundations of my composition ideas clear so that it creates resonance in the other musicians from their own motivation. So that the music we create together has a deeper foundation than just me telling them the notes I want them to play. I have this superstition about that this creates another texture to the music, a more tactile flavor.

So it's a both yes and no to that question. It is crucial that everyone has the right focus towards the music. And that the one in charge (which there usually is) tells in the best clear way possible what kind of participation is wanted, and what the music needs. But regardless of how good your idea was, if it doesn't sit, work, as part of the whole, you have to deal with that and not stick to the idea. Either through democratic process or semi democratic process as you adjust your creative plan accordingly to the people you are collaborating with.

I think a great composer that composes music that feels alive has a lot of human knowledge in addition to instrumental knowledge. And the person who made the music and has the vision, has to make the musicians also believe in the music.

And this process doesn't have to be democratic. But it becomes democratic in a way in my mind, if the composition is good, because it opens every musician and allowing the music, the wholeness, to become alive. Something that could not have been possible without anyone of the participants.

What's your take on cross-over collaborations between different genres?

If you have a good navigation point I think anything can work. And that it's built from a creative force from the beginning.

To me I find that the strongest expressions come from cross-over collaborations, but not genre wise, more different art forms. It releases an even stronger energy in the co-existence between different art expressions.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

When I think of it again the creative decisions when playing with other people are highly constructive and rewarding, they make you alert and alive. Because you have to trust yourself, that's all you have.

You also only have yourself performing solo obviously. But it ́s a different kind of free fall than being creative with others.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you as part of a collaboration? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

Collaborations opens up, in a way, a broader scale of music. I think so. It's like presenting your whole self and having to adapt on the spur of a moment in a different way.

So I think this relates to how I see how society can be. We have been told to abstract things to being this or that in a too narrow manner. Being creative is an essential part of every human being, no matter what their world looks like. Things we do, how we act, are related to so many things.

And I don't find it natural that we can conclude with only one thing as our answer. It is always depended on so many layers of information and emotion. I think we somewhere got lost when society became a source of putting things into statistics. Individual got lost and a mechanical world grew upon us.

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this and what was it like?

Perhaps working with Keiji Haino would fall under this category.

He came to one of our concerts in Tokyo, on our sound check just sitting there and after the sound check commenting: good sound. Then we collaborated with him on two different occasions in Tokyo and I recorded a duo with him where I play octobass and he plays drums. He is definitely one of the musicians I value the most and how his approach to music gives everyone a better foundation. He is deadly serious and has no time for bullshit. To do a good job you need good conditions and that was a lecture to experience.

And reticently we also started a collaboration with Caspar Brötzmann. I did not believe it at the beginning, that he had contacted us for a possible collaboration. It's not having high shoulders but it is different when you meet a person you never thought you would meet in real life, which you have heard about and heard the music of. I am really curious towards this collaboration because there are some really cool thoughts towards how to make a concert more spontaneous even though you perform songs, but giving the freedom to every musician in how to progress, where to go next. Non- ego structure, deep listening, a lot of bass.

Having a bass lesson with Joélle Leandre was a similar experience. I remember I tried to find all the excuses I could as to why I was not as good as I wanted to be. And she made me see so clearly that there is nothing in the world you can put up between yourself and the music you want to play. You have to make yourself ready for it.