Name: ükya
Members: Emil Bø (trombone), Kristian Enkerud Lien (guitar), Michael Lee Sørenmo (drums)
Interviewee: Kristian Enkerud Lien
Nationality: Norwegian
Current release: ükya's new album Soon Means Now is out via Nakama.
Global Recommendation: A walk in the forest around Munkerudevja.

[Read our Emil Bø interview]
[Read our Michael Lee Sørenmo interview]

If you enjoyed this ükya interview and would like to stay up to date with the trio and their music, visit them on Instagram. Kristian Enkerud Lien is also on Instagram. 



When did you first consciously start getting interested in musical improvisation? What was your first improvisation on stage or in the studio and what was the experience like?

Improvisation has always been there since I first started to play music.

Together with a dear drummer friend, we improvised for hours and hours together, originally for the sake of making rock riffs, but we often tended to forget them in the eagerness to keep playing and then trying to recreate the same after. Never a success, but constructive for the joy of playing music.

On stage, my first free improvisation was together with a dance group at school with another drummer friend, where we improvised to their improvisation.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. What made you seek it out, what makes it “your” instrument, and what are some of the most important aspects of playing it?

The guitar is a lovely enigma to me. It has limits that want to be broken.

I am often trying to recreate something I’ve heard in another instrument or electronic music, and  love working with/against physical limits, retuning vs. finding all this strange sounds within the same standard tuning and all the heavy references and idioms that lay so naturally in the instrument.

It is also an adventure searching sonorities I have in my head that are the “perfect” sound or something like that. I tend to play as acoustically as possible with other people, I like the rawness in just the acoustic instrument, but as the instrument is very quiet I almost always need some amplification.

In ükya I often use a cello bow and try to emulate a cello or a very dramatic opera singer.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. What kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

I have been working on this technical idea I have stolen from David Stackenäs’ work: to create a bobly, plastic perpetuum mobile that can for me feel free and compliant in a harmonic sense. These continuing rapid waves of sound that emanate from the instrument. It is quite romantic.

I’ve heard that David got the idea the crazy circular breathing from Evan Parker. This is so interesting and so many musician have their own take on it. I love to part in a big music community.

I’ve also written some songs for  bands like KRISE, Idiotek and Traum. Some of these works are documented on our newest release with ükya.

Taking your recent projects, releases, and performances as examples, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation?

Making something nice and powerful.

A key idea from my latest work is a very specific work within microtonality and also an extended use of flageolets on the instrument. I find that the exploration of smaller intervals has a deeper expression to me.

This is very fascinating in composer Ben Johnston’s work. His string quartets, especially 6 and 7, are divine. To master serialism, melody and just intonation at this level … wow.



I try to incorporate these feelings and exact intervals in my improvisations and find that rewarding.

What are some of your favourite collaborators and how do they enrich your improvisations?

I enjoy playing music with numerous people and aesthetics.

Good listeners, challenges and surprises are warmly welcomed.

As a listener, do you also have a preference for improvised music? If so, what is it about this music that you appreciate as part of the audience?

I appreciate when the music sounds focused.

It is also nice when music is aesthetically pleasing.