Part 2
Describe the process of working together, please. What was different from your expectations and what did the other add to the music?
Sebastian: My main tool is the actual process in the studio, a 4-step process that has emerged after many years of allowing (and holding back) my creativity. In this process, I have different steps that help me stay present and sensorial, avoiding thinking, planning, or judging.
For this album, we allowed the same process, and one of the beauties of it is that it helps everyone in the collaboration to allow themselves and play out their voice of the very moment.
The first step is like a "pre-step": connecting with presence and feeling the flow of life/energy. Remembering the simplicity and beauty of being, and in that trust, feeling and allowing the creation of the world. This pre-step is repeated every day and often many times a day.
The next step is to play, record, loop, blend … basically, record and play without any filters, a step filled with playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and a radical trust to spark and attraction. When I work with other artists, this step is divided into two parts. In the first part, I try to create a warm and allowing space and let the other artist just play out within a certain scale and tempo. In the second part, I massage these recordings into mantric long loops and soundscapes.
Often the sounds blend and go in and out through gear and instruments many times, and most of the time I have my fingers on the faders to add my feelings.
The next step is to pick 12 sounds from all the sounds made in the previous step and drop them on my 12 performative channels on my mixer.
The last step is to actually record the final song. I play the sketch and take care of the live looping, and the instrumentalists improvise together with the sketch. You can hear and watch this happening on the spot in the title track of the album ("Hind"). Normally, I make a lot of different takes in this step, but this song actually happened in the first take.
In this process, I don’t expect anything from my collaborator nor myself; it’s all about allowing whatever comes to life and celebrating it. The entire album was made in the way I described above - it’s actually the only way I make music these days.
Is there a piece which shows the different aspects you each contributed to the process particularly clearly?
Henrik: Sebastian describes the process so well in detail. There is not so much to add from my side, but maybe the odd piece “Off course” could be mentioned since it stands out a bit.
It developed to be a synthesis of atonal western music phrases and playing techniques on the viola, married to a kind of corny groove emerged from Sebastian's sensitive hands, guided by his music mind a the very moment on the fly. There is a connection between these two elements that was so fun to play with.
Throwing the bow on the string creating a bouncing effect sets off the tune and awakens the curiosity about in what direction the music will develop. If you end up hearing a bossa nova beat, that’s your 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?
Henrik: I have, through a long career, played with a lot of excellent musicians within different genres. The most inspiring setting for a collaboration is from my point of view, with musicians that you like and respect both as musicians and human beings. If you experience that “personal chemistry” when playing music, this phenomenon can be one way to take you into the zone.
If you start to evaluate if it is comfortable or not you are not in the music but in your thoughts. If you are thinking, you are not playing - If you are playing you are not thinking.
If you want to go deeper you just have to let go of all your efforts and just play.
Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?
Sebastian: I believe the universe and everything it holds, including nature and humans, communicate and connect in many dimensions and ways. To live life is to collaborate; it is to open up to the life we meet and to share the life we allow through our humanness.
Playing together with someone means to hold the other person’s expression in your awareness and allow the sensation of this expression to be experienced in this awareness. When doing this together, you open up to a deep and open dialogue and connection.
Allowing your creativity beyond thoughts and judgment is naturally allowing this connection, and this is why allowing your creativity is so healing and such an important and essential part of being human. In this space, we transcend separation and unite, something the human realm is always in great need of.
Sometimes, the universe gives us small gifts of confirmation that this magic is real, and Henrik and I experienced something very remarkable one of the first days Henrik visited the forest where I live.
We had a long walk in the forest, shared our intentions with this project, and talked about the values of improvisation and creativity. Just before finding a spot to meditate, we talked about how creativity is like allowing the divine and childlike playfulness, and that the forest is like the great mother calling for this child within us.
We sat down in a green lush glade in the middle of the forest, and after around 30-40 minutes of meditation, we heard some footsteps in the leaves behind us followed by a very loud bark.
It was like an instant call, cutting through the very moment and making us 100% awake. The steps ran away, and for half a minute, we were just sitting in this very sharp and clear awareness. As I always have my eyes slightly open when I meditate, I saw something running towards us through the trees.
When coming closer, I could see that it was a baby deer, and apparently, she didn’t notice us and ran straight towards us. Just two meters in front of us, Henrik made a move, and she saw us and jumped over my shoulder.
The mother Hind called for her child, like nature called for the child within us. This is the reason for the name of the album.
What are your thoughts on the need for compromise vs standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements in this collaboration?
Sebastian: For me, creativity is about allowing and letting expression take place, not trying to construct or plan something. I don’t think creativity is about analyzing and judging, but about allowing a space where life can bloom in any form and way.
With this approach, collaboration is not about defending something or standing by convictions or dogmas, but about allowing and welcoming. When we neglect creativity, the defending or competitive patterns in us often take more place, and separation and division come into play. When allowing creativity, these patterns slowly lose their grip, and life can flow freely again.
My process has appeared with this in mind; each step helps me and the one I’m working with to let go of separating patterns and welcome creativity. In the process, there are of course moments of decision-making, but when these are embedded in playfulness and mantric music-making, I feel that they are made with a connection to feelings and experience and not only based on conceptual ideas and plans.
I also feel it’s very interesting to see how defensive and territorial patterns completely lose their grip when using this approach in collaboration. In the end, when we decided on what songs to include in the album, there was no disagreement or difficulty in making decisions even if we initially had some different ideas.
To touch life through a creative process is the most profound way to avoid any form of war and destructive conflicts, both within ourselves and in our relationship with the world.
Henrik: No need to add something here. I am totally in the same universe as Sebastian when we speak about, or try to answer these essential questions about life.
Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?
Henrik: Our method makes it possible for the flow to happen in music. In one way, if it wasn't fun I don’t think it would have happened.
But what is actually fun? Is it a feeling trigged by our senses? Or is fun in music almost the same as satisfaction? Is it really the meaning of music? Going deeper could be fun as taking musical risks, being surprised, inviting other people to your musical world etc.
When this question comes up and you try to answer it, it easily lead over to the much bigger question: - What is music? There has been different explanations of this through history. John Cage claimed that music is ”Organized sounds” which is a less emotional one. I like better this more abstract one by the Finish composer Leif Segerstam: - Why it sounds as it sounds, when it sounds.
Maybe music is a phenomenon we don’t need to understand or explain. We can just experience it.
Do you find that thanks to this collaboration, you changed certain parts of your process or your outlook on certain creative aspects?
Henrik: Expanding you own musical horizon is an endless process. You can always learn something new from people you work with if you are open minded. Music is enough for a lifetime but a lifetime is not enough for music.
