Part 2

Late producer SOPHIE said: “You have the possibility […] to generate any texture, and any sound. So why would any musician want to limit themselves?” What’s your take on that?

I think as long as you stay honest with yourself and behave according to your taste everything can go. But on the other hand I can get confused and later realize that it was my ego tricking me.

I also think that people have different strengths and interests. Some like the sound of their instrument and are more interested in arranging, harmony and microtonality for example. While some other person almost doesn’t care what notes are playing and will focus almost 100% on sound design.

I think both ends of the scale can work. With that said I feel like my best work includes both of these parameters. I would also add that a familiar sound can also make the listener feel “home” while always changing textures can keep them on their toes.

Do you feel that your music or your work as an artist needs to have a societal purpose or a responsibility to anyone but yourself?

I almost feel like it can be the other way around. That the work itself deserves a good life instead of being limited to hanging around on my hard drive.

And when I have something that I do feel like this about, sharing it with people is a chance to do something good in the world. Music has been the greatest medicine for my life, and I feel like the world has a great need for positive forces. If I am able to be a small part of this, then that feels very meaningful.

So I try to make the best, most heartfelt and honest music I can, and then I try to invite people into it in different ways. I feel like context can be a great way to give someone the tools to connect with your music even if they are not already familiar with the genre.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you’ve received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

Since I make mostly instrumental music people are very free to interpret it in whatever way they want. So I don’t think I have had much of people misunderstanding them.

I have had people tell me the music got them through dark times, that it has inspired them, given them new ideas and changed their state of mind. Many people, like myself, go through normal life with something that needs to be scratched from time to time or we get unhappy. And many times people have described just this feeling of getting something they maybe even didn’t know they needed. That feels very nice.

Sometimes for me I describe this feeling like going through the world with jigsaw puzzle pieces flying around. Then, when the music is just right, imagine all of those puzzle pieces lines up perfectly, to the point where you see the picture perfectly! You don’t even see the lines from the edges of the puzzle pieces, you just really REALLY see the picture clearly, but just for a moment. Then it goes back to semi-chaos, hehe!

I could write much more about this, but in general people tell me that the music did something with them, and that this is a positive thing.

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”?

The music is everywhere in everything if you just listen for it. What makes music music is for me that someone listens to it as music.

When thinking about the musicality of the non-human world it is hard to be able to say anything before mentioning the heart crushing Ted talk by Bernie Krause called “The voice of the natural world.“



4 minutes into the talk he talks about a forest in the Sierra Nevada before and after cutting down trees with a “selective logging” technique. The company that did this selective logging promised that there would be no environmental impact by doing it this way. Then he plays the audio recordings before and after. Whenever I tell people about this (including right now) it is hard not to cry.  

I really REALLY think the world would be a much better place if people were really trained to listen.

On a more positive note I recorded some birds with a recorder that can record at a very high sample rate. This is the audio parallel to a slow motion camera that captures many more frames per second then what we can perceive. So you can slow down the sound afterwards and it still sounds like “real” sound. It doesn’t have that muffled underwater sound.

When I slowed these bird recordings down a little bit they started sounding like different animals. A bit lower they start sounding like monkeys. Eeeeven slower they sound like humans. I haven’t done the math but there is a relationship between the pitch, heart rate and lifespan that all sort of lines up to say that we are pretty much all singing the same songs and living the same life just at different speeds. It is extremely fascinating stuff!

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

You know how athletes say that the rest is almost as important as the training? That is how I feel about silence. You need it to both rest your ears, rest your brain and as a contrast to sound. If there is no darkness there is no light. If there is no silence, there is no sound.

Of course there is no true silence, but I guess there is also no full maximum sound either. So maybe these are just the markers of the scale.

I am extremely fascinated by noise cancelling headphones!

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn’t or wouldn’t in more ‘mundane’ tasks?

Coffee is such a great example. Because you are only able to really enjoy the finer tastes if you experience a lot of coffee and train your tastebuds. And you have to bother to give it a proper taste. More than one time. That is when you really experience the coffee.

Music is the same. I think you can express yourself in lots of different ways.

This made me think about the times where I have had a big cup of coffee, then as I am walking to the studio, listening to music, the sun pops out and then I start feeling the caffeine starting to kick in. Ah what a glorious feeling! They are all harmonizing in a way.

What is a music related question that you would like to add to this interview for other artists to respond to – and what’s your own answer to it?

Q: What is the biggest shift over the years in how you view yourself as a musician / artist that you can think of?

A: That I have (almost) stopped feeling like I should grow up and become a better “normal” musician. I realize that whenever I am actually really interested in something I can not get it out of my head, and the things I don’t really care about it is hard to make space for up there.

I used to feel guilty or less for not being a better traditional musician that has the chops to play this or that tune. Over time I am more and more able to focus on where I want to be and what I want to do artistically and what I need to learn to be able to do that, instead of feeling like I need to learn skills for tasks I am not really interested in.