Name: Peder Niilas
Occupation: Composer, producer, sound artist
Nationality: Norwegian
Current release: Niilas's new album Nama Haga is out now.

If you enjoyed this Niilas interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



What were some of the musical experiences which planted a seed for your interest in electronic music?

The track «Kepesh» by Arms and Sleepers is pretty much that one definite track that made me get into producing my own electronic music.



I could not fathom how the sounds in this track was made, and so the story began.

[Read our Arms and Sleepers interview]

Most genres of music make use of electronic production means. What does the term “electronic music” mean today, would you say?

Since (electronically) it is pretty much the universal way to create and record music these days, I think we have to apply a cultural perspective to the term. Which groups, people, contexts, use this term actively, and what separates them from the rest? Where did it come from?

I think the electronic scene today is kind of split into two, those who work within «club music» tropes, and those who lean towards an experimental approach.

It’s obviously still a very broad definition, but it makes more sense than collapsing country-music and hard-techno into the same folder.

Disco, house, techno, drum n bass, IDM and many other genres were about a lot more than just music. For you personally, is electronic music (still) a way of life – and if so, in which way?

Exactly, it used to be a lifestyle, because it connected you to a specific community, area, mindset etc.

I try to listen to and interact with a broad palette of genres and peoples, because there is so much great music and people around!

Debates around electronic music tend to focus on technology. What, though, were some of the things you learned by talking to colleagues or through performing and/or recording with other musicians? What role does community play for your interest in production and getting better as a producer?

I think the role of community has become more and more obvious after the days of «online community» have withered away.

The days of an active and vibrant Soundcloud-community have gone, and in the aftermath of social isolation from the pandemic, I think a lot of musicians are feeling the same thing. Music is an inherently social process, and can start to feel increasingly hollow and meaningless when everyone is competing against each other in a superficial attention-economy.

For a long time, there was a sort of stagnation in the development of «electronic music» as a genre, where we saw cyclical trends of genre-hype influencing the community as a whole. I think the truly experimental big artists today are influencing a new generation of producers and musicians to think of music in a radically different way, and its very interesting to observe.

As an example, I remember the artist Sophie talking/posting about how the interface and categories of DAWs tend to define the way we think about «roles» of the composition (drums, strings, guitar, vocal etc). Her point was that we have technology that allow us to break down the borders of «categorical sound», letting sounds blend in between each other. Drums can turn into synths, vocals can morph into pads.

This feels like a very abstract way of thinking about music, but I think it has more to do with the way we learn and condition our minds to think about the concepts around us.

What are examples for artists, performances, and releases that really inspired you recently and possibly gave you the feeling of having experienced something fresh and new?

The album Utstrakt by Heida Mobeck has been on my mind the last couple of months. She is a truly experimental tuba-player, and has opened my eyes for the wonderful instrument she is performing with. I would also call her a «electronic» musician, even though she works with a traditionally «classical» brass instrument.



Also the artist Sassy 009 just released a new album which is super inspiring. It feels like she has been making the music she wanted to make, and not what's «hot right now». That's how something gets hot right now!



Lastly, I want to point out local producer Posner. Its funny how some people make music that sound like themselves, and Posner is a great example of this. He has an awesome ability to use simple ideas, go with it, and make it bounce really great. 



Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal  impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?

I currently feel very inspired around gathering people in a room, and playing/performing for each other. I’d like to see the threshold for meeting up and playing for each other be drastically lowered, so we can flood the world with amazing and bad ideas, shows, performances, instruments.

In a world where sleep is Netflix’ nr.1 enemy, and as such having a good nights sleep has become a political tool, I think we as artists have more power than we think, but that the opportunities and arenas might not necessarily lay where one would think.

Also, if I think too much of the impending multi-doom of ecological disaster, political descent, technological dystopia and capitalist mania, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. So instead, I try to do simple things well, hang out and take care of the people around me, and have fun.

Tell me a bit about the sounds & creative directions, artists & communities, as well as the colleagues & creative hotspots of your current hometown, please. How do they influence your music?

Since the pandemic, Oslo has felt slightly dismembered in terms of community, at least in the electronic scene.

The music scene in general is doing quite well I would say, and there is always a lot of things happening, but it also feels like the «community» consists of a bunch of isolated people trying to catch the attention of everyone else. It doesn’t really feel like a community moving together, with each other, rather it feels like bunch of dogs drinking from the same bowl, afraid of running out of water. Or at least some variation of this type of feeling, which I feel is coming downstream from the culture and society in general becoming more and more fractioned.

However, I think people are increasingly starting to feel it, and getting really sick of it. In Oslo, there has been an uprise in community-radios, compilation releases, low-threshold concerts etc. People feel the need to meet up in real life, perform and exchange energies, and its quite uplifting!

I’m dealing with it by finishing up a compilation record with a bunch of great Norwegian electronic artists, and I’ve just started experimenting with performing my music with a 4-piece jazz ensemble!

Today, electronic music has an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

The title of my latest album is a big salute to one of Sapmi’s greatest multi-artists, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. «Nama Haga» simply means «untitled», and is a title he used for many many paintings and works. The sound of the album however, is quite accessible and colourful, dancey and social, at least on the surface.

I think when digging more into the tracks, some of the ideas I’ve explored are a bit more experimental than the first-impressions might indicate, with blending beats and ambient soundscapes with collage-like sampling and layering. It’s been quite refreshing to work In this way during the process, and it stands as a counterpoint to my latest couple of albums, where I’ve gone quite intensely in the direction of experimentation and introspection.

What were some of the recent tools you bought, used, or saw/read about which changed your perspective about production, performing, and making music?

Performing with Trondheim Jazz Orchestra this fall was simply amazing. The composer had written the piece graphically for us to interpret and figure out together. «Traditional notation» has some really heavy biases and pushes both the composers and performers into certain directions, which is taken completely for granted within musical institutions.

Improvisational, or even just a bit more «abstract» music, notated traditionally, would be insane to try to «read» and perform. However, for example, a painting could give musicians the perfect cue to perform a certain «landscape» during a concert.

With this project, I realized that music is inherently and explicitly social, and you can just ask people to do something, and it opens up a box of magic that can be so much more than you expected.

How do you see the role of sampling in electronic music today?

In a sense, I see it as so essential and important that it could sound quite banal.

The process or recording and manipulating sound has become so easy, fast and accessible that we take it completely for granted.

How, would you say are your live performances and your recording projects connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?  

I’m currently in the process of developing a brand new live-show with a jazz ensemble.

It’s been a big hypothetical situation as long as I’ve performed music, and the timing is really great with the «re-socialization» vibe that is currently running strong in Oslo. I’m not focusing too much on my recording-side yet, since I just released a new album and I want some time to work freely, without planning and conceptualizing the writing-process.

I am also finishing up a bunch of techno/breakbreat/dub music which is sounding really good. I haven’t found the alias for the music yet, but when its nailed down, I’m looking forward to showing it to the world.

This also opens up some creative space, where I can focus my main project (niilas) on live performances and more sophisticated writing processes, and use my alias as an outlet for the dedicated club-music and even more experimental side that I love working with.  

Even if AI will not entirely replace human composition, it looks set to have a significant impact on it. What does the terms composing/producing mean in the era of AI, do you feel?

In the same way the computer/laptop has influenced literature in general, I think these types of ai-based tools will affect music. I think it's very hard to concretely predict what will happen, but I have no doubt that it’s going to «replace» musicians or composers.

I think having the ability to digi-vomit up 100 albums of super polished club music, will lead to the increased perception of value and prestige of actually being able to perform live with other people on stage and in the room.

I am however worried that Spotify, Suno, whatever, could change the way people think of and conceptualize listening/creative experiences and setting, in such a drastic way that they remove a market for live music. That is quite drastic and a bit of a doomsday-situation, so I choose not to spend too much energy on it, at least yet.