Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.04.2010, Side 12

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04 — 2010
12
Feature | Interview
Leather Bar, night of the Icelandic Music
Awards – 01:30 AM
Nico Muhly: So now we’re here in Iceland.
I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’ve been here
trying to make sure the live show is good.
Jónsi: There’s a lot of shit going on. We are
only five people in the live outfit, trying
hard to make the album work within our
confines.
N: Why didn’t you want to tour with a
mini-orchestra?
J: I don’t know... I kind of wanted to start
small, have it all raw and dirty – a stripped
down version of the album. Because the
album is so f lamboyant and layered – in a
really nice way – I wanted the live show to
be kind of different from that. Maybe later
this year we can do some crazy shit.
N: When we first talked about it, I was
wondering how to treat these songs, when
I first got the demos they were literally one
guitar and his voice, nothing else.
J: It was as stripped down as possible: one
acoustic guitar, one mic and a voice, with
a click track.
N: I won’t do anything without a click
track; working without one is a disaster.
The first song I arranged was Boy Lilikoi. I
listened to the demo and thought, “I want
to try something so outrageous for this,
and I am just going to completely skeet all
over its face!”
J: And this is why I wanted Nico to work
with me the first place! I had heard one
album with his arrangements, Sam Ami-
don’s album [All Is Well], and I was like,
“Whoa! This is perfect for my music!” It
was like this painting, a splash of colours
that goes in and out – not like a constant
carpet over the music. So I was really ex-
cited about this collaboration, to get this
crazy vibe, this colour and texture all over
the songs.
On gOing apeshit On that bitch
N: I remember, I took it home and was all
“I’m just gonna go apeshit on this bitch,”
so I got all my midi woodwinds all over
it and I sent it to Jónsi. I was so nervous,
I thought: “He’s gonna think I’m com-
pletely crazy.” Now, first of all, midi demos
are always the worst, it sounds like, you
know, Legend of Zelda shit. But it seemed
to work.
J: I think it was really good.
N: You were so happy.
J: I really liked it
N: I remember, I woke up to your e-mail
reply, and it was a very happy moment for
me. “Good, this is a good start!”
J: I think it [Boy Lilikoi] is your best ar-
rangement on the album, for some reason
you were so inspired and it was the first
spark, really full on and crazy.
N: It’s super full on. It’s also about as
much shit as you can possibly get away
with in pop music, ever.
J: I sent Nico the acoustic guitar demo
through the internets. I got the file back
and was all... “Hmmm... this is really full
on. There’s so much shit happening, it’s
cool and I really like it. It’s perfect, exactly
what I wanted, really colourful and play-
ful...”
We met two days later; he came to my
home with his laptop and was sitting on
the f loor with a small midi controller. We
did, like, five arrangements in that one
night. I think that’s so crazy! It’s a really
good example of the way Nico worked with
us. I like to work kind of fast; I like to build
things quickly, to see progress. It was thus
exciting get to work with Nico, because
he’s so spontaneous and fast.
N: I like throwing things out if they don’t
work. I’m all like “Whoa, doesn’t work! On
to the next one...”
J: Exactly. I heard about Mr. Nico, that his
best quality is to throw stuff away that
folks don’t like, without getting all of-
fended. His attitude is: “Whatever works,
works. OK, start again from scratch, no
problem...”
N: Throwing music away is so much fun,
it’s as much fun as wasting water. There’s
something delicious about it, you can turn
it on and off, and you can totally admit it
when it’s not successful.
On mOving away frOm sigur rós
J: Starting the album, I wanted to move
away from Sigur rós, those f loaty, dreamy
landscapes. That made it kinda fun to
work with you, because you had your midi
controller and then you just played and
played; “Oh, we have a f lute now. What do
you think about this? Eeeh, can we have
a little bit more this...” [starts singing].
That’s how it worked. Super fast, super or-
ganised, no bullshit and he takes it home
and works on it. I didn’t think this kind
of music could be that spontaneous, that’s
one thing I don’t like about classical music
and arrangement: it’s too thought about
and too worried about.
N: This music wanted to be ecstatic; it
wanted to feel like a magic thing erupting
from below. So the best way to do all the
arrangements was to at first shit them out
and vomit them out, make it be all messy
and let there be gut reactions. They’re your
songs, and I kept telling you “I see brass
band, a Mexican funeral,” I basically kept
throwing these images out...
J: I think that’s really good, how we would
visualize things. For example on Boy Li-
likoi, we were talking about Saint Francis
of Assisi and how he was preaching to the
birds, all these images and layers and co-
lours. I really like that, it’s a good way to
describe how music should be.
N: Arranging is really about taking the
other person and making them as present-
able as you can. It’s as if you’re designing a
dress; it’s not about making the dress look
good, but the person wearing it. It’s about
finding something that is fabulous, that
makes you sound fabulous. It shouldn’t
call attention to me – as an arranger, you
have to erase yourself in the process. So
spontaneity is the best way to accomplish
this, and images are often the best way to
accomplish that. Everything has to go to-
gether. That was something I really liked
about the Sigur rós arrangements, there
was a formality to them. They also just
serve to make your voice sound so fabu-
lous. What I wanted to do was make it a lit-
tle bit naked, to claw a little in your range.
J: Exactly. I remember the images you
tried to bring to mind: gardens and birds
f lying around and f lowers growing. I
think it’s really cool to describe music and
arrangements like that.
N: What was fun for me, too, was record-
ing it, because we did it all in one go, in
sections, and we did this thing where I
designed the sections along with this con-
tractor violist, Nadia. We could record it
quickly, but no one could believe we could
do it as fast as I said.
On spOntaneity
J: Yeah [laughs]! It was like, “That Nico
Mueller is sooooo hyperactive. He’s a
workaholic. Everyone is talking about it!”
It was an intense session. [All laugh].
I hadn’t heard all the arrangements
until we recorded them. Nico was working
on them at the last minute, and we had to
make all sorts of decisions right before
they were recorded. He was always mak-
ing these new things, right up until the
deadline. It was intense, but very healthy.
N: One thing I wish, if we had more money
for it, is that we could back one more time
with more musicians and just do...
J: No that’s bad.
N: Why?
J: It’s very healthy, I think, making these
fast decisions. It’s healthy in music, and
in life.
N: In everything.
J: Yeah.
N: Some of the best arrangements are re-
sults of stuff we said and did in the record-
ing sessions themselves. It was like a tor-
nado at times, I brought this printer to the
studio and every night it was spewing out
a million pages of these new crazy things
that we had worked on the night before.
How many songs did we record? Fifteen?
More?
J: Fifteen.
N: And how come there’s only nine on the
album?
J: I don’t know...? I think I kinda wanted
to have it kind of uplifting and spontane-
ous and...
N: None of the slow jams went on the al-
bum.
J: Some of them did...
N: Which slow jams?
J: Like Hengilás and... Tornado
N: Tornado’s a fast jam.
J: There are some slow jams on the album.
N: It’s a funny thing. While we were mak-
ing it the album seemed like such an enor-
mous, spontaneous beast. What it is now
is a bullet train of an album.
J: It’s funny actually, how you go into an
album. I wrote the songs in my apartment
on an acoustic guitar, piano, harmonium
and made these really simple demos that
I slipped to Nico – with a click track – we
went to the studio and we saw things build
up quite quickly because of the fabulous
arrangements, strings, brass and wind ar-
rangements. It was quick – Nico only had
like six days to record everything – I think
it worked.
N: Not to mention the piano parts, which
were all hysteria. Complete hysteria. Ha-
haha! It was hilarious, I got myself all
jeeped up on coffee and just went com-
pletely nuts with it. I’d give you seventeen
tracks on top of each other and catch the
next train to New York.
J: It’s Nico’s trademark. He does a shitload
of shit and leaves you with a shitload of
shit, then you have to dig through it and
find the gold nuggets, you know.
N: Yes! We made lots of good stuff that
way! Also, for me it’s more fun. It’s like if
you’re a houseguest at someone’s house
and instead of giving them one present,
you give them a whole kitchen of spices to
serve.
J: Yeah, and they can throw out the things
they don’t like.
N: Everything, if that’s the case. The
amount of piccolo on that album...I think
we really made the album with the most
piccolo in modern music. I don’t think
there’s any more.
J: Nico is obsessed with this piccolo part.
I kind of can’t hear it anymore. I’ve gotten
numb to this piccolo thing. Do you have
any questions, Haukur?
-Well, I love to hear you two talking together.
You are so eloquent.
J: Elephant? Elegant? I have this TV blar-
ing in my eyes, it’s a little bit distracting
[points to TV set in the corner, projecting
homosexual pornography with regular
cumshot intervals].
On getting tO knOw each Other
-Well. How did your relationship develop?
How did you guys come to know each other?
You’ve both been in Iceland obviously, had
you been hanging out and drinking cham-
pagne a lot?
J: I didn’t know Nico AT ALL. When you
came to one of our shows in New York, I
spanked your ass that time...
N: ...that’s right. A little spanking.
J: That was our introduction.
N: We got to know each other through this
shy person thing, where we both sorta sent
word through other people that maybe we
wanted to do this thing with this certain
person.
J: Yeah.
N: It was all done through like nineteen
different people. E-mail chains. It was
funny and shy. Hahaha.
-This album, it was two years in the making?
N: Last January was when we first started
working together. So it was a year and two
months ago.
-Did you know each other's music before you
worked together?
J: No. Nico knew Sigur rós, probably.
N: Yeah, I knew Sigur rós.
J: I never listen to anybody’s music, I
never have a clue about any music at all,
so I never heard Nico until Valgeir [Sig-
urðsson] gave me Sam Amidon’s album.
I met him at some show and he gave me
Sam and the other Bedroom Community
albums. I’ve not heard all of them yet, but
I heard Sam’s album and was like, “Yeah,
this is pop!”
N: Yeah, it was weird about Sigur rós. It
was a band for starters, and totally differ-
ent from anything I was listening to. It
was hard to evaluate the composition of
the band. What was interesting about it is
that it evolved into playing more composed
pieces later. Like the songs didn’t start
emerging until the last two albums, like
actual short songs.
J: Yeah, exactly, that’s kinda true.
N: A lot of stuff, these endless ten minute
long compositions, not quite ambient but
kind of... Anyway, I knew my Sigur rós,
for sure, I did my duty as a young gay col-
lege student and went to some show at the
Fillmore or whatever, like in 1999 or some-
thing. I forget. It was like, right before
Takk came out in the states, I saw a show
with these Icelandic people. It was chaotic.
On learning frOm One anOther
-So alright, you are now acquainted. The
next logical question would be “You spent
time working and communicating, did you
learn anything from one another?”
J: In what way? Life in general? You mean
better in life, like practical stuff? Alex
[Somers, American visual artist and boy-
friend/collaborator to Jónsi] is always tell-
ing me: “You’re so good at life,” meaning
practical stuff. I don’t spend time doing
the day-to-day stuff. He always takes a
long time to shower, I shower in like five
minutes, then I’m out. When responding
to e-mails, I just answer yes or no. I try
and be practical like that, I think Nico is a
little bit similar. No bullshit.
N: Yeah. As for stuff that I learned, for
me – what I always learn when working
with sorta non-classical musicians – you
learn to be a good advocate for your ideas
because those working with you don’t read
music. I can’t go around sending people
scores and asking if they don’t think it's
genius. Instead I need to invent a vocabu-
lary to present my ideas.
J: It’s all about sound.
N: Yeah and to be able to envision this
dumm-diddy-dumm diddy, to convey that
and articulate what I’m doing. So much
stuff we sent back and forth, that was the
big lesson, getting into your head a little
bit, how you saw music.
J: Also, what surprised me a lot about Nico
Mueller...
N: Möller!
J: That’s such a good last name. Nick-
laus Möller. Like Helga Möller. Anyway,
I think the best thing about him is that
he comes from the classical world, cuz I
have always been sceptical about classical
people and music schools and that, all that
stuff is sooooooo boring. What I have re-
ally liked about Nico was the spontaneity
of him. That was the most surprising for
me. He came in with his laptop and midi
and that was exactly how it sounded on the
album. These were good times, the two of
us in my apartment, doing five arrange-
ments in one night.
N: That was so much fun!
J: I know, and that’s how it sounds on the
album. Fun!
N: For me as a classical composer, it was
so great not to have to put in all that pre-
compositional work every time. If some-
one commissions me to write a piece, I’ll
work on it for days, figuring out all the
bullshit and intricacies. Here I got to f low
more freely, seeing your reactions as we
went along.
J: That’s how it should be with all music.
N: Yes. But still, one of the things I cher-
ish in my life as a classical composer is
how you have time to think about things.
Sometimes, if someone commissions me
to write a piece, I’ll love to have a year to
think about it. It comes and goes, in the
scheme of the classical person’s life... like
when I started working on this opera that
I’ve been writing for two years now, and
I’ll be writing for another six months...
J: How does it work? I don’t understand!
A piece on piano or cello... you obviously
play piano very well, but how do you think
about the cello part – how do you arrange
it? As if it’s a vocal line?
Because for me, I started playing in-
struments really early, at age thirteen I
started playing the guitar and I decided
It’s nearing midnight on Saturday, March 13, 2010. After a strenuous
Icelandic Music Awards ceremony, the Grapevine feels like going home,
watching Back To The Future II and kicking back with some popcorn.
Which would be the smart thing to do.
However, Grapevine isn’t very smart. So Grapevine opts for a post-cere-
mony beer at Kaffibarinn. Where Grapevine stumbles upon the giggling
pair of Jón Þór Birgisson – Jónsi of Sigur rós – and composer Nico Muhly.
The two are in high spirits, and we get to talking.
“Too bad we can’t do that interview we’ve been talking about,” Nico
blurts out. Grapevine’s heart sinks. “What? That’s our feature for next
issue!?!”
“I’m leaving for Bandaríkin tomorrow at two. Didn’t you get my e-mail?”
Nico replies. “We could always do it now, though. Are you guys up for
that?”
Jónsi and the Grapevine nod in unison. So off we go, to the only bar in
Reykjavík one can enjoy conversation on a Sunday morning without
getting all shouty and stuff. The super secret, super awesome MSC club-
house – The Leather Bar. We borrow a bottle of champagne from nearby
Boston and get to talking while deep house blurts in the background and
the fetish cage stands vacant.
The following is a transcript of what went on that night.
Enjoy.
Nico And Jónsi GO ALL IN!
...and Grapevine got to sit in!
Nico And Jónsi GO ALL IN!
“It’s Nico’s trademark.
He does a shitload of
shit and leaves you with
a shitload of shit, then
you have to dig through
it and find the gold
nuggets, you know.”