Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.06.2010, Síða 32
20
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2010
Music | Interview
He is tow-headed and unassuming, sitting
on a patio, fidgeting as he lights a cigarette.
He is driving to the airport in four hours to go
on a two-week tour in support of his latest
album, … and they have escaped the weight
of darkness, which was released at the end
of April. The critics seem to love him. He is
often called a ‘genius’ and a ‘wunderkind.’ He
is barely twenty-three, yet he seems to fit the
bill of a very hard-working musician. In fact,
he seems to be two steps ahead of himself
at all times. For now, he has taken a quick
moment before jumping on a plane to vent to
Grapevine to his heart’s content.
You’ve had a lot of success at a young age,
especially given your chosen genre. It’s all
come on pretty fast. How have you coped
with that? Has it affected you?
Well, I like to believe that I worked for it. I like to
believe that I did everything myself and I feel fully
responsible for the fact that I am not sitting in my
living room writing music on my piano. I’m actually
down here because I went out and did stuff. In the
beginning, I went on tours that I booked myself; I
spoke to friends who were starting up a record la-
bel and they released my stuff. Through that work,
the bigger entities discovered me so I don’t have
to do everything myself anymore.
But coping methods? It can still be a bit weird,
especially when you lose control of it. I have to
admit I’ve had quite a hard time coping with it.
There is also this attention, everything is always
about me. This I’ve never really liked. I’m a closed
off person, I’m a loner. People always come to me
and I need to give so much of myself. That’s just
expected of me. I had a period last year when I was
just really tense. I didn’t like it, I hated it actually. At
one point, something just turned in my head and I
just approached it full on.
do you enjoy touring?
Yeah. I get sick of the songs sometimes when I’m
doing sound-check, but when I go onstage and
play them for an audience the experience is always
different. It’s almost like playing a new song every
night. The reception is different, the atmosphere
in the room is different and it changes our percep-
tion of the music, so it almost changes the music
itself. I never get bored of playing my own songs.
There’s some songs that I’ve played at every single
one of my shows, not to mention sound-check, re-
hearsals, recording, but I always give myself into it
every time. I really enjoy touring.
It’s a labour of love, where you have to give
yourself entirely over…
Of course, because if I don’t I won’t enjoy it. On
one tour we made the mistake of playing the same
set-list every night. That order of songs made the
most sense, but by the twenty-fourth show with-
out a day off, it was becoming such a routine that
I automatically didn’t put myself into it. I really hat-
ed that show and after it we had a band meeting
where we said “never again!” It’s just as important
that we like the show. Why do this if you’re not
enjoying it? If I was just doing it for the money then
I could just be a lawyer.
UNSPOILEd CITIES
Where have your most memorable gigs been?
I always like the places that aren’t really spoiled.
In a city like London, hypothetically, they have
bands coming all the time and nothing’s new to
them. They’re very jaded. I feel it in the audience.
They clap less, they buy less CDs after the show,
and they’re not as enthusiastic about the whole
experience.
One of my favourite places is Eastern Europe,
Poland for example, where they don’t have a lot of
bands come through. They are all waiting outside
for the doors to open and they are so excited and
they go completely silent during the show. The at-
mosphere becomes completely different. After the
show they’re all waiting to meet you and they all
want autographs. I don’t really handle it very well
because I’m an awkward person, but I appreciate
it. In the bigger cities, I’m just one of a hundred
other artists playing in that city that night.
Then you toured China. How was that?
That’s another country that I really liked playing
in. It was weird, but the whole culture is just so
different. But there is so much respect and grati-
tude. They are quiet at the shows but not intensely.
Not because they don’t appreciate it, but in their
culture you can go enjoy good music, even in a
classic theatre setting, and still chat. I felt like they
could still take it all in without being as quiet as the
Polish people are.
That can be a bit intimidating too.
It can. It can make you nervous, especially when
I’m not feeling that way and I don’t make that con-
nection. But sometimes you make that connection
with the people and the atmosphere is so fragile. I
also felt like they really appreciated me coming all
that way. They don’t get a lot of international art-
ists into the country.
Here as well, there aren’t many international
artists that come frequently now.
Yeah, but here people don’t actually appreciate
it very much. It’s a one of a kind market actually.
In all my deals, record deals, management deals,
agency deals, whatever, I always exclude Iceland.
First, because I know this market better than any
foreign people, but also because they just wouldn’t
understand it. It’s so small, it’s just so tiny. Send-
ing an artist over here doesn’t make sense. It’s
not worth the money for a management company.
It’s not worth the investment. I don’t want to stop
bands from coming, but I don’t encourage it. The
market here is not very open for foreign artists.
Say what now?
If you look at the music sale charts in Iceland, for
Icelandic bands it’s still going up, selling more and
more CDs. For foreign bands, sales have dropped
down to almost nothing. Stores sell almost no for-
eign CDs. The division of fees when you’re played
on the radio is almost all given to Icelandic artists.
Are there Icelandic content laws for radio?
No, but there is discussion of it because we want
more Icelandic music on the radio. I mean, we
as musicians want the exposure and also for the
copyright society which I am part of, that is our
income. That’s where we make the money that we
can divide to all the artists so they can try to make
a living off their work. We try to lobby the radio
stations and try to get them to play more local mu-
sic and there are ideas about forcing them to. But
I’m not really into forcing anything.
It’s interesting that you work with the Icelan-
dic copyright association which deals with
the issue of illegal downloading, since you
sort of bridged that gap last year with your
Found Songs project, where you gave away
your songs for free.
Fun fact about Found Songs: that was actually il-
legal to do that.
No way. So you were like “Fuck you! I’m doing
it anyway” ?
Basically, according to the law you can’t give away
a song for free. There has to be a copyright fee for
the composer of the song. The same rule has to
apply for everyone in order for it to work, so there’s
a reason for this, but one of the things I want to do
as part of the association is to find a way around
this. So what I did was actually illegal. I take full
responsibility for that! The thing is no one will do
anything about it because they know I’m the com-
poser of the song.
HITTING THE FAST-FORWARd BUTTON
I hear elements of your previous work on this
album, but it also seems like you’re going in a
new direction as well.
I want to call it more ‘pop’. What I want to do is
reach the most people. Not to make money, I
wouldn’t call myself a sell-out. I want to open peo-
ples’ eyes to this kind of music. Most of the people
who buy my albums don’t listen to classical music
at all, so it was both conscious and subconscious
to go in this direction. It was very natural for me to
go this way, but I was also thinking “yeah, this is a
good way to go,” because I want to be accessible.
You just put out this album, but what do you
see on your horizons now? do you know what
you want to do next?
I’m already doing it. I finished this album a couple
of months ago and then went straight on. At the
moment I am orchestrating a new album for a full
orchestra. We’re premiering that on July 1st in
Manchester with a British orchestra, but I will per-
form it with different orchestras in different cities
in the autumn and in Shanghai as part of the Expo
in September. Hopefully we’ll be doing it in Lon-
don, Berlin, Cologne and other cities later.
do you foresee yourself making other kinds
of music at any point in your life?
When I get the time. I’d like to produce bands that
make different stuff from my own. I’d like to add
my personality into that. I added the strings to
the Bloodgroup album, I produced one track by
Árstíðir and I'm doing their next album. I do the
techno thing with Janus [from Bloodgroup] as
Kiasmos. I need to branch out. It’s like staying in
the house too long and you need to get out. I get
that when I am touring a lot, playing my own songs
over and over again and going in the studio. I need
to get out and do something else.
Into The Light
Ólafur Arnalds faces the music
You can score Ólafur Arnalds' new record RIGHT NOW at a record shop or
internet-retail outlet of your choice. We hear it's pretty good.
Words
Rebecca Louder
Photography
Julia Staples
“Sending an artist over here
doesn’t make sense. It’s not worth
the money for a management
company. It’s not worth the
investment. I don’t want to stop
bands from coming, but I don’t
encourage it. The market here is
not very open for foreign artists.”
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