Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.06.2011, Síða 24

24
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2011
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Music | Interview
DOING SOMETHING FOR YOUR-
SELF
“The idea was to basically have nothing
written, come here, borrow as much
equipment as I could and make a re-
cord with people from Húsavík,” Mike
says of his sojourn. He’s an affable sort,
bearded, lanky and unassuming as he
sips beer in a Reykjavík café. It’s his
last day in Iceland, and he doesn’t want
to leave, but a Tunng gig in Minneapo-
lis demands his presence. “I’m going
there for one show, it’s crazy! I’ve got to
leave Iceland for this, man!”
It’s not that he doesn’t like his
bandmates. But after seven years, four
albums and countless shows, Mike
needed a change, and saw the perfect
opportunity for a solo adventure after
the end of Tunng’s tour in support of
their 2010 album, ‘…And Then We Saw
Land’.
“I haven’t done anything for myself
for years”, he elaborates. “There was a
couple of months where I could have
just been in London in a dark basement
working on a new Tunng record, which
is what I’m supposed to be doing, or
hanging out in Iceland looking at the
mountains”.
MASSIVE EPIC EUPHORIA
Mike was somewhat familiar with Ice-
land, having an Icelandic girlfriend and
having played at last year’s Iceland
Airwaves festival. After spending some
time in Húsavík and the surrounding
countryside, he became enamoured
with the landscape and the people, and
began fantasizing about recording mu-
sic there.
“It was… one of those kind of ideas
you have, and you think, ‘that’s not re-
ally possible, is it?’ and then it is possi-
ble, and then you’ve booked the flight,
and then you’re doing it, and then
you’re like, ‘fuck!’”
And did it work? Mike’s certainly
pleased. In fact, he says it’s one of
the best things he’s ever done, even
though it didn’t turn out exactly how
he planned it. Expecting to channel the
isolation of the environment into some-
thing approximating “lonely, subtle,
desolate electronic folk”, he instead
drew heavily on local talent, recruiting,
among others, marimba and trumpet
players from Húsavík’s music school,
two garage band bassists, a fifteen-
year-old accordionist and veteran pop
circuit drummer Gunnar Illugi Sig-
urðsson. “The whole record’s kind of
shaped because of these people,” he
says, going on to describe the results
as surprisingly “massive, epic” and “eu-
phoric”.
Mike assembled a studio in his cab-
in, using equipment borrowed from the
aforementioned school. He’s recorded
eleven tracks, and says they’re pretty
much ready. “Maybe they need a bit of
work, here and there, and I’m thinking
of maybe coming back to Reykjavík in
June and trying to mix the album here”,
Mike says, hopeful. “It just feels like the
whole thing needs to be done here…
I think if you sort of fuck with that, it
ruins the whole idea”.
CHEEK MOUNTAIN THIEF
For the purpose of the project, he has
taken the artist name Cheek Mountain
Thief, the ‘Cheek Mountain’ part be-
ing a literal translation of the name of
the mountains visible from the cabin
windows, and the ‘Thief’ being a self-
deprecating reference to Mike’s rela-
tionship with Húsavík’s music scene. “I
borrowed the cabin, all the equipment
and the people, basically. And (the
name) sounds kind of cool”.
He lets me hear a track, ‘Snook Pat-
tern’, describing it as “big and meaty.”
It’s totally not, at least not to me. On
the contrary, it feels folksy, individual
and direct, and not at all what to ex-
pect after his description of random
people coming together, except per-
haps for the random drum solo about
two minutes in. It is, of course, reminis-
cent of Tunng, but there’s a purity to it,
an undiluted mood of resignation and
calm that is not quite as immediate in
Tunng’s work.
“I’d like to get the Cheek Mountain
Thief project up and running with all
the people from Húsavík and do a few
shows with them… get a whole crew
together. We’d probably just play a gig
in Húsavík for a start,” he predicts. “I
think it’d be a very strange-looking
band”.
Stealing Mountains
Mike Lindsey of Tunng reveals his Húsavík project
For three months, Mike Lindsey has
lived alone in a cottage in north-
east Iceland. Having gained some
notoriety as a founding member of
British alt-folk gang Tunng, he de-
cided last March that what he re-
ally wanted to do was to go to the
middle of
nowhere and make music with peo-
ple he didn’t know at all.
Words
Sindri Eldon
Photography
ANONYMOUS
‘Cheeck Mountain Thief’ will be out on Full Time Hobby
this year. Mr. Lindsey is still looking for an Icelandic label
to release the goods.