Reykjavík Grapevine - nóv. 2020, Blaðsíða 23

On Human Nature
Mammút talk their new album, the pandemic & the importance of touch
“Easy to hide. My mind needs light.
I open up my mouth. My mind needs
light.”
And so begins Mammút’s recently
released fifth effort, ‘Ride The Fire’.
The song—entitled “Sun and Me”—is
an apt anthem for these times. Not
only is sunlight getting scarce in the
Icelandic winter, but all of the other
lights we’re accustomed to—candles
in bars, strobes at concerts, the fash-
ionable lanterns of restaurants—have
been replaced by the blinding fluores-
cents of computer screens, which is
where I meet up with vocalist Katrí-
na “Kata” Mogensen and bassist Ása
D!radóttir.
The conversation starts—as most
conversations do nowadays—with
making sure our microphones work
and the cameras aren’t too blurry.
A different conversation
‘Ride the Fire’, Ása and Kata explain,
was written pre-COVID, with every-
thing about the release planned for
a world sans social distancing and
gathering bans. They had concerts
and tours planned—and cancelled, of
course—but the album has found new
relevance as they’ve spent so many
months inside.
“Kata mentioned some days ago,
‘Have you listened to ‘Sound of Cen-
turies’ recently? It’s really speaking to
me this time.’” Ása says. “You have a
different conversation with some of
the songs now.”
Kata nods. “Like ‘Forever On Your
Mind’—the first single. We put it out
in November, 2019, but I feel like it’s a
lot about this situation,” she explains.
“The lyrics are about chaos and what’s
going on so when I was listening to the
album recently for the first time in a
few months, I felt like it suits right now
very well. When you listen to it with
that [mindset], it changes.”
Trusting your partner
‘Ride The Fire’ also marked a depar-
ture from the band’s usual mode of
production. As the two explain, they
had always written everything togeth-
er in the same room from scratch, but
for this release most of the songs were
written solo and collaborated on to-
gether from a distance.
“We live in separate countries, so we
were juggling ideas back and forth and
it was a new method of creating, which
we felt was really fun,” Ása says. “We
had to trust our partners—band mem-
bers—more. We talk about ourselves
more like partners, not band members.”
Even though the songs were written
physically separated from each other,
Ása emphasises, there was still a no-
ticeable musical thread.
“In a way, we were in a totally differ-
ent state of mind and completely dif-
ferent time in our lives than we were
while writing ‘Kinder Versions’. It was
calmer? More focused?” Kata wonders
aloud. “‘Kinder Versions’ was a heavy
album and I think we were all coming
down from that. In my mind, there was
a high around that album—so much
going on, both as individuals and as a
band. I think this music was a result of
… the calm after the storm.”
The album has an undeniable the-
atrical tone that their previous efforts
lack—much more ethereal, even hope-
ful, in contrast to the sonic weight of
‘Kinder Versions’. Tonally, it feels like
a natural progression for the band—
a sweet dessert after the heaviness of
their last effort.
“Sun and Me” is emblematic of this
shift. The group wrote it in Febru-
ary 2018, in a London studio. “It was
rainy and depressing. I was having a
huge downer after everything and we
did this sketch in the studio,” Kata
explains. “It’s like a desperate call for
light and for the sun—for some light
into life. And then with that, the light
came and we did this album.”
Is dinner ready?
“Solomon” is a particularly personal
song for Ása. While Kata normally
takes care of the lyrics for Mammút,
Ása’s demos for the track included lyr-
ics she wrote, which ended up on the
album. “They were really personal—
about weird, childhood memories,”
Ása explains. “A part of ‘Solomon’ is
about waiting for dinner as a child. It’s
very bland. And there’s a lyric about
how my brother used to lie to me and
say that there were dead horses in a
cabin outside of the house.”
“But that’s what you remember
when you get older,” Kata responds,
nodding. Ása shrugs, adding “That’s
the stuff that sticks with you.”
“Ása wanted to throw away these
demo lyrics and I wanted to keep them,
but Ása was always like, ‘You don’t have
to keep them!’” Kata says, doing an ani-
mated impression of Ása. “I put some
layers on top of it, but Ása was always
coming around saying, ‘You don’t have
to keep the lyrics. You know that?’”
MySpace memories
Ása and Kata often do this—answer-
ing questions for each other and ex-
plaining what the other is probably
thinking. Spend just five minutes with
the two and you’ll find they have a
closeness more akin to siblings than
bandmates.
“I was a fan of Ása’s MySpace page,”
Kata admits, when asked how the two
met. The admission sends both into
fits of laughter. “We formed Mammút
in late 2003 and in 2006, I came into
Ása’s store, where she was working and
just asked, ‘Do you want to be the bass
player of our band?’ And she said yes.”
“I was not a bass player by the way,”
Ása interjects, which sends the two
into louder fits of laughter. “[Ása] never
told us and just showed up to rehearsal
and she was extremely bad at playing
the bass,” Kata laughs.
“They didn’t feel like telling me
that I sucked so I just continued,” Ása
continues. “I thought they knew that
I wasn’t a bassist and this was just
some way of experimenting?”
The laughter continues. “I’m very
glad you didn’t tell me because I
would have just said, ‘Ok, bye!’” Kata
says. “But that’s how we met and we’ve
been together ever since. It’s such a
long history.”
At that time, Ása explains, they
used to play Gaukurinn every other
week and were part of the early years
of Eistnaflug. Albums were written
in summer cabins while the sun was
setting. As she tells it, they were idyl-
lic years for the two.
And in this moment in the con-
versation, I can viscerally feel two
retreating back to those early days
of MySpace and bass. Back when con-
certs were permitted and no one wor-
ried about staying two metres away
from each other.
Forgetting human nature
These moments of nostalgia are not
unique to Mammút. In the midst of
this dreadful pandemic, the you-
don’t-know-what-you-have-til-it’s-
gone feeling is universal. And ev-
eryone seems to be using their time
stuck indoors looking not towards the
future, but wistfully back to the past.
For musicians and other artists, the
art of live performance might now
feel like ancient history.
“You can feel it. Especially when
fall came, people are kind of giving
up, which is so depressing,” Ása says.
“People talk differently. They aren’t
good at communicating with words.
And ourselves—you need the contact
of experiencing music and art togeth-
er and feeling together. Singing and
dancing is such a huge part of social
communication—and it always has
been since forever. You can’t just swipe
it away. People need to socially experi-
ence something together. It should be
part of public health.”
Kata nods. “That’s something Ása
and I have been talking about often.
Our human nature has been forgotten
in all this. We are mammals. We are
herd animals. We need to be around
each other and that’s not a theory,
that’s just how it is. That’s how we
work as animals, as humans,” she ex-
plains, softly and delicately. Her sol-
emn tone stands in direct contrast to
her normally-jovial one. “And this tech
thing—I think it’s very serious that
we’re trying to normalise communica-
tion like this. It isn’t communication. I
don’t even think I would recognise you
if I would see you on the street.”
For Ása, this widespread isolation
is, as she puts it, inhumane. “People
need touch. People dance together and
attend events together to be close to
each other because it’s a socially ac-
ceptable way of touching,” she says.
“Dancing, hugging, seeing each oth-
er—people have not been touched
since February.”
Ride the fire!
The release of the album seems almost
serendipitous. “I think the title serves
this year well,” Kata says. “Let’s not just
be paralysed by all this. Let’s just ride
the waves that are coming and stay
true to what we feel is right and not
lose sight of creativity and how impor-
tant human connection is,” she contin-
ues. Ása nods slowly. At that moment
it’s easy to imagine that—were the two
not separated by houses and connected
only by a wifi connection—they might
have hugged.
And for Kata, the solution is but six
words: “Let’s not forget our human na-
ture.”
23The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09— 2020
Words:
Hannah Jane
Cohen
Photo:
Art Bicnick
Pictured: A MySpace success story
“It’s like a desperate
call for light and for
the sun—for some
light into life. And then
with that, the light
came and we did this
album.”
Album
‘Ride the Fire’
is out now,
everywhere.
You can get a
hard copy in the
Grapevine Shop.