Where did you grow up?
A small town directly North of here — about a three-hour drive — called Blönduós. It's on the main road so it's quite a busy place.
By 16 you had an internship in a studio?
Yes. I finished my basic schooling and then moved here to Reykjavik and began [college]. I had some songs that I had been writing, I saw an ad in a paper offering a day in the studio for a really good price, so I called them up and booked time. I went there with my drum machine and keyboards. The engineer noticed that I found my way around the studio quite quickly and was interested in what was going on. It was a little basement studio with an Akai. I don't know if you've ever seen these Akai desks, with a videocassette for tape?
Rings a bell. Eighties digital?
Right. He had a few compressors and some nice mics, too. He was losing interest in the place and asked if I'd come help him out. I soon took over his more mundane editing jobs. He did a lot of radio commercials and voiceovers. Lots of going to tape, cutting and splicing — so that was my first task. He'd leave me alone for hours with a pile of tapes and a script and say, "Hey, if you could get this done before I get back that'd be great." Then I helped him out recording some bands. He said to me one day, "I'm going to sell this place. Do you want it?" I said, "Sure." I was 17 and was spending a lot more time there than at school. I actually convinced my parents to help me sign the loans because I wasn't old enough to do it myself. It wasn't a lot of money, but for a 17- year-old it was enough. He offered to sell me the equipment as well and to take over the rent for the studio space and the apartment, which I did. That's what I did from 17 to 19 years old. I was trying to find projects and make it work. I was making the payments, learning more about studio life and making my own music. I was making a living, mostly by doing the commercial and the voiceover jobs. Sometimes bands would come in. Then I decided to sell the equipment to go and study. I needed to learn more in order to be able to go to bigger studios.
That's when you went to London?
Yeah, I went to SAE [Institute]. At that time there were no Neve or SSL [consoles] in Iceland. There were quite a few studios with okay desks, but nothing great — and none of them had jobs [for me]. Those were in private studios, and you had to create your own thing. They had a Neve desk at SAE, and still [were] all about tape machines in '89.
How long was that program?
It was a year — a postgraduate thing. I convinced them that since I had the two years of experience, I shouldn't have to do the first year. It was good to be there and to try to get a little taste of the real world. While I was in London I was trying to get jobs in studios, but it was hard while I was studying. I decided to stay around after school finished. That lasted for about two months while I looked for jobs; but it wasn't going anywhere so I came back [to Iceland] and started freelancing and doing other things.
Did you learn anything at SAE?
I can't say that I did. I mean, they had some theory courses and I guess it all sinks in somehow. My biggest disappointment for that year was the practical time; it was really limited because there was one studio and you had to book time far ahead. It was actually useful, because when you booked time you had to have a project-I had to go out and find someone. I actually found this great singer that I did some work with. You learn the hard way. You don't really sit down in a classroom and learn how things are. You have to pay attention, and if you're lucky enough to be able to watch someone work then you learn from being there. I've been really fortunate — for example, the projects that I did with Björk: just going to a session with a full orchestra for Dancer in the Dark. It was the first orchestral recording I had experienced, and I was the engineer responsible for all the backing tracks and sequencing. You pick up a lot seeing someone who knows what they're doing while working with 100 people. That's something really hard to explain to people.
It's ironic. It sounds like you learned how to be a freelancer in school.
Maybe I learned survival in the school. I don't know! [laughs]
I know with Björk on Vespertine you had a guiding principle, of "domestic music." I wonder if you could tell me more about how you derived that idea and how it guided the decision-making.
That was actually a phase leading up to and into Vespertine. They overlapped. Dancer in the Dark to the beginning of Vespertine was when the domestic idea was forming. The laptop is what triggered it. It was the end of the '90s and suddenly it was possible to do stuff on the laptop. I think, for her, it was appealing to be able to do everything small, take it with you, put it in a bag and do whatever you want with it. It was never exactly how we worked, as we carried a lot of gear around. But this idea of domestic music grew around the self-sufficient person able to compose, record, mix and do everything at home. During this time I had taken all the necessary equipment out of my studio to go to Denmark, where she was filming with Lars Von Trier [Dancer in the Dark's director]. We were in this big house and I had a garden pavilion with windows looking out at the sea with all the equipment there. While she was filming, I was working on the music for the score and we also started working on new pieces — all in the same house we were living in. That's where this domestic concept started happening. She'd come back after filming and work on new stuff. I don't know how much you've heard about that movie, but it was quite an intense and stressful process for her, especially not being a [trained] actress. Coming into the studio was a big relief. That was a shift of headspace for her and it was really important. The other part of the domestic idea was that you could create music out of anything around you. You could pick up a piece of paper, you could play around with it in the microphone and make beats and then cut it up in the computer. Go into the kitchen and find some things to make sounds with. It's a microscopic approach — really zooming into the waveform, cutting a small piece out, creating something new and combining it with another sound. I used to layer them on a keyboard and play all these beats that you would never come up with as a percussionist. That was a part of it. She would come in from the kitchen and say, "What do you think this would sound like?" [laughs]
Björk went on to record with other people, and I'm wondering why you guys didn't continue to work together? I hope that's not too personal.
No, not at all. We worked together for a long time, starting around 1998. In '05 or '06 I began the Bedroom Community label. I also wanted to focus more on my own music and projects. There was a point where I had to put myself on hold. It was around the time she was starting the Volta record. The intention was to keep working together, but it didn't pan out. We both wanted it to work, but it didn't seem like it was going to.
For scheduling or creative reasons?
Both, probably. We were in completely different headspaces — me wanting to go more on my own, her wanting to give me that freedom but not really accepting it. It was a bit of struggle, almost a breakup process. It was probably good for everyone because, after working together for so long, there's only so much you can keep learning and adding. It came to a point where I had to make a decision, "Is this what I want to do?" I didn't want to do that record. The difficult part about it was feeling like I had to close the door on a lot of people for a while. It was like starting from scratch after ending my time with Björk
But it's led to some great things. It must feel good to have that freedom and to pursue your music with Bedroom Community.
Absolutely. It was a good start.
Have you worked with philosophies like the "domestic music" with artists other than Björk?
I worked with this French singer named Camille recently, and she has these concepts for her records. The artist has to be into that, because it's really time consuming when deciding to go there. The luxury I had when I worked on the Björk project was being there from the writing process, to mixing and through the mastering. Björk and I worked together over a period of eight years on four major projects. It's a luxury to be part of the process, from when the first idea is born to two or three years later when it's finished. In the meantime, all these other ideas have come up and they go into the next phase. This is more than you get on a project that you plan ahead with the artist and go in to record for a smaller period — if you're lucky it's a few weeks, if the budget or schedule allows it. Something I try to do is break a project into smaller periods instead of saying, "We're going to spend two months making this record." I prefer to spend six months where the band and I work a month here, two weeks there and then two weeks there. That way the project is always in your system. Even if you're not thinking about it, it's developing. It gives me the opportunity to remove myself; to distance myself from something I've recorded. Then I come back to it and find something interesting and it becomes fresh again. I've been unhappy almost every time I've done something back-to-back; recording and mixing, for example. I try to encourage at least a week or more between, so I can come back and I'm not attached to anything on the tape anymore.
That implies that you're still making a lot of production decisions during mixing. I'm imagining, from the sounds you're using and the construction that's going on, that mixing is a lot more than tone and level.
It's as much about production as the recording.
Do you find that you're typically trying to get things pulled out during mixing, or are you adding during mixing?
