I have a Yamaha YC-45D organ in my studio. It's actually Terry Riley's favorite keyboard, so if you find old clips of him on YouTube, he's usually playing one of these.
When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.
I think there's very little interesting in art that is not transgressive in some way. And I don't think that's a very revolutionary thing to say.
I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.
I always relish the idea of collaborating with the director on creating the sound world, the sound spectrum, and the sound environment of the film. I use every means at my disposal to create a score that is as strong and powerful to enhance the director's vision for the film.
Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.
I think my music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people's emotions. I try to make music that doesn't need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people.
I think melancholy is kind of a misunderstood emotion. I don't think it's necessarily an unpleasant or bad emotion.
Public speaking is something I fear more than death itself.
I don't really take vacations.
The kind of industrial wasteland that you see in so much of Europe has a tremendous poignancy to me, especially when it's run down and you see the collapse and failure of this system. And also how nature reclaims it.
Silence can be very effective, and it gives the music space to breathe.
It's very common in Iceland, this music-making and artistic expression by non-professionals. The brass band tradition is not as big, but there are choirs everywhere. So that's something that is familiar to me.
I think I have a sound or a certain feel in certain harmonies in the way I construct melodies.
I believe that things can be expressed very powerfully through simplicity.
If you look at my career, you'll find that the same record doesn't show up more than once. I try to challenge myself with every project.
The more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it.
Melancholy is a state that I very much enjoy being in, actually. It's not the same as feeling sad. It's a more complex emotion; it derives from a tragic view of the world, a tragic view of art.
Brass bands are part of my upbringing. Brass band records were among the first records I listened to.
I had three older sisters whose record collections I borrowed, so I was listening to The Velvet Underground as well as Bach and brass band music.
There are some stunning visual moments in 'Arrival' that are out of this world, but it's all on the earth, and it's about an academic, a woman that is dealing with a personal tragedy, but there's a circular view of time that makes things more complicated.
That's one of the hardest parts of putting together an album - finding that concept, that unifying idea. Especially as I write mostly in instrumental music, the idea of having a central concept that unifies the music is very important to me.
Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.
When I work on films, I like to be involved from as early as possible. I think this is really good and beneficial in terms of absorbing the atmosphere of the film and for the music to become a part of the DNA of the film.
I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.
For me, 'Blade Runner' is one of the big influences in my life - I saw it when I was 13 or 14, when it first came out, and since, I've seen it many, many times.
I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.
The idea that things should last just doesn't fit the economic model anymore.
I've never been very good at creating absolute music, which has no non-musical dimension to it. I think that is why filmmakers gravitated toward my work.
I get restless very easily; I don't like to do the same thing twice.
To be honest, I don't particularly see myself as an Icelandic artist. I'm a European artist.
I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.
