Less is more' may be a cliche, but that doesn't mean musicians often heed that advice. Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, who performs and records as The Tallest Man on Earth, follows it religiously.
I'm enjoying writing songs that are more stripped back.
Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down.
Why play a chord when you can play one note?
I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.
That's what I love - on 'The Farewell,' we played with a lot of silence and a lot of negative space, and I really worked with the composer to create those juxtapositions of like, those awkward silences and when something comes in.
And then as we played more and more as a trio, it became more and more of a situation where we realized we really knew how to use the fourth member of the group - that space. The thing about the trio is that it's the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.
For me, music is in the choice of what not to play as much as in what you've chosen to play.
