Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't really take vacations.
I'm a huge fan of Philip K. Dick.
I like the whole Pacific Northwest.
Always really good audiences in Belgium.
I'm interested in extremes, in many ways.
I love 'Treasure.' It's one of my favourite albums.
I'm far from casual. I'm a huge fan of 'Blade Runner.'
I am a trombone player, and that was my first instrument.
Public speaking is something I fear more than death itself.
Film is a collaborative medium, and I very much enjoy that.
I'm fascinated by the ruins and remains of industrialisation.
A lot of my music tends to combine electronics and orchestra.
I like to have space between the notes. I like to use silence.
I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.
I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.
I get restless very easily; I don't like to do the same thing twice.
Silence can be very effective, and it gives the music space to breathe.
I believe that things can be expressed very powerfully through simplicity.
Cheap electronics are not built to be repaired. They're just used and then discarded.
To be honest, I don't particularly see myself as an Icelandic artist. I'm a European artist.
I think I have a sound or a certain feel in certain harmonies in the way I construct melodies.
For me, what people generally call sound design is just one component of orchestrating a score.
Brass bands are part of my upbringing. Brass band records were among the first records I listened to.
Brass has a very distinctive sound. It's delicate but powerful, but it's also melancholic and plaintive.
Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.
I try not to obfuscate or to be to obscure or to be too cerebral. I like to work on a visceral, emotional level.
I think melancholy is kind of a misunderstood emotion. I don't think it's necessarily an unpleasant or bad emotion.
Very early on, I started improvising. I was more interested in the music that came out of me than any music I heard.
Music has to be treated in the same way as set design, casting, or choice of location - it has to start at the same time.
I tend to get hired because the filmmakers like what I do, so there's usually not that much conflict about the direction.
There's something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don't care for things anymore.
In my solo work on my own albums, I have used voice synthesizers and vocoders quite a lot in connection with orchestral instruments.
I started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.
I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.
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.
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 love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.
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 very much enjoy working with talented filmmakers who have a good sense for music, who have a strong feel for music and for what music can do in a film.
'End of Summer' expands the way I want to express myself as a composer. It's a piece of visual music that has this narrative and conceptual dimension to it.
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 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.
I like to work with people that I find interesting and stimulating artistically, and the field in which they're perceived to work is secondary and not that relevant to me.
One very early influence was reading about John Cage's experience in an anechoic room where the only sound you are left with is the high-pitched drone of your nervous system.
When I write music for a film, I'm not writing a solo album, and I'm not writing a personal piece. I'm part of a team of artists. So I think like a filmmaker more than a composer.
In this post-industrial society, when we're moving away from what was the norm, we have to deal with what it has left in its wake in terms of the impact on people and the environment.
I think that the essence of being an artist is to break rules. You have to learn rules, and you have to break them, because if you make art only by the rules, then you make very boring art.
Making 'Orphee' has been a true labour of love, one that has been a part of my life for six years, and yet the music always remained fresh - it was constantly in a state of flux and renewal.
Even when I was studying piano, I always preferred to play around with my own improvisations rather than do my studies. So I've always been interested in writing music from a very early age.
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.