Your music conjures such a sense of place.
It's important for me to have the surroundings in the sound somehow.
It seems like you draw a lot of inspiration from settings and try to bring that into your music. I'm thinking specifically of “The Bell Tower,” and how that feels like a little vignette. I know you were inspired by holy sites for previous albums. It’s a recurrent theme in your work.
It is. It's not how I want every piece of music, or my work, to become, but it's happened. When I love art and music, it's when I feel it's completely taken me over; that “zoom-out” feeling. I want to create a spacious depth in sound because that's what gives me that perspective, when that dimension is there.
It's not like, “I need inspiration. I'm going to go to some burial mounds and write about them.” It's more that you get transported by the sense of being immersed in a place.
Yeah, exactly.
You have a unique combination of analog and digital elements in your recordings and compositions.
It's not that planned, any of the instruments. It's what sounded good at the time. In my childhood, I had these wrecked up pianos that I tried to tune myself. But coming into these Conservatory spaces where there are these grand pianos everywhere, I couldn't help myself but try and learn to play piano. But then I also wanted to [layer] the melodies so it didn't sound completely like a piano. I got into how to create overtones in each note from the piano and layer them with different types of instruments to create these overtones that were recognizable for the ear as a string, but that also sometimes bended into a sound that became a little bit unfamiliar. That balance has always been a big joy for me to find. The [Boss] DD-7 [Digital Delay] has this Reverse delay on it. If you have it on a classical guitar with the DI or with the electrical input, and have the DD-7 just tweaked a little bit so it's mostly the guitar that comes through – together with the piano – there was something that happened up in the overtones that made these small bends. It gave me so much inspiration to write melodies like that for the right hand, for the guitar. Then I'm writing the bass lines and the bass parts and rolls for my left hand and layering it like that so that some melodies were for the guitar and some of the melodies were for the bass. But they're all composed on piano, and I pulled out the pianos to give space for these instruments. That layering was central. The sound was magic for me, and I just had to write more and more pieces so I could experience those sounds from different intervals. That was the foundation of the instrumentation for me. I got into experimentation with my voice, and I composed for the drums. I wanted these big rock pieces to come in, so it had a natural movement into a more prog rock vibe.
You think so much about where things are going to sit – overtones and undertones and layering. What is your approach to mixing?
I've actually never been able to give away that part to someone else. I haven't met anyone who has understood precisely what I was doing. It's not like I have to mix myself. I want to give that away and just keep on writing. It was Jens [Ramon] Murga from Copenhagen who I started mixing with. I mixed it a lot myself first, and then I met up with him because he has a lot of hardware. I sent it back to my computer, sat with it again, tweaking it, and balancing it again. When I finished that and felt like I had the sound I wanted, I met up with Mikkel Bolding and we went through some more hardware, including the [Roland] Space Echo. It can make extra notes with a specific setting. It opens up the overtones a little bit, which is fascinating. That tool gave the openness in the top. So, the whole album is not over compressed. That's why it gets really loud and then really quiet sometimes. I wanted to keep that, because that's keeping the top frequencies alive.
Your vocals are an anchor. It's the part that has more even dynamics with the compression on it.
Exactly. They hold the listener's hand.
[laughs] Yeah.
That's how I've often worked. Mostly, I only do it with one other collaborator.
You respond to who has the gear that you need to use?
Yeah, and in doing that, it's important to work with someone who knows what I want to do. Growing up as a female artist, of course I've been mansplained to a lot. I’ve had to understand that my ears are actually the best. I didn't think that when I was 19, sadly. However, the little things that I think are important, others can’t hear that as important and they never will be able to. You can have a partner and maybe meet someone who, throughout a long life in music, can understand what you're doing. But I don't think I'll ever be able to let the mixing part go completely because it's as big as the composing part. Creating that sound is the whole warmth and body of the music.
You're the ultimate expert on your musical children.
Yeah. Exactly.
What do you see yourself evolving toward? What would you like to do next?
When I started, the inspirations were external. World of Work was, of course, also external, but the physical space has become a bit smaller, and it's been pointing more inwards. It's not scary, but it's vulnerable. I'm not afraid of showing more of that journey inward. It's important to share. But it is kind of surprising. It's also what it’s like growing up: You understand more and more what you actually want to say. I'm becoming more centered, and I don't know what it quite means yet.
