I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.
— Johann Johannsson
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.
My first album, 'Englaborn,' was based on music originally written for the theatre. My solo albums, like 'IBM 1401, a User's Manual' and 'Fordlandia,' have also had narratives attached to them.
With 'The Theory of Everything,' it seems that people really like the voice I've found with the music, which is great. But I may not do that again. Every project is different.
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.
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.
The more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it.
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.
I don't want to make light of the importance of my musical upbringing, as you cannot avoid being influenced by the area you grow up, but I will say that Reykjavik's geography is very different from, say, New York, Paris, or Copenhagen. There's big skies. The buildings are low. The landscape is spread out.
I don't really take vacations.
In my solo work on my own albums, I have used voice synthesizers and vocoders quite a lot in connection with orchestral instruments.
A lot of my music tends to combine electronics and orchestra.
I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.
Cheap electronics are not built to be repaired. They're just used and then discarded.
I think it took me until - my twenties were really a time of exploration and experimentation with different groups and different types of music. Then I kind of developed the sound, which first appeared, I guess, on my first solo album 'Englaborn,' which came out in 2001.
'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.
Sometimes you write music to a script or while a film is being edited. Sometimes I write without seeing any images, but that's rare. The approach is often based on practical decisions, but I'm interested in the narrative and physical space that music can occupy in a film or play.
For me, what people generally call sound design is just one component of orchestrating a score.
I tend to get hired because the filmmakers like what I do, so there's usually not that much conflict about the direction.
I started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.
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.
Film is a collaborative medium, and I very much enjoy that.
The drone is a very fundamental part of my music, although it's not always present.
I am not very extreme in my life. But I'm very attracted to art that works with extremes and works with limits, that transgresses limits and transcends limits and crosses borders and has a certain boldness.
There's very little synthesized sound in the 'Arrival' score. There are a couple of synthesized beats in there, but 99 percent of the sounds in there are acoustic in origin and either played or sung by a musician or a singer and recorded in a room.
I'm a huge fan of Philip K. Dick.
I always do very detailed demos. I feel that it's better to show the director a demo that sounds as close to the final thing as possible with samples. It takes time to create, but I feel that it's better to get the director on board very early on in terms of the sounds that I have in my head.
Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.
I believe that things can be expressed very powerfully through simplicity.
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.
The idea that things should last just doesn't fit the economic model anymore.
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'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.
Very early on, I started improvising. I was more interested in the music that came out of me than any music I heard.
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.
I think you are always influenced by your surroundings and where you grow up. Your environment is always one of the things that shape you, and the music scene in Iceland was a very important factor in shaping me.
When I make film music, I'm a filmmaker first and foremost. It's about serving the needs of the film. You're telling a story; in a way, you stop becoming a composer and become a storyteller instead. You tell the story with the most appropriate themes. How you approach these things is a very personal matter, but your goal is to tell the story first.
I get restless very easily; I don't like to do the same thing twice.
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 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.
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.
To be honest, I don't particularly see myself as an Icelandic artist. I'm a European artist.
I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.
I love 'Treasure.' It's one of my favourite albums.
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.
There's something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don't care for things anymore.
I'm far from casual. I'm a huge fan of 'Blade Runner.'
I've been sort of playing music since I was probably 8 years old or something like that.
Brass has a very distinctive sound. It's delicate but powerful, but it's also melancholic and plaintive.
