Let’s start with a classic 🙂 How is everything going? You have lots of fans from Turkey, are you excited about playing here for the first time?
Everything is going well at the moment, I’m just about ready to go on tour in a few weeks, we are going to be rehearsing a lot the days before and that’s a fun process. But yes I am excited about it, been so many countries in the last few years and I don’t know how we missed Turkey until now, It’s always exciting to visit a country for the first time.
Do you think that the beautiful nature of Iceland influences your music? If yes, how so? Is there a specific place that you can say, it influenced you over a song?
It probably does influence my music, it’s not easy to pinpoint what exactly it is about the country. But it’s beauty, mountains, rivers, harsh weather, volcanoes and everything that it is can probably give spark to you’re imagination. As well as sometimes in the winter all you can really do is to stay inside and in my case I used that time to play and write music.
After his work with Olafur Arnalds, Icelandic music-lovers had a chance to meet, your father Einar Georg. Is there any collaboration in near future with you and your father?
Yes, I’m actually just now finishing working on an album that’s going to come out later this year and I worked closely with my father on the lyrics for it. It’s going to be released in both Icelandic and English.
Some says Icelandic is a poetic language. And you have some records in Icelandic. Do you have any plans to record new songs in Icelandic?
Yes, I’m going to be realising a whole album in Icelandic this year.
What about new release, is there a specific thing happened in your life that inspired you on the Afterglow? What differs Afterglow and In The Silence?
Not one specific thing that happened I would say, just a lot of time between those two albums. The process of recording the two albums was actually quite similar, but the way I went about writing was different I think. We toured the first album for a very long time and I didn’t write much while we were touring and it took some time when I was starting writing again for afterglow to get my head around what it was that I wanted to make. I think it only came to me a few months before it was released, so most of it was recorded in that time.
Afterglow is more progressive and not as easy listening as my first album, and I was really looking to grow with the album rather then doing something safe. I was exploring a lot more and playing with the sound a lot more whereas In the Silence is more of an honest album in a way I guess, it’s was simply recorded like the demos that I had made for it and recordings were finished in about two months.
Have you ever inspired for a song, by a movie or another song? If yes, which ones inspired you a lot?
There are some songs that I can say were a direct inspiration for some of my songs, from the top of my head – I love you so by Egill S, Hljóma þú by Samaris, Retrograde by James Blake. I remember getting inspired by movies more when I was younger, I’m a big fan Howards shore music for the Lord of the Rings and the first song I learned to play on the piano was the hobbit song. I remember getting really inspired by the movie Walk the line which is about Johnny cash, I wrote a lot of country songs after watching that film.
Icelandic music scene offers very talented musicians nowadays. But still it is an undiscovered scene. Can you suggest some Icelandic bands, friends which we should add to our spotlight list?
I feel like Iceland is making its mark on the scene, but maybe thats just because I live here. We’ve had some pretty big acts come out over the past few years. But some of my favourites include Samaris, aYia, Mugison, Hjálmar, Júníus Meyvant, Bríet and Snorri Helgason.
