Did Berlin have any influence on the music?
I’ve been in Germany for eight years, and before that I lived in Paris. I have an obsession with the architecture and culture of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and a lot of my music has come from that too. This stuff was the height of human achievement.
I live in East Berlin, near where the Stasi headquarters was, so around here it’s all Plattenbau, which is these old, flat, Russian-style buildings that were pre-fabricated, often in Soviet Russia. They would ship these rock and concrete modular squares to places in their satellite states like Germany, and the East Berliners liked them because they were new. So at least they had things like heating and running water. But they are ugly beyond belief, and there’s this huge feeling that you cannot manufacture beauty in that way. You cannot manufacture human life in that way. We are not Erector Set modules that just piece together. That’s a long way to say that, yeah, living in East Berlin has made me think a lot about beauty, and about how, when we lose organic-ness, the more we are losing beauty and transcendence entirely. When I was writing this album, I became really obsessed with Renaissance, architecture, music, art, painting, and I was going galleries in Berlin and then Stockholm and, essentially, it’s changed me completely. I found myself listening to a lot of choir music. I found myself going to churches in these places and listening to the church organ, and the Renaissance music led me to a lot of lute.
On the subject of Europe’s beauty—you have a few European shows coming up in London, Brussels, and Utrecht in the Netherlands. Are there any other cities you want to take this new album, or any of your music, to?
I mean, I can’t tour anymore. I can’t handle the stress of it. Not to mention the flying. But I wish, more than anything, that I could easily get to a few places to play shows: Mexico, Brazil. South America in general, but definitely Brazil, because I’ve canceled a few times there, partially because of the fear of flying. And then maybe Turkey, because playing in Istanbul is really one of my favorites.
I’ll probably continue to do my writing between Norway and Berlin, but I want to go to the Asian steppes really bad. I’ve always been super obsessed with Persia, with Iran, with Uzbekistan, and places like that. I’ve been obsessed with their architecture and the Silk Road, all the way to Mongolia—Mongolian music I find so fascinating. There seems to be something much slower and meditative, I guess, about the music that comes from these places. And I find that really fascinating, and I want to know what it is that creates that feeling. So I’ve been listening to a lot of Mongolian throat singing, all the way to like, Ottoman court music, you know? It’s really interesting stuff, but I don’t know if I can make it that far, especially since I’m not really flying much anymore.
I guess that depends… You’re clearly a road trippper. How do you feel about traveling by boat?
I’d be okay with boat. I’m actually wondering about hopping on the Queen Mary to get to the US again someday. I haven’t been home since 2019, and I’m happy with slow travel. It makes me a lot happier.