Johann Johannsson

“Very early on, I started improvising. I was more interested in the music that came out of me than any music I heard.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Public speaking is something I fear more than death itself.”

“Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.”

“I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.”

“I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.”

“The idea that things should last just doesn't fit the economic model anymore.”

“I get restless very easily; I don't like to do the same thing twice.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.”

“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.”

“Silence can be very effective, and it gives the music space to breathe.”