“I believe that things can be expressed very powerfully through simplicity.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’m a huge fan of Philip K. Dick.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“’Orphee’ is, for me, about changes: about moving to a new city, leaving behind an old life in Copenhagen, and building a new one in Berlin – about the death of old relationships and the birth of new ones.”
― Johann Johannsson
“One very early influence was reading about John Cage’s experience in an anechoic room where the only sound you are left with is the high-pitched drone of your nervous system.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Public speaking is something I fear more than death itself.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I like to have space between the notes. I like to use silence.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Silence can be very effective, and it gives the music space to breathe.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’m fascinated by the ruins and remains of industrialisation.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“There’s something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don’t care for things anymore.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I like the whole Pacific Northwest.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Always really good audiences in Belgium.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I don’t watch TV that much, but I like to get series on DVD and watch them all back-to-back.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I think melancholy is kind of a misunderstood emotion. I don’t think it’s necessarily an unpleasant or bad emotion.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Melancholy is a state that I very much enjoy being in, actually. It’s not the same as feeling sad. It’s a more complex emotion; it derives from a tragic view of the world, a tragic view of art.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Music should resonate with people on an emotional level. That’s one of the criterions I use for an idea. Does it speak simply and directly without obfuscation and without being unnecessarily complex or obscure?”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’m interested in extremes, in many ways.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Making ‘Orphee’ has been a true labour of love, one that has been a part of my life for six years, and yet the music always remained fresh – it was constantly in a state of flux and renewal.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I think I have a sound or a certain feel in certain harmonies in the way I construct melodies.”
― Johann Johannsson
“For me, ‘Blade Runner’ is one of the big influences in my life – I saw it when I was 13 or 14, when it first came out, and since, I’ve seen it many, many times.”
― Johann Johannsson
“That’s one of the hardest parts of putting together an album – finding that concept, that unifying idea. Especially as I write mostly in instrumental music, the idea of having a central concept that unifies the music is very important to me.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I try not to obfuscate or to be to obscure or to be too cerebral. I like to work on a visceral, emotional level.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Music has to be treated in the same way as set design, casting, or choice of location – it has to start at the same time.”
― Johann Johannsson
“In this post-industrial society, when we’re moving away from what was the norm, we have to deal with what it has left in its wake in terms of the impact on people and the environment.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Brass bands are part of my upbringing. Brass band records were among the first records I listened to.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I am a trombone player, and that was my first instrument.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I had three older sisters whose record collections I borrowed, so I was listening to The Velvet Underground as well as Bach and brass band music.”
― 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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Brass has a very distinctive sound. It’s delicate but powerful, but it’s also melancholic and plaintive.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“’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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’ve been sort of playing music since I was probably 8 years old or something like that.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’m far from casual. I’m a huge fan of ‘Blade Runner.’”
― Johann Johannsson
“The idea that things should last just doesn’t fit the economic model anymore.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Cheap electronics are not built to be repaired. They’re just used and then discarded.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn’t have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“A lot of my music tends to combine electronics and orchestra.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I love ‘Treasure.’ It’s one of my favourite albums.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.”
― Johann Johannsson
“In my solo work on my own albums, I have used voice synthesizers and vocoders quite a lot in connection with orchestral instruments.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I’m very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I don’t really take vacations.”
― Johann Johannsson
“To be honest, I don’t particularly see myself as an Icelandic artist. I’m a European artist.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“The more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“The drone is a very fundamental part of my music, although it’s not always present.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“Film is a collaborative medium, and I very much enjoy that.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I get restless very easily; I don’t like to do the same thing twice.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I tend to get hired because the filmmakers like what I do, so there’s usually not that much conflict about the direction.”
― 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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“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.”
― Johann Johannsson
“For me, what people generally call sound design is just one component of orchestrating a score.”
― Johann Johannsson
“I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.”
― Johann Johannsson
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