people on the very opposite end of the musical spectrum, like Rou Reynolds of Enter Shikari. “I find it funny when people do that deliberately,” Ólafur says. “Because that’s never what we did, we just didn’t give a fuck! [laughs]”
IN THE STUDIO
Since his humble beginnings as the drummer of Fighting Shit, and writing piano music in his spare time, Ólafur has now built himself a mothership of a studio back in Reykjavík. I’m keen to know about his composing process, and how all of the kit fits into that. “I work with Pro Tools all the time,” Ólafur says. “I have my tech converters, a few of them, to have enough channels. Most of my gear is vintage preamps and compressors, which I’ve spent a lot of time finding, and looking for. 1950s tube preamps, and stuff like that. It’s the same with the microphones. Normally, I would start by improvising on the piano, until something nice is coming along, or until you find something you feel you can expand on.” So it’s a more physical process? “Usually, yeah. What appears in my head tends to be a structural idea, like, ‘I want to do a song where the piano is doing sixteenths!’ It’s almost never a melody, but more an idea I can sit down and find the right notes to fit into it. It’s very improvisational at the beginning.” Ólafur then takes a whole host of these ideas, and condenses them down, until he has a piece in which a few of the ideas fit together. “I then go to the computer and start arranging,” he explains. “I get started with the Spitfire Audio libraries right away. Also, I sampled the piano I have at home with the Spitfire guys, so I now have my piano at home, and on my computer [laughs]. The samples don’t stay in the final product; it’s for arrangement purposes, getting the structure of the song.” Having now worked with Spitfire Audio to bring out his own composer sample pack, the Ólafur Arnalds Composer Toolkit, he has formed a great relationship with the company.
In fact, quite a few of the Spitfire guys have come along to see the show tonight. “I started using Spitfire in 2011, when they just started,” Ólafur says. “There was only one string library out — they’ve brought out many new ones since then, but I’m still using the same one! I actually pirated it [laughs]. At that point, they were very small, but made a very good product. They weren’t necessarily the best company in the business then, but they definitely are today. “That’s not to say I haven’t used other libraries; I’ve just never liked them as much. Spitfire have a special approach to everything that no-one else seems to get. When Native Instruments sampled the Una Corda (the piano created by Nils Frahm and David Klavins), it sounded good, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but you look at the interface, and you see there’s a slider where you can turn up the creaking chair, and even turn off the piano. It just feels really constructed, it doesn’t feel natural to play it. Spitfire are just like me and Nils in the beginning; we weren’t trying to make the chair creak. “Spitfire aren’t trying to make their libraries imperfect, but they know that if they leave those imperfections in, it will feel more human. It comes naturally to them, and that’s what makes them great at what they do.” Ólafur’s process differs, depending on if he’s working on a film, or one of his own albums. “If I’m working on a film, I’ll send the arrangement with the Spitfire samples to the director,” he says. “That way, if they want changes, I can still change it easily. When everyone’s getting happy, I’ll start replacing the samples with the real instruments. You then get an improvisational element to adapt to the real instruments. That’s when the magic happens. “My interface is a Mytek,” he says, “and I have a bunch of Siemens preamps, which are 1950s, and Austrian. For EQ plugins, I use the FabFilter a lot, and Slate also. A lot of it is done out of the box, as well. I have the 1178
Compressor from UA, which is a stereo version of the 1176, and I have two Teletronix LA2As - a lot of the compression is done in those. I have the Plate Reverb, which I prefer to the plugins, and in terms of microphones, I work a lot with Neumann KM84s and 83s — the 83 is just the omni version. I have the U47 also, to record piano, that’s all.” For a musician who has an album titled For Now I am Winter, and is associated with the colder climate of Iceland, his future is looking powerfully bright. After the huge popularity of three seasons of Broadchurch, and making time for Kiasmos, it’s finally time for his first, full-length solo LP since 2013. “Me and Janus still have a few more Kiasmos shows in the Fall,” Ólafur says. “But apart from that, I’ll just be writing the new album, until next Spring or so.” I ask what on earth we should expect. “[laughs] It keeps changing! This album has been long in the making, even before Island Songs!” Ólafur is then whisked away to have his photo taken with the Thames as the perfect backdrop. Later that night, the Kiasmos set is totally unforgettable. One song in, he picks up the mic and declares, “Let’s turn the Royal Festival Hall into a rave!” Everyone duly obliges — huge numbers of people ditch their seats, and pile into the aisles, throwing all kinds of shapes. Two girls are stood on their seats, sunglasses on, and filming throughout. It’s a rapturous spectacle, the likes of which the Southbank Centre probably won’t see again; and it’s all thanks to another unique success story from the diminutive island of Iceland. Here’s to many more seasons of Ólafur Arnalds. www.olafurarnalds.com www.spitfireaudio.com
31 Headliner