Interview Amiina

Penserete a quattro fatine silvestri con la fissa per le alchimie musicali, quando sentirete il disco delle Amiina, band islandese al femminile composta da Sólrún Sumarlidadóttir, Maria Sigfúsdóttir, Edda Olafsdottir e Ársælsdóttir, caratterizzata dal fatto che ciascuna delle quattro graziose componenti non riveste un ruolo preciso legato ad un solo strumento: le Amiina si danno ad un turn-over su strumenti anche piuttosto desueti (dai glockenspiel ai metallofoni, da bicchieri di vino a chitarre e tastiere, dai cuadros alla celesta, dai metallofoni alle arpe celtivhe, dai kalimba ad un parco fiati invidiabile (flauti, tube, clarinetti, trombe,...), da xylofoni a metallofoni.. E ancora: seghe, tromboni, violini, violoncelli, viole, Rhodes, arpe piane, mandolini... Le quattro fatine si alternano quasi come stessero giocando con affascinanti manufatti, tessendo e disfacendo intricati filati sonori. Il risultato -questo disco intitolato Kurr, denominazione onomatopeica che fa riferimento al verso degli uccelli islandesi!- e' davvero pregevole, ricordando sia esperienze recenti (in testa quelle proposte dai connazionali Mùm e Sigur Ros) sia le childplay di Raymond Scott. Con queste eteree entita' nordiche, abbiamo voluto fare qualche chiacchiera. Buona lettura!Amiina "Kurr" (Ever Records, Distribuzione Audioglobe) 01.Sogg 02.Rugla 03.Glámur 04.Seoul 05.Lúpïna 06.Hilli 07.Sexfaldur 08.Kolapot 09.Saga 10.Lóri 11.Bláfeldur 12.Boga

Hi there! Where are you while answering? I'm at home in Reykjavik!

I've seen your surnamen ends with "dòttir". What does it mean in icelandic? It means "daughter". So, for example my name is Sólrún Sumarlidadóttir - my dad's name is Sumarlidi - and so I'm daughter of Sumarlidi. It's a name tradition here in Iceland.

I've read that all began with a sort of backpacking. Among different location you visited, which is the best fitted for giving birth to your music? Well, it wasn't exactly backpacking… But one of our first attempts at making our own music as amiina did happen in the countryside, in the west of Iceland. It was on this old farm that had been transformed into a place where artists can come and work for a short period of time. We filled a car with all the instruments we could find and fit in the car, and just drove up there. It was a great place to work, really amazing to devote days on end to making music with nothing and no one to interrupt us… except for a few sheep that kept licking our car outside the house.

Your way of performing is really interesting, as anyone as a definite role in the line-up. Does it influence your music in a way or another? We consciously keep our roles in the band flexible. Each of us approaches and plays every instrument in a different manner, so they all get used in a variety of ways depending on the song and player. And it's just very inspiring and refreshing to not always play the same instrument.

Some excerpts reminds me another Icelandic band, Mum, maybe for that childish touch. Have you ever met them? Yes, we've met them. Reykjavik is a very small city, so it's hard not to bump into fellow musicians here. Also there's quite a lot of collaboration going on here between bands.

Someone reported that while playing, you look communiting in a sort of telepathic way while on stage. Are you fairies or something like that? :) Uhm, no not fairies I'm afraid. But we do have a very strong communication going on between the four of us. We've known each other for a long time and are close friends. Plus we've spent soooo much time together touring and all that. If it looks like we're "tele-communicating" it's just because we know each other well enough to be able to interpret each other's facial expressions and gestures pretty precisely.

What's your musical background? We all grew up studying classical music from a young age, so that's our collective background. We started working together as string players playing chamber music in the mid 1990s, and we have worked together pretty much since then. This part of our musical past has very much influenced our way of working.

I really enjoyed that photo on the cover! Four weavers working on the same thing... Is it a carpet? A scarf for a giant? Well, we always call it our monster. It's really weirdly shaped, and took quite a long time to make. Basically we just started knitting with the aim of making something really big, and after several days of knitting this is what came out!

Your favourite fairy tale? My favourite is an old Icelandic tale of a seal-woman who gets caught in the net of a fisherman. She marries him and has 7 children with him. Later she disappears and the fisherman discovers that she has left him and their children to go back into the sea to her 7 children from before she was caught by the fisherman. The seal-woman's heart is crushed because she had to leave her 7 children on land, and often people saw a beautiful seal staring towards land with big teardrops falling from her eyes into the ocean. It's a very sad tale, but very beautiful.

I've read the info-sheet on Kurr, telling that songs like amiina could stop war. As outcries don't have any appreciable effect on his policy, why don't you mail a promo to the attention of the President of the United States of America? Someone else wrote this about our songs, we don't claim anything like that ourselves. But wouldn't it be beautiful if wars could be stopped with music alone?

I've just listened to the whole album. Really mesmering, immersive and daydreaming! It seems I travelled in a fantastic world, coming out from a Carroll's novel or Chronicles of Narnia... What's your reaction after a recording session? At times we're just happy to finally have recorded a song. Getting a song down to a recording can be a long and often difficult process. There's so much self-criticism going on that it can become quite painful. One always feels one could have done things better. Generally there's more freedom to enjoy the song when performing it on other occasions than in a recording studio. But of course there a great moments in the studio as well. A lot of magic can happen there too!

Any musician you consider a sort of guru for your musical ideas? No. Our music is a result of the minds of four persons exposed to all sorts of influences throughout their lives. We don't look to a specific musical source at all.

Is there any possibility to see you perform in Italy soon or later? Yes, definitely, we'll come as soon as we can!