I ♥ Icelandic Music: Múm Spits Interview and BBC Collective Interview & Live @ London (2007)

laugardagur, september 15, 2007

Múm Spits Interview and BBC Collective Interview & Live @ London (2007)

A Spits Video about the "new" Múm .
Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason talk about the band.
In English with Dutch subtitles.
http://spitsnet.nl/nieuws.php/47/464958/anp

BBC Collective
Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHQaFvNCar0

Northern Exposure
Much has transpired in the magical realm of Icelandic pop experimentalists Múm since the release of their last album, Summer Make Good, back in 2004. Along with extensive global touring, remixes for Goldfrapp, live dalliances with the National Dutch Chamber Orchestra and innumerable extracurricular creative activities, the protean ensemble also managed to squeeze in the recording of their third album, titled, with typical inscrutability, Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy.
Much of this occurred despite the 2006 departure of helium-voiced singer and accordionist Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. The Reykjavik-based ensemble, latterly expanded to a septet built around founder members Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, take the personnel changes in their stride. “The band has been like that ever since we started,” Smárason confirms. “We’re kind of used to that way of working. It’s somehow in the nature of the band to keep changing and it’s definitely going to keep changing.”
Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy bears impressive testament to Múm’s unimpaired muse - their signature electronic textures and flickering beats now effortlessly subsumed into swooning arrangements for strings, brass, piano and harp. Eschewing conventional studios, the album was captured in some unorthodox locations. “The studio can be a very sterile environment sometimes, people can get very self-conscious, so we prefer to record in different places,” Tynes affirms.
Iceland’s genial community spirit also played a part. “In small towns, things are so simple that when we asked if there were any houses around that we could possibly borrow or hire, they just gave us the keys and the number to the security code and let us get on with it. We also recorded in two schools – one of them was a music school… Suddenly we were in this huge place surrounded by instruments. It was summer, so there weren’t any kids around, we could just do whatever we wanted.”
Playfully evocative song titles (Marmalade Fires and I Was Her Horse are typical) pepper the new album, of which They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded is undoubtedly the most perplexing. “It’s to do with the kind of evil things kids do, without meaning anything bad,” Smárason explains. “Like taking the feet off flies, or suffocating cats, things like that. We found out that almost everyone has a similar story back in their childhood, where they did something like this. They usually deny it at first, and then they remember…”
David Sheppard (August 2007)
"Blessed Brambles" Live @ Museum of Garden History, London (BBC Collective, 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eecH9wMdG4