ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #37

Kim Hiorthoy

Kim Hiorthoy is an Oslo-based 30-something. An internationally admired graphic artist and filmmaker turned electronic musician who, in fact, prefers to ignore such rigid labels. It's probably fairer to think of him as a very creative, mildly iconoclastic art all-rounder. His bold amalgams of digitally sourced imagery with infusions of luscious primary colour, grainy photo collages and cool geometrics made a huge impact when decorating sleeves for ascetic Norwegian record imprint Rune Grammafon (as documented in the label's recently published 10th-anniversary-celebrating book Money Will Ruin Everything). Hiorthoy's music is a similar blend of the beautiful and the irreverent. His debut album, Hei (Smaltown Supersound/Vertical Form), was a major critical success -- its sentient timbres and beguiling, childlike melodies taking contemporary electronica to newly verdant places. A follow-up EP cemented his position in the vanguard of the genre -- so much so that a brand new album For The Ladies (Smalltown Supersound), which features no music as such, simply "found sounds", is already being greeted warmly by the cognoscenti.

additional Kim Hiorthoy images


David Sheppard: Do you regard the processes of music-making and graphic art as essentially the same thing?

Kim Hiorthoy: I regard them as very different things, even though the place in my head that decides if something works or not is the same for both (and I guess for anything, in a way).

DS: Is it fair to say that injecting -- even subverting -- digital platforms with a very human, analogue warmth is what you do, regardless of the discipline?

KH: I've never thought of it like that. I've nothing against '"digital platforms" but I'm also not so interested in categories. It's never really been an intention to inject or subvert anything. I just try and do or make things that make sense to me in some way. (Or don't make sense, in ways that I enjoy).

DS: Being simply a succession of field recordings For The Ladies is something of a departure from your previous sonic output. What was your intention in releasing this as an album?

KH: There were several reasons. I come from an art background, and in art there's a long tradition of this way of thinking about music and/or sound, and having departed from art, at least in some ways, I thought it could be good to try and make an "art-record" in the kind of semi-popular "electronic music" field which it often feels like my records inhabit. It also came out of an interest in noise music, where some years ago a lot of "quiet" noise records seemed to be getting released. And I began thinking about what they meant and what the ideas behind that kind of music is, or can be, and I thought it would be interesting to try and make a noise record, but an acoustic one and with little control over the details. I also thought that the idea of trying to make "acoustic noise music" was pretentious in a stupid way, which I liked. I've also been using field recordings like the ones on For The Ladies in my music since I began making records and then thought it would be nice to try and take out the music completely.

DS: It's a very intimate and personal document -- it almost feels voyeuristic to listen to some of it. What do you imagine an audience will take from the record?

KH: I have no idea. I try not to think about the audience when I make stuff -- it makes it difficult to make.

DS: Do you feel the term "electronic music" is a bit redundant now?

KH: I don't really care about terms so much. "Rock" is a good term, but I know that's not really what I make.

DS: How many times (apart from "too many") has a journalist mentioned Scandinavian weather and/or landscape when describing your music?

KH: Almost every interview. I feel no affinity what so ever with the weather or landscape.

DS: Who are your heroes?

KH: There are so many. Some are friends or people I know. Now that I'm getting old and grumpy and meet people who are ten years younger than me, or more, and they have so much energy and do so many good things, then they become heroes, even if they make me feel even older and grumpier.

DS: I believe you have another "musical" album coming out soon? What can we expect?

KH: Yes, it should be out later this year. There should be more beats on it. Less field recordings -- hopefully no singing.




David Sheppard is a musician (State River Widening, Ellis Island Sound etc.) and freelance writer who essays on matters musical for MOJO, Q and various organs of the fourth estate. Sheppard enjoys cycling in the country while listening to the pastoral works of Hans-Joachim Roedelius on his antideluvian Walkman, among other things. Oddly, his music is currently gracing HM Government's mildly paranoiac adverts about "what to do in an emergency".


Image © Kim Hiorthoy

© 2004 KultureFlash Limited