Interview mit Ihsahn von Ihsahn

Let’s tackle the obvious first: Why just „Ihsahn“ as the album title? Is it your most personal album, or even the final?
No, I think the record label made a much more big deal of it than I intended. There’s really two reasons. First, it was very hard to find a title to capture all the layers and the duality of the orchestral version, the metal version … the two parallel stories, all of this. And secondly, it’s an album that is very down to center compared to my other records … compared with the EPs that I did prior to this, with „Telemark“ being really old-school, and „Pharos“ being more indie, kind of experimental. This is black metal, symphony orchestra, typical stories, typical archetypes … very down to center of my career. So I thought this is just as good a time as any. Because a lot of artists have a self-titled album, and it’s usually either their first or somewhere down the line. And I thought, well, this might be as good a choice as any.

Why was it important to you to separate the orchestral and metal album versions? Why not just a double album with both versions?
I wanted to have it as two separate. Of course, there’s this deluxe vinyl version where you get both of them. But this was the idea even before I started writing any music: I wanted to do a dual-layer album, where I literally would write orchestral accompaniments to the metal production, but arrange it in such a way that it would also work independently as its own thing. And that was the big challenge: to try and explore what is literally the same music, but with two different emotional impacts. The first single, for example, „Pilgrimage To Oblivion“: In the metal version, it just starts with a scale run, and … Boom! Extreme blast beats, screaming, all that. And the orchestral version is like whispery, quiet tremolo cellos. It’s the same music, but it gives a different feeling, a different emotional impact. That was the whole idea. There’s the storyline that goes into the metal version and all the lyrics, but then there’s the parallel storyline that follows the orchestral version. So, all in all, an excuse for myself to try to make an imaginary soundtrack within the context of a metal album.

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I read that Chris Baum was involved in the recordings, but also I read that the orchestral part was not with real instruments, but programmed … could you explain that?
It’s a mix. And it’s done in a very typical way as soundtracks are produced these days, with a blend of artful orchestra and real instruments. But the only way I could make this puzzle work was to do the full orchestration. And sample libraries, the way you can program them, admittedly it is extremely tedious and takes a lot of work, but it was very educational for me. And then I had this amazing violin player, Chris Baum, who doubled all the parts of the first and second violin … and there’s some real percussion. But the majority of this is samples. And it’s really the only way that I could approach doing this. Obviously it would be amazing to do this with a proper orchestra at some point, but quite honestly the expenses and resources needed to make that happen, in a way that it would actually make things better, practically, would be beyond the purposes of what this was supposed to be. This goes for live as well. I’m super happy with how it came out and how it sounds. I wouldn’t have had it any different.

I also read that you had two drummers involved?
Yeah. The two Tobias. On my previous recordings, predominantly I’ve been using Tobias Ørnes Andersen for drums. On „Pharos“ I used Tobias Solbakk. On my live shows I’ve been using both. None of them have any weaknesses, but they have different strengths. So for this album, I really literally gave half the album to each, depending on which song I felt they had their most strength.

Was your son Angell involved again as well?
My son is a drummer. So of course, when I had two of Norway’s best drummers in the studio in Notodden, he will be there to get some free lessons. He has been doing percussion parts together with Tobias Ørnes previously too, many years ago. This time, we had to get a percussion ensemble feel. We literally had this big room, great acoustics and put a stereo mic in the middle, and we positioned Tobias and Tobias in each end, with like a percussion station. And then since Angell was there as well, we put him in the middle of that triangle. So there were like three drummers performing as an ensemble. And it gives a much livelier expression than if you just overdub the same drummer. And, of course, it was really cool for him to play with them.

In „Blood Trails To Love“, you are singing a very touching, clean part in the refrain, and it sounds mind-blowing …
It’s very kind of you.
How do you improve your singing skills, and how much autotune was used?
I would say: lots of takes. (laughs) Many attempts. And I would say you’d have to ask [album producer] Jens Bogren, but I guess the average amount of tuning and production as is typical these days.

I’m not sure if you will answer the next question, but let’s give it a try: In „Born Twice“, the lyrics are „I’d question all I once held true“, which probably had a personal background. Can you give an example of something you recently questioned that you once held true?
Of course, there’s a lot of me in the lyrics, since I wrote the story. But this is actually the first time that I’ve really tried to write from an external perspective. This is like a fictional protagonist through the story. But, of course, if you do anything creative, you can’t not put any of your own thinking and experience into that. At least if it’s supposed to be genuine. This whole journey in „Twice Born“ … the title even indicates this is like a rebirth. And symbolically, of course, like the traditional journey, he comes from this way of seeing the world. Then he challenges that, and he takes on the journey to see more. Then he realizes: „I took this for granted, but I questioned it. And this was true for me before, but now the scales have fallen from my eyes.“ So it’s a story of realization, of questioning, which I think arguably is at the heart of rock music. The whole adversary position of rock music and metal, and my trajectory into Nietzsche, just questioning everything, not taking things for granted. I answered it. Why wouldn’t I answer that?

Because someone said, you don’t like to give out too much information about your lyrics …
What I’ve said is that even though there is a particular storyline to this, and I wrote the synopsis of the novel as a backbone to write the lyrics and the story and the leitmotifs and all the music, so there would be a pathway for everything to go into … but it’s not important for me to try to superimpose my interpretation of that story for the listener. Because as a fan of music myself, I’m always much more concerned with how it makes me feel and how I interpret the music and lyrics than having the artist tell me what to feel and what to think. And I don’t want to fall into the same trap, even though for me this is really vivid and it’s all connected. But I’ve already heard some other interpretations. Which is not wrong. It is not my interpretation, but the most important thing for me to convey is that people who have played the album, who didn’t know that it had a story behind it, came back and said, I feel like I’m watching a movie. And then I felt I had achieved what I wanted. So then people can explore further if they want, and find their own meaning and interpretation.

What’s your favorite song on the new album? Your own favorite?
Oh, that depends … some of the songs I have a slight preference in the orchestral version and others on metal version. And some I enjoy listening back to them. Others I feel entertained playing them. It’s impossible to say. But I can tell you, I’m just subjectively extremely proud and grateful for just the whole experience of making this. At my age, I’m closing in on 50, to be doing as many records as I have done and to be in a position where I was so excited about making new music that I learned so much from a process, even at this stage in my career, I’m just even more excited to start the next one.

To conclude, a more general question: What’s your prediction about where the music industry is heading in the future?
If I had an answer to that, and if I was good at doing the smart thing in business, I’d probably don’t do a double conceptual album in 2024, where people’s attention span is about 10 seconds. So in that respect, I’ve been doing everything wrong myself. But I think this has been ever-changing. As with everyone of my generation, I was fortunate enough to, as a fan, and also consequentially as an artist, be part of that era where you could sell your music in physical format. But then I kind of analyzed that, in music history terms, that period is very short. Prior to that, there were hundreds of years of live music. You know, and even in the beginning, with records and everything, maybe there’s one person in a group of friends that maybe had one single, and they were listening to the singles on the radio. But it was the live performance. That was the thing. And then we had these decades where we could sell it. You know, the album was kind of the main prize. And now I see that we’ve come back to live music being the main focus point, and that albums, for better or worse, unfortunately for me, from that generation, but that’s more the accessory. But the great thing with the whole digital revolution is that you can make high-quality stuff on your laptop.

Even if you have just an iPad and something like [music production app] GarageBand, the sonic potential of that is greater than what I could do with my 4-track, even if I went to studios back in the days. It has changed so much. The downside is, of course, that everything is so saturated. When everybody can do it, it’s even harder. You could say in the past it was probably stupid that there were these kind of keyhole gateways for artists, that some record company executive had to give you your chance, in a way. But also it filtered away a lot of mediocre things that are now clouding the gems. But on the other hand … do you know James Blake, „Limit To Your Love“? He’s a very experimental pop artist. And his debut album was so forward-thinking, really emotional, and no record company would ever give an artist like that a chance in the record-selling business. But with the digital age, you will get gems like that.

In the beginning I felt that things were very unfair, that musicians are important, blah, blah, blah. But then I’ve been thinking: It’s not a human right to make albums and play rock shows. All of that is like a commercial business side of things that’s market-led. That’s the people who decides. And with all social media, it’s a big clutter of things. And I heard about bands blowing up on TikTok on one song. It seems very chaotic and random, and nothing that you can control. So for me personally, I think I’ve been very fortunate with my background that the focus point was always just my own personal relationship to music, trying to make the best possible music I could with the means available. And then fortunately getting to release it, and I was lucky that people caught on to it and were interested.

But as I’ve told many of my previous students as well, when it comes to learning an instrument and playing music, and they’re like, oh, well, if people think this, and what is the smart thing to do and so on, I say, look, don’t worry about it. There’s all this stuff that you have to do in life. Playing rock guitar is not one of them. You do that because you love it. And maybe because you love it, you do it so much, you get so good that someone else might even enjoy you playing guitar. That’s the bonus. But if you keep your relationship to your music true, no one can take that relationship away from you. And that is the most important thing. And that’s the only way I think you could make something genuine and heartfelt that might resonate with someone else. If you try to make music, especially this kind of music, for the purpose of selling records and becoming famous or girls or anything like that, you’ve already lost.

Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you once again for all your support.