Kim Hiorthøy interview: “I needed a new way in”

Ghost hunting

More than a decade after his last full album, Kim Hiorthøy has made his return with Ghost Note on the Belgian label Blickwinkel.

Somewhat intriguingly, the Norwegian electronic musician, graphic designer, illustrator, filmmaker and writer describes Ghost Note as being “electronic music that is acoustic, made from instruments that don’t exist.” The idea plays with perception, challenging what feels real and what feels like a memory.

Well, that was enough to get us hooked. So we quizzed the man himself to find out more…

Hi and thanks for your time….  First of all, can you tell us where you are right now, and what kind of day you’re having…  Been anywhere already or going anywhere interesting later? 

I’m in my studio, which is more a kind of a messy workshop room with many books and objects. Day is good, nothing special, trying to check things off the list, not get taken by the procrastination demon or the growing sense of general worldly doom.

Tell us a bit about your formative musical experiences… Early musical memories from siblings, parents, schoolmates…  First instruments, embarrassing bands etc

I had violin lessons when I was very young, but I was very terrible, never rehearsed. At a years end event with parents, our instructor  did a sketch where he pretended to be us – a fully incompetent child, forgetting his notes, not knowing up from down on the bow. Parents were laughing but I remember feeling kind of offended at the time, even though his portrayal was probably accurate. I guess he must have been fed up and needed to get it out. I took guitar lessons also, and never learned to play that instrument either. After that – I think my most formative experiences happened during the early to mid-90s, travelling and discovering techno, jungle, instrumental hip hop, as well as the music of people like John Zorn and Fred Frith. 

And your journey into the music you make today – what were the important steps?

It feels more like disparate stops and starts. Going from using mostly samples to (like so many) getting into modular synths.  Becoming more and more interested in percussive music. Reading about and listening more to experimental music. Coming into middle age.

Give us a quick precis of what you’ve released to date for the uninitiated…

My first album, Hei came out on Smalltown Supersound 25 years ago (holy crap); a few releases followed on from that; Melke in 2002, three EP’s in 2004, one of which was a collection of almost silent field recordings; My Last Day (2007); a record called Disco (2009), with a kind of band  called Drivan, with people I’d worked with in Sweden; Dogs (2014), which I thought of as a kind of piano album, which it probably wasn’t; a smattering of 7″s here and there; a digital release last year on Superpang called Dust Knuckle.

It’s a whopping ten years since your last album – obvious question, but why the wait?

Partly making music for other people, for dance, theatre and film; partly – mostly maybe – not feeling sure what my music really was anymore; partly just being busy doing other things. I needed a new way in.

Tell us about the concept behind Ghost Note – creating ‘real’ instruments that aren’t real…

The not-real instruments just comes from using physical modeling synthesis to make the percussion and some of the instruments on the record. I like the idea of making home-made-sounding instruments on something as advanced as a computer. It’s both making a kind of fiction, a kind of theatre, but also using fancy technology in a kind of backwards (the fancier the technology, the more realistically backwards you can go). But as far as ‘concept’ goes, I was mostly interested in trying to escape the music I felt I was coming from, maybe. And also to try and make tracks that seem to fall apart as they go. None of which I’ve managed to do very well, I suppose. The title I think comes from the idea of music as something that lives in you whether you want it to or not, and also how it’s immaterial in a sense – and then perhaps becomes even more so when constructed as a fictional physical object that you can only hear, never see or touch.

Love the album cover photos too – what’s going on there?!!! They look like they might be from your personal collection…?

The cover design is by Jelle Martens who does all the sleeves for Blickwinkel. I’m not sure where the front cover image comes from. The back cover is an old film still.

What’s next for you in the short/medium/long term?  What are you hearing that’s inspiring you?  Any more live or release action we should know about?

Julius Eastman. Kali Malone. The Fall. Noël Akchotés unbelievable collection of solo guitar interpretations, of everything from early sacred music and baroque, to Feldman, Kagel and Xenakis (for instance Dario Castello: Sonate concertate, Primo libro, Arr. for guitar). Hockets for Two Voices by Meara O’Reilly. The first track on KLMNOPQ by Kara Lewis and Peter Mannerfelt. The second track on 13 Rabbits by Moritz Fasbender. The question about what’s next makes me think of reading so-called «profiles» in old magazines of people who now seems to have simply vanished. So that will be my answer. The next thing is to vanish.

Buy your copy of Ghost Note on vinyl by clicking here