Quotes from Johann Johannsson

I think there's very little interesting in art that is not transgressive in some way. And I don't think that's a very revolutionary thing to say.

I like the whole Pacific Northwest.

There are some stunning visual moments in 'Arrival' that are out of this world, but it's all on the earth, and it's about an academic, a woman that is dealing with a personal tragedy, but there's a circular view of time that makes things more complicated.

Always really good audiences in Belgium.

When I work on films, I like to be involved from as early as possible. I think this is really good and beneficial in terms of absorbing the atmosphere of the film and for the music to become a part of the DNA of the film.

I think that the essence of being an artist is to break rules. You have to learn rules, and you have to break them, because if you make art only by the rules, then you make very boring art.

There's very little synthesized sound in the 'Arrival' score. There are a couple of synthesized beats in there, but 99 percent of the sounds in there are acoustic in origin and either played or sung by a musician or a singer and recorded in a room.

I'm a huge fan of Philip K. Dick.

Film is a collaborative medium, and I very much enjoy that.

I think you are always influenced by your surroundings and where you grow up. Your environment is always one of the things that shape you, and the music scene in Iceland was a very important factor in shaping me.

I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.

I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.

I've never been very good at creating absolute music, which has no non-musical dimension to it. I think that is why filmmakers gravitated toward my work.

I think my music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people's emotions. I try to make music that doesn't need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people.

There's something quite shocking in this idea that everything is disposable and that people don't care for things anymore.

Brass has a very distinctive sound. It's delicate but powerful, but it's also melancholic and plaintive.

I'm interested in extremes, in many ways.

I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.

I always do very detailed demos. I feel that it's better to show the director a demo that sounds as close to the final thing as possible with samples. It takes time to create, but I feel that it's better to get the director on board very early on in terms of the sounds that I have in my head.

Give the composer time to experiment, time to try out ideas. Also, the time to fail. When the composer has very little time, the temptation is to reach for stock ideas - ideas they know will work and have worked in the past.

A lot of my music tends to combine electronics and orchestra.

The drone is a very fundamental part of my music, although it's not always present.

I tend to spend quite a lot of time on the film scores that I do.

I very much enjoy working with talented filmmakers who have a good sense for music, who have a strong feel for music and for what music can do in a film.