Quotes from Johann Johannsson

When I make film music, I'm a filmmaker first and foremost. It's about serving the needs of the film. You're telling a story; in a way, you stop becoming a composer and become a storyteller instead. You tell the story with the most appropriate themes. How you approach these things is a very personal matter, but your goal is to tell the story first.

Sometimes you write music to a script or while a film is being edited. Sometimes I write without seeing any images, but that's rare. The approach is often based on practical decisions, but I'm interested in the narrative and physical space that music can occupy in a film or play.

To be honest, I don't particularly see myself as an Icelandic artist. I'm a European artist.

I tend to get hired because the filmmakers like what I do, so there's usually not that much conflict about the direction.

I'm far from casual. I'm a huge fan of 'Blade Runner.'

I'm fascinated by the ruins and remains of industrialisation.

Making 'Orphee' has been a true labour of love, one that has been a part of my life for six years, and yet the music always remained fresh - it was constantly in a state of flux and renewal.

Very early on, I started improvising. I was more interested in the music that came out of me than any music I heard.

When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.

I like to have space between the notes. I like to use silence.

Silence can be very effective, and it gives the music space to breathe.

I believe that things can be expressed very powerfully through simplicity.

For me, 'Blade Runner' is one of the big influences in my life - I saw it when I was 13 or 14, when it first came out, and since, I've seen it many, many times.

It's very common in Iceland, this music-making and artistic expression by non-professionals. The brass band tradition is not as big, but there are choirs everywhere. So that's something that is familiar to me.

Melancholy is a state that I very much enjoy being in, actually. It's not the same as feeling sad. It's a more complex emotion; it derives from a tragic view of the world, a tragic view of art.

I am not very extreme in my life. But I'm very attracted to art that works with extremes and works with limits, that transgresses limits and transcends limits and crosses borders and has a certain boldness.

Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.

I love 'Treasure.' It's one of my favourite albums.

Music has to be treated in the same way as set design, casting, or choice of location - it has to start at the same time.

The kind of industrial wasteland that you see in so much of Europe has a tremendous poignancy to me, especially when it's run down and you see the collapse and failure of this system. And also how nature reclaims it.

For me, what people generally call sound design is just one component of orchestrating a score.

I have a Yamaha YC-45D organ in my studio. It's actually Terry Riley's favorite keyboard, so if you find old clips of him on YouTube, he's usually playing one of these.

I am a trombone player, and that was my first instrument.

When I write music for a film, I'm not writing a solo album, and I'm not writing a personal piece. I'm part of a team of artists. So I think like a filmmaker more than a composer.