I know that you grew up between Bali and Oslo. What connects you with Bali?
It was a 5-6 year period of my childhood when I was moving back and forth all the time. My mom was a part of an art community in Ubud, Bali. At first, she went there for three months, then for five months and later we came for a year. It was an escalating thing.
But what was your mother doing there?
She was creating sculptures and jewelry, collecting masks and stuff.
What about Balinese culture, did it have a significant impact on you?
Enormous. At first we stayed for only 3-4 months. I was homeschooled, which meant that during the day I went to a dance and music school and there was a man called Wayan who I was by regularly. In Bali, you get your names after the number of a kid in a family, so Wayan is the first child, Made is the second child and so on. So Wayan was the oldest in the family. He was a grown man, dancer, and musician. I’d follow him and watch him perform almost every night because he was putting on shows five nights a week. And during the day I’d practice Balinese dance, gamelan and the drum called Kendang.
So the music has always been an integral part of your life?
As long as I can remember, there have always been instruments around me. There's always been singing and dancing. It was an essential part of expressing myself in the family and my community in Norway. I went to a private school called Waldorf where we used a lot of dance and music to express ourselves. It has always been a part of who I am. I think, as a child when you travel a lot between continents and you don't really have a language, I was around English, Norwegian, Indonesian and Balinese, it may be necessary to develop means of expressing yourself in nonverbal way.
How your attitude to the instrument has been changing through time? Haven't you ever felt a desire to try out other ones?
Oh, all the time! I don't go around romanticizing the saxophone saying it's the best instrument in the world; it's just a piece of equipment that followed me. It's given me so many opportunities. But there was a time when I moved to Berlin, and I didn't play the saxophone at all. It was my job. I would earn my living from playing it, which is great, and it's still a way to explore music as a daytime job, but it wasn't very inspiring from my artistic point of view.
And obviously, who doesn't want to make electronic music when they come to Berlin? So I did that, of course. I made a lot of electronic music. I used to do that before I moved to Berlin. I produced music for other artists, dance and theatre. It was following me quite a lot. I think the project that I do now is very much this idea of continuing to make electronic music using saxophone because
I find that only with saxophone I'm able to access something personal - I can be real in a sense. I can convey something that is me.
While I was making electronic music, I found that I can't get to that point where it would become uniquely mine.
I know that you grew up between Bali and Oslo. What connects you with Bali?
It was a 5-6 year period of my childhood when I was moving back and forth all the time. My mom was a part of an art community in Ubud, Bali. At first, she went there for three months, then for five months and later we came for a year. It was an escalating thing.
But what was your mother doing there?
She was creating sculptures and jewelry, collecting masks and stuff.
What about Balinese culture, did it have a significant impact on you?
Enormous. At first we stayed for only 3-4 months. I was homeschooled, which meant that during the day I went to a dance and music school and there was a man called Wayan who I was by regularly. In Bali, you get your names after the number of a kid in a family, so Wayan is the first child, Made is the second child and so on. So Wayan was the oldest in the family. He was a grown man, dancer, and musician. I’d follow him and watch him perform almost every night because he was putting on shows five nights a week. And during the day I’d practice Balinese dance, gamelan and the drum called Kendang.
So the music has always been an integral part of your life?
As long as I can remember, there have always been instruments around me. There's always been singing and dancing. It was an essential part of expressing myself in the family and my community in Norway. I went to a private school called Waldorf where we used a lot of dance and music to express ourselves. It has always been a part of who I am. I think, as a child when you travel a lot between continents and you don't really have a language, I was around English, Norwegian, Indonesian and Balinese, it may be necessary to develop means of expressing yourself in nonverbal way.
How your attitude to the instrument has been changing through time? Haven't you ever felt a desire to try out other ones?
Oh, all the time! I don't go around romanticizing the saxophone saying it's the best instrument in the world; it's just a piece of equipment that followed me. It's given me so many opportunities. But there was a time when I moved to Berlin, and I didn't play the saxophone at all. It was my job. I would earn my living from playing it, which is great, and it's still a way to explore music as a daytime job, but it wasn't very inspiring from my artistic point of view.
And obviously, who doesn't want to make electronic music when they come to Berlin? So I did that, of course. I made a lot of electronic music. I used to do that before I moved to Berlin. I produced music for other artists, dance and theatre. It was following me quite a lot. I think the project that I do now is very much this idea of continuing to make electronic music using saxophone because
I find that only with saxophone I'm able to access something personal - I can be real in a sense. I can convey something that is me.
While I was making electronic music, I found that I can't get to that point where it would become uniquely mine.
Don't you find playing saxophone limiting in a way?
Of course, it's extremely limiting. While making Surrender, I set some strict premises before I started. One of those was not to add any sounds - just a single take and that's it. I could only use one instrument, so I chose tenor saxophone for the whole album, which at the time sounded like it is going to be a very boring album.
So instead of going into the studio and adding layers of sound, I decided not to use any of those possibilities. The whole idea for making that album was really tight boundaries, very strict limits. Also, I wasn't going to play a single straight note. There is not a sole 'normal' saxophone tone throughout the whole album. I just played it differently the entire time.
I've noticed that composing within these boundaries is a very freeing experience.
It is a paradox in a sense. For example, you can use a compositional form A-B-A, which means that you have a theme called A, then you have a different one called B, and then you go back to the first one again, but play a variation of it. I've found that it frees up a lot of headspace because you rely on the form that is a part of the music tradition or a part of our whole aesthetic inheritance. It's like a paper with lines on it.
I do this exercise with friends and colleagues where we do automatic writing, and the first thing you want to do is try to free yourself from the form of the page and not use the lines. My favorite example of that is when you start in a spiral. You begin in an outer edge of the page, and you work yourself into the center. It becomes very constricting soon. There are so many similar examples where creating limits and boundaries turn out to be very freeing.
Surrender, Music for Dance were recorded in Emanuel Vigeland Museum in Oslo. Why not studio?
It was because I wanted to go into this project with a mentality that I wasn’t the architect or the boss. I wasn’t the one that decided that ‘it’s going to be like this,’ and then constructed the world according to my vision. I wanted this album to be about the experience. So when I was performing this material, I had a very meditative experience where I was depriving myself of oxygen, and I had to concentrate very deeply to produce these momentums. I didn’t want there to be any edited or artificial sounds on the album. So I had to find the space that sounded good, but also be of importance. Emanuel Vigeland Museum is, in fact, a mausoleum; it was built for his ashes, and it’s my favorite place on the Earth. It’s dark and immersive, and the sound is incredible.
You mentioned the meditative state you have while performing, how would you describe it?
In most meditation practices that I've experienced, breath is a core element. So much of the arts, like music or dance, is about aestheticizing breath.
Breath is a significant invisible gesture, and we all do it. There is a lot of empathy in it. It's a fascinating gesture to become mindful through.
I've made it my general practice to play a drone, to play one long note, and through that, I get to connect with my breath and become mindful of how much oxygen I need. It is a process that took me many years to figure out, to know where the boundaries are and so on. When I do this, I have an experience of everything else in the world around me kind of disappearing, and I am allowed to simply exist. It is surprisingly difficult to get to.
I think this aspect of breathing in spiritual practices is more about the state of being aware, but concerning what you've said I can assume that for you it's akin to separation of body and mind in that moment of performing.
It is a different state of mind, I guess. I can go to a strange space where I don't necessarily feel very safe, and I can perform something through it. I can be reminded of myself. I think, we are not necessarily connected with the concept of self. For instance, in communities where there are only men, there are a lot of threatened and bruised self-esteems. People sometimes are angry towards somebody they don't know, like: "How could you say this to me?" or "Why do you look at me like that?" It is really about this lack of confidence in yourself. So the idea is to be able to find it through a specific gesture, to find a connection to a concept of self, be it yoga or meditation. For me, it is playing the saxophone.
You've said that you came out of opposition to being furious in the straight male-dominated world and pretending to be who you are not. Now it seems that you are in the right place. Am I right? What fueling your music now?
Yeah, the concept of opposition. I'm very much in opposition still. I think it is necessary to have a bit of it, to move out of your comfort zone and go into a big unknown. Discover something new for yourself. I think the opposition is the fuel for that. I'm still in opposition to my jazz background. It's not because of the individuals in my jazz background, but more of a structure where I found it challenging to be me. I found it challenging to be gay in that community, for instance. And also I found that when you are straight or acceptably gay at work and then a crazy club gay in your private life, it's going to be a bit of disconnection. This project of mine is just me doing whatever I want and trying to take this joy that I experience from queer culture and bring it into music that I make and the music industry overall. The music industry is surprisingly straight. I don't know why.
Don't you find playing saxophone limiting in a way?
Of course, it's extremely limiting. While making Surrender, I set some strict premises before I started. One of those was not to add any sounds - just a single take and that's it. I could only use one instrument, so I chose tenor saxophone for the whole album, which at the time sounded like it is going to be a very boring album.
So instead of going into the studio and adding layers of sound, I decided not to use any of those possibilities. The whole idea for making that album was really tight boundaries, very strict limits. Also, I wasn't going to play a single straight note. There is not a sole 'normal' saxophone tone throughout the whole album. I just played it differently the entire time.
I've noticed that composing within these boundaries is a very freeing experience.
It is a paradox in a sense. For example, you can use a compositional form A-B-A, which means that you have a theme called A, then you have a different one called B, and then you go back to the first one again, but play a variation of it. I've found that it frees up a lot of headspace because you rely on the form that is a part of the music tradition or a part of our whole aesthetic inheritance. It's like a paper with lines on it.
I do this exercise with friends and colleagues where we do automatic writing, and the first thing you want to do is try to free yourself from the form of the page and not use the lines. My favorite example of that is when you start in a spiral. You begin in an outer edge of the page, and you work yourself into the center. It becomes very constricting soon. There are so many similar examples where creating limits and boundaries turn out to be very freeing.
Surrender, Music for Dance were recorded in Emanuel Vigeland Museum in Oslo. Why not studio?
It was because I wanted to go into this project with a mentality that I wasn’t the architect or the boss. I wasn’t the one that decided that ‘it’s going to be like this,’ and then constructed the world according to my vision. I wanted this album to be about the experience. So when I was performing this material, I had a very meditative experience where I was depriving myself of oxygen, and I had to concentrate very deeply to produce these momentums. I didn’t want there to be any edited or artificial sounds on the album. So I had to find the space that sounded good, but also be of importance. Emanuel Vigeland Museum is, in fact, a mausoleum; it was built for his ashes, and it’s my favorite place on the Earth. It’s dark and immersive, and the sound is incredible.
You mentioned the meditative state you have while performing, how would you describe it?
In most meditation practices that I've experienced, breath is a core element. So much of the arts, like music or dance, is about aestheticizing breath.
Breath is a significant invisible gesture, and we all do it. There is a lot of empathy in it. It's a fascinating gesture to become mindful through.
I've made it my general practice to play a drone, to play one long note, and through that, I get to connect with my breath and become mindful of how much oxygen I need. It is a process that took me many years to figure out, to know where the boundaries are and so on. When I do this, I have an experience of everything else in the world around me kind of disappearing, and I am allowed to simply exist. It is surprisingly difficult to get to.
I think this aspect of breathing in spiritual practices is more about the state of being aware, but concerning what you've said I can assume that for you it's akin to separation of body and mind in that moment of performing.
It is a different state of mind, I guess. I can go to a strange space where I don't necessarily feel very safe, and I can perform something through it. I can be reminded of myself. I think, we are not necessarily connected with the concept of self. For instance, in communities where there are only men, there are a lot of threatened and bruised self-esteems. People sometimes are angry towards somebody they don't know, like: "How could you say this to me?" or "Why do you look at me like that?" It is really about this lack of confidence in yourself. So the idea is to be able to find it through a specific gesture, to find a connection to a concept of self, be it yoga or meditation. For me, it is playing the saxophone.
You've said that you came out of opposition to being furious in the straight male-dominated world and pretending to be who you are not. Now it seems that you are in the right place. Am I right? What fueling your music now?
Yeah, the concept of opposition. I'm very much in opposition still. I think it is necessary to have a bit of it, to move out of your comfort zone and go into a big unknown. Discover something new for yourself. I think the opposition is the fuel for that. I'm still in opposition to my jazz background. It's not because of the individuals in my jazz background, but more of a structure where I found it challenging to be me. I found it challenging to be gay in that community, for instance. And also I found that when you are straight or acceptably gay at work and then a crazy club gay in your private life, it's going to be a bit of disconnection. This project of mine is just me doing whatever I want and trying to take this joy that I experience from queer culture and bring it into music that I make and the music industry overall. The music industry is surprisingly straight. I don't know why.
But now you are in Berlin, having a different community experience. Perhaps it is more liberating.
I think I feel the opposition mostly to my background. When you are young and talented, you look for other people's approval. And as I got older and more confident, I go back to these situations, and I want to say to my younger self: "Fuck that! You don't need these people's approval. What they think is completely unimportant to what you think!" So I am still revisiting these acts of opposition. The whole concept of this album and the next one is limitations. I'm just going to use one instrument; I'm not playing swing; there is no jazz harmony there. There is a lot of stuff that is simply not there.
Does this opposition impact your sound?
When you ask a question like that, you are asking me to be analytical of my project, but it isn't an entity or a result for me, it's a process. My project is an elusive goal somewhere in the future. I don't focus on what it will become. I am constantly discovering. There are so many ways to create music on a saxophone that has very little to do with the way I was taught to play it. It's a goldmine. It's incredible. I haven't got any aspects of my life, where I've discovered such a profound source of possibilities. It feels like almost every time I sit down and start searching, I find something which is entirely new.
I find many sounds, and they are like unpolished diamonds. They often sound really shitty, and it takes months to shape these sounds into something melodic and inviting to the listener. So it's free from conflict, full of expression. In jazz, where I come from, there is a lot of search for a complicated harmony, something full of tension and difficult to perceive. My project is to do the exact opposite - to take the sound that is difficult to grasp, to play the instrument that is difficult for the performer, and then use that power for the good. I want to use that to create a nice melody, a rhythm that you can trust.
I want to go back to Surrender again. You've said it has a lot to do with your personal experience. So how is it connected with this experience?
Well, Surrender has been such a process for me, and I think that it still is. Now it is not in the future anymore, but it has been a concept of the future for me for quite some time. And now, since the release date, it is a concept of the past. I viewed many different things through this process. I think there is an issue in a capitalist society today that as consumers we are entitled to have an idea of what we want and then we go and purchase it, whether an experience or an object. I encounter, through the arts and queer culture in Berlin, that there is a lot of things that we can not buy for money; you have to go in and 'surrender' yourself to it. I want to create that experience somehow. Not being this masculine character that imposes himself on his surroundings. Instead of ordering what you want, just go in, be humble, and experience it.
Is it also connected to your nightlife experience?
Very much, yeah. There are so many aspects to it. When I went clubbing in Berlin, I found that I experienced music in a very broad way. I managed to kind of get rid of the intellectual aspect of listening to music and just exist with music and through dance. I've perceived how music manifests itself in my body, and then the other people did the same thing, and this became a larger-than-life and larger-than-self experience. I guess that's the way I experience arts and music.
At first, I tried to surrender myself to this experience, whatever it is, and when I found something that I truly enjoyed, I asked myself: "What is this about it? What do I enjoy? Is it sex and drugs? Is it the lights and the smoke? Is it the setting?" And I've realized that it is these very long build-ups. Sometimes I felt that the music was building up and up and up, and it was just escalating until the whole room reached some sort of ecstasy. That isn't just drugs and alcohol; it is also music. Music can do this to us. So I started asking myself, how do you do that? How do people sit in front of the computer and achieve that? How the hell? How can I create this atmosphere of trust in music that allows you to reach that point of ecstasy and exist on that elevated level? So that was the question that led to these compositions that I put on the album and the whole new music that I'm going to record.
What I also love about Surrender and your art, in general, is that you treat the topics of sex in a very open way. It seems very natural for you. So I wonder what informed this? Have you always felt this way?
Oh, not at all. I've been very shut-in. I came out pretty late. I can only talk from the perspective of a gay man, but there is this threshold. There is a point in your life when you have to come out. And the fact that you come out means that you had to hide. The necessary part of the coming out is that you enter adulthood as a vulnerable little child. In my case, it was knowing that love was a beautiful thing, except for me. When I loved, it was a perverted thing. Coming into that acknowledgment as a young adult is confusing and challenging, but I had to come out. Through coming out, you reach the point of subversion where you say "Fuck all of you!" to society. There is no other option for me, but to live my life and my truth. So that's what I'm going to do - I'm homo, I'm gay.
I started to see it as a blessing. The first thing that I presented to people was my sexuality. But do I show it with words, outfits, or what? I was forced into this thing where I had to represent myself very clearly. I think at some point I realized that the fact that I'm allowed to do this, the fact that I'm not meeting any prosecutions or I meet very little hate means that it's a big privilege, and this privilege comes with a big responsibility. So I see it as an opportunity to be a representation, to be a counteract and say, "Guys, it's okay," you can be whatever you want.
But now you are in Berlin, having a different community experience. Perhaps it is more liberating.
I think I feel the opposition mostly to my background. When you are young and talented, you look for other people's approval. And as I got older and more confident, I go back to these situations, and I want to say to my younger self: "Fuck that! You don't need these people's approval. What they think is completely unimportant to what you think!" So I am still revisiting these acts of opposition. The whole concept of this album and the next one is limitations. I'm just going to use one instrument; I'm not playing swing; there is no jazz harmony there. There is a lot of stuff that is simply not there.
Does this opposition impact your sound?
When you ask a question like that, you are asking me to be analytical of my project, but it isn't an entity or a result for me, it's a process. My project is an elusive goal somewhere in the future. I don't focus on what it will become. I am constantly discovering. There are so many ways to create music on a saxophone that has very little to do with the way I was taught to play it. It's a goldmine. It's incredible. I haven't got any aspects of my life, where I've discovered such a profound source of possibilities. It feels like almost every time I sit down and start searching, I find something which is entirely new.
I find many sounds, and they are like unpolished diamonds. They often sound really shitty, and it takes months to shape these sounds into something melodic and inviting to the listener. So it's free from conflict, full of expression. In jazz, where I come from, there is a lot of search for a complicated harmony, something full of tension and difficult to perceive. My project is to do the exact opposite - to take the sound that is difficult to grasp, to play the instrument that is difficult for the performer, and then use that power for the good. I want to use that to create a nice melody, a rhythm that you can trust.
I want to go back to Surrender again. You've said it has a lot to do with your personal experience. So how is it connected with this experience?
Well, Surrender has been such a process for me, and I think that it still is. Now it is not in the future anymore, but it has been a concept of the future for me for quite some time. And now, since the release date, it is a concept of the past. I viewed many different things through this process. I think there is an issue in a capitalist society today that as consumers we are entitled to have an idea of what we want and then we go and purchase it, whether an experience or an object. I encounter, through the arts and queer culture in Berlin, that there is a lot of things that we can not buy for money; you have to go in and 'surrender' yourself to it. I want to create that experience somehow. Not being this masculine character that imposes himself on his surroundings. Instead of ordering what you want, just go in, be humble, and experience it.
Is it also connected to your nightlife experience?
Very much, yeah. There are so many aspects to it. When I went clubbing in Berlin, I found that I experienced music in a very broad way. I managed to kind of get rid of the intellectual aspect of listening to music and just exist with music and through dance. I've perceived how music manifests itself in my body, and then the other people did the same thing, and this became a larger-than-life and larger-than-self experience. I guess that's the way I experience arts and music.
At first, I tried to surrender myself to this experience, whatever it is, and when I found something that I truly enjoyed, I asked myself: "What is this about it? What do I enjoy? Is it sex and drugs? Is it the lights and the smoke? Is it the setting?" And I've realized that it is these very long build-ups. Sometimes I felt that the music was building up and up and up, and it was just escalating until the whole room reached some sort of ecstasy. That isn't just drugs and alcohol; it is also music. Music can do this to us. So I started asking myself, how do you do that? How do people sit in front of the computer and achieve that? How the hell? How can I create this atmosphere of trust in music that allows you to reach that point of ecstasy and exist on that elevated level? So that was the question that led to these compositions that I put on the album and the whole new music that I'm going to record.
What I also love about Surrender and your art, in general, is that you treat the topics of sex in a very open way. It seems very natural for you. So I wonder what informed this? Have you always felt this way?
Oh, not at all. I've been very shut-in. I came out pretty late. I can only talk from the perspective of a gay man, but there is this threshold. There is a point in your life when you have to come out. And the fact that you come out means that you had to hide. The necessary part of the coming out is that you enter adulthood as a vulnerable little child. In my case, it was knowing that love was a beautiful thing, except for me. When I loved, it was a perverted thing. Coming into that acknowledgment as a young adult is confusing and challenging, but I had to come out. Through coming out, you reach the point of subversion where you say "Fuck all of you!" to society. There is no other option for me, but to live my life and my truth. So that's what I'm going to do - I'm homo, I'm gay.
I started to see it as a blessing. The first thing that I presented to people was my sexuality. But do I show it with words, outfits, or what? I was forced into this thing where I had to represent myself very clearly. I think at some point I realized that the fact that I'm allowed to do this, the fact that I'm not meeting any prosecutions or I meet very little hate means that it's a big privilege, and this privilege comes with a big responsibility. So I see it as an opportunity to be a representation, to be a counteract and say, "Guys, it's okay," you can be whatever you want.
I think that sexuality should be something that we talk openly about in our society, just like we talk about food, sleep, or transport. The fact that we don't talk about it openly gives more power to capitalists forces that are ready to industrialize and capitalize. So that is a bit of a protest movement on my part.
I think that sexuality should be something that we talk openly about in our society, just like we talk about food, sleep, or transport. The fact that we don't talk about it openly gives more power to capitalists forces that are ready to industrialize and capitalize. So that is a bit of a protest movement on my part.
The element of performance seems very important for you - the way you dress up, the way you behave on stage. What is your approach to it? What vibe do you want to create on stage?
When I studied music, there was this idea that it should be all about the music in the community, which means that the ultimate way of behavior on stage was not to think about what you are wearing, not to be mindful of the fact that you are on stage. And again, with my coming out experience, I know that there is not a single minute when people are not performing. Not even on stage, but during the small talk, or on the subway - people perform. I studied dance in Bali as a kid, and I was doing all these characters with masks. It has always been a part of how I am in the world, performing some version of myself or some other character. So I think my quest is to take this to the stage. We are performing anyway so we might as well have some fun doing it. We might as well take it to the next level. That's my attitude.
The element of performance seems very important for you - the way you dress up, the way you behave on stage. What is your approach to it? What vibe do you want to create on stage?
When I studied music, there was this idea that it should be all about the music in the community, which means that the ultimate way of behavior on stage was not to think about what you are wearing, not to be mindful of the fact that you are on stage. And again, with my coming out experience, I know that there is not a single minute when people are not performing. Not even on stage, but during the small talk, or on the subway - people perform. I studied dance in Bali as a kid, and I was doing all these characters with masks. It has always been a part of how I am in the world, performing some version of myself or some other character. So I think my quest is to take this to the stage. We are performing anyway so we might as well have some fun doing it. We might as well take it to the next level. That's my attitude.