Caught in the Carousel

Ampop

Sail to the Moon
Sena Ehf

Ampop

If Coldplay and Travis had a child who grew up to marry an underground ‘40s jazz band fond of the Beatles, you might have the sound of Ampop’s Sail To The Moon. These three Icelanders have traveled a long way from their early electronica records. Everything about the new album is big, right down to the golden tint of the CD. The sparse, A.M. station songs of Made for Market morph ironically here; the band has marketed itself with an "amped pop" that reaches orchestral levels. The results are staggering in a mostly impressive way, as these are highly skilled musicians who are clearly in love with their muse. "You Could Be Lovely" explodes the record open with melancholic keyboards and layered melody that works its way to a frenzied rock end of bass, string, and guitar crescendo. The title track bursts into a surprisingly playful and jazzy sound, while "Two Directions" haunts with a heart-splintering progression of thick bass, strings, and keyboards. Lyrically, the album is simplistic and rather sentimental, yet, the words are counterbalanced by complex harmonies and sophisticated instrumentation. While ultimately the songs evoke London more than Icelandic fjords and some audiences may take issue with their riskier genre straddling, it’s impressive that Ampop has reinvented their sound in each of their subsequent releases. Plus, there’s never a dull moment here. Sonically, you’re in a carousel, then a London pub, now a grand ballroom swingin’ to Basie, and soon you’re speeding 100 miles down a desert highway. Sail to the Moon proves that accessible, anthemic rock does not have to make a simple indie girl run into the woods. This record rocks, with woodwinds.

—Alex Mattraw

Alex Mattraw sits down with singer/songwriter Biggi of Ampop:

CITC: How did you come up with the name Ampop? Were there any runners-up for band names?

Biggi: Me and (keyboardist) Kjartan were working on our first track together, (we were a duo for the first few years) and it was a mixture of ambient and a kind of trip-hop feel, but when I sung onto it, it made sense to call the song "Ampop" temporarily. Three months later we were picked to be released on a compilation and had to rush finding a name and we decided to stick to Ampop.

CITC: Listening to the early albums but especially your recently released Sail to the Moon, I hear complex melodies and harmonies. The new record features intricate instrumentation and composition. You must be classically trained—and if so, what were the first instruments you picked up? If not, what has led to this understanding of theory?

Biggi: We've always been interested in creating melodies, although we have just recently started using classical instruments on our recordings. I studied musicology for a year, but that really didn't help, it only increases your understanding in how music is written and you can read notes. We normally start by creating a song structure, and build a soundscape around it and it’s usually a coincidence what instrument or sound we use. We like to play around with different sound sources at early stages and see what fits a certain song or a melody. My first instrument was an acoustic guitar. My dad used to play the guitar and the piano and I sat around for hours listening to him, which inspired me a great deal. Then I took electric guitar lessons for a couple of years during high school and I've taken piano lessons as well, just to learn the fundamentals and how to read notes.

CITC: How do you solve the eternal problem of maintaining financial security as working artists in an isolated country where one beer costs the same as three martinis in the States?

Biggi: Well, practically we wrote, recorded, produced and performed our first 3 albums almost for no money at all. I remember a gig where we didn't even get a beer for playing. We've always been very independent as a group and we want to do most the work ourselves. Just recently our music has been successful in our homeland, so we've gotten a lot of the work back in some form, like respect and people coming to our shows, etc. We all have different jobs as well, for instance Kjartan works as a social worker for kids with problems, I write and produce music for adverts and films and Jon Geir is a storekeeper. We probably need to be successful in other territories to be able to live from doing music, but that is a work in progress.

CITC: Made for Market is beautifully sparse album and seems to mirror the barren parts of your country. Are you actually from Reykjavik or did any of you grow up in the vast fjords?

Biggi: Yeah, in a way Made for Market has this cold, lonesome sound and me and Kjartan have been asked whether we were depressed or something when we made it, but the truth is that we spent most of the time making it in a very small and narrow juvenile

bedroom and mixed it during a very snowy winter in a small harbour town called Hafnarfjordur. We both grew up in Reykjavik, but I actually grew up in Hafnarfjordur until I was five, but Kjartan grew up at some point in Sweden during the same age.

Jon Geir is actually from Isafjordur, which is the North West part of Iceland, a really strange but beautiful place. It has mountains all around the fjord,which can make you claustrophobic. The energy over there is enormous, there is nothing like it.

CITC: You have developed in so many musical directions since you put out your second electronica record, Made for Market. How has Ampop transformed itself from the rather underground sound one might expect to hear on an A.M. station into the literally amped pop explosion heard on Sail to the Moon? It seems the latter album is perhaps ironically "made for market" as it allows you to access a much wider audience. What has this process been like for you and are you happy with the results?

Biggi: I think it has a lot to do with bringing a drummer to the group. Me and Kjartan were getting bored of all the bedroom hang around and wanted to create a band that would be able to evolve as a live group. We were just fed up with doing all our music in midi sequencers on the computer, and found it challenging to start playing our instruments again for real. Actually we were getting really rusty on the instruments and had to practice a lot to keep up with our new drummer, as he was a very experienced live drummer. We have never been conscious about reaching a wider audience, it’s just something that has happened. We have always written "sing-along" songs at some point, but the costume we put on our music used to be much darker. But when we wiped the dust off our instruments and abandoned the computer environment, our music became more alive, in a good way I believe.

CITC: Have you received any criticism for reinventing yourselves?

Biggi: Yes, mostly in a positive way. People are becoming more aware that we are a live band, but during the making of our first albums we didn’t even bother playing more than 1-2 shows a year—we just weren’t good performers at all.

CITC: Sail to the Moon relies on strings and even woodwinds. Did you hire an orchestra to help you with the songs and also, how do you plan to tour with such a large entourage?

Biggi: We did hire a guy to help us out with the string arrangements, just to make sure they were done right. Then we hired a string quartet to perform the arrangements and a trombone and a trumpet player as well. Usually when we do our own shows in Iceland we bring all the team together live, but when showcasing or playing abroad we yet can’t afford it, although we would definitely like to bring them along.

CITC: In the song "3 Hours of Daylight" on My Delusions, you sing, "I’m staring out the window/ there’s not much to see but snow..." This song’s melancholy is sweet and suggests that a muse exists in such darkness. I’ve long had a theory that the tumult caused by the polarity of Iceland’s midnight sun and days of darkness (not to mention all the volcanoes and glaciers) is the very reason why the country renders such great songwriters. Can you tell me what influence the unique physical environment of Iceland has had on your creative process?

Biggi: Well, I spend a lot of my time in the summer in the Icelandic countryside fishing salmon, which is my favourite hobby and I can’t be without. The weather, landscapes and atmospheres of Iceland surely have something to do with our songwriting and for instance we wrote most of the songs for My Delusions during winter, when it was very cold and all was covered in snow. The weather kept us indoors and we chose to spend our time making music, instead of watching television or playing computer games, like most young people do nowadays. We also went to the countryside when putting together the songs for Sail to the Moon. We went to this very old village called Skalholt, which is a very historic place in Iceland; it’s where the old bishops used to reside. It is a very spiritual place; you can feel the energy from the mountains and glaciers surrounding you.

CITC: Your influences seem as varied as your sound; I hear current bands like Coldplay, Supergrass, and Travis but also Tears for Fears, the Beatles, Aphex Twin, Stereolab, and maybe even Queen. What was the first album you remember buying, and could you name a few influences?

Biggi: I used to listen to a lot of my dad’s and sister’s records when I was a kid; such as David Bowie, Dire Straits, Supertramp, Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne, The Beatles and of that kind. However my favorites as a juvenile were Sonic Youth and Nirvana; but at the time when me and Kjartan started working together I was mainly under the influence of IDM music, such as Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Portishead. Nowadays I’m listening to all kinds of music: Johnny Cash, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd’s early records, just to mention few.

CITC: So, your current record seems to straddle everything from pop to rock to jazz. What now?

Biggi: Currently we’re taking a break from making records and trying to get our records out in the big world and performing it live—that’s our priority now. However, we might take a u-turn and make a country record, or go back to our electronic roots and do a beat oriented record—you never know. As long as we’re doing what we love, we’ll be fine!