Music vibrates in you: Getting lost in Bjarki's unpredictable techno

Let’s talk about your three-album project. All three contain different sounds, styles and tempos and were made over an extended period of time. Why did you choose to release them like this. What are you trying to get across?

There was no particular reason. I just gave my music to Nina and I really like being a part of трип so I decided to give her all my music so it all just seemed pretty natural, I guess. We didn’t really decide any particular style or sound and a lot of the stuff is maybe four or five years old so releasing it now feels like closing a chapter of my life. I want to put all of this music out so I can focus on something else for the next few years.

Will the music you focus on next be very different to what we’re hearing now or in a similar vein?

I like how I work now, in that most of the tracks I’m going to release are always going to have a three or four year gap between when they were made. Next year I’ll probably release something I made in 2013. I like doing it like that. I won’t ever release something I’ve just made, I’ll maybe sneak something in there that’s fresh but I love the idea of releasing something I’ve been listening to a lot and that has meant something to me for a long time.

I make music all the time, I’m like an addict, it’s an addiction for me so I can always create something but a lot of it is shit, maybe. It’s nice to have someone like Nina who can filter out what suits for her concept.

Forty one tracks across three albums is a lot of music to release at once.

You know I’d love to release 80 but I don’t think it would be worth it and it would just be stupid. Like an overload, I guess.

It's quite a bold statement releasing that much in such quick succession, you don’t really see artists do that often and we’ve also heard there’s a story behind each one of your tracks. Is that the case?

Yeah I mean most of the good stuff that I do, that I like, usually has something to do with me personally. Either something that’s happened to me before, like I met an alien or I had a dream about something, or I close a certain chapter in my life. The music is like a photograph of something. I think that might be quite cliché but it’s something like that. I like to experiment a lot with both programs and gear – or people.

What do you use to make your music? It all feels very analogue?

I definitely don’t want to go into the technical side of things but I think that it would be best described as using everything and nothing at the same time. I’ve made with tracks with YouTube samples and YouTube Amen drum beats and breaks. I’ve even uploaded stuff to YouTube then downloaded it back and then uploaded it and downloaded it again, just to see how it sounds, like some sort of a glitch, then I’ll use that. It doesn’t matter what you have really, it’s what you do with what you have. Moodymann said that in his RBMA interview. It just depends; music is not only coming out from speakers, music is something that vibrates in you, whether it’s in key or off key, or if it’s on a keyboard or on a guitar. It’s just a fucking stone in the ocean. Wind can be music – I love wind, wind is my favourite thing.