Kaada - Music for Moviebikers

I try to make the musicians do something they're not comfortable with doing, because when they're challenged they'll give you their edgiest music.

Feature by Ali Maloney | 14 Aug 2006
Film composer, musician and Mike Patton collaborator Kaada's latest album, 'Music for Moviebikers' is a grandiose epic that stirs the soul in a way that few albums can hope to. A melting pot of vast cinematics and Scandinavian pop, the album draws upon all Kaada has learnt from scoring soundtracks as well as his time touring with his band, Cloroform.

"The album was a huge project involving 22 musicians and all kinds of adapted instruments," Kaada tells The Skinny, "It was completely different compared to my previous albums where I was sitting in front of my computers and controlling everything myself. We recorded the strings and the melodic instruments in a mausoleum in Oslo and it was a very inspiring place to record in. The only problem was that it was very dark so I couldn't read any of my notes that I had written down."

Utilising guitars, stringsm, vocalists, and several home-made instruments, it is easy to take the scale of this album for granted in an age of digital samplers and synths. "I try to make the musicians do something they're not comfortable with doing," Kaada explains. "Because when they're challenged they'll give you their edgiest music.

"I asked one singer to sing like a 90 year-old woman and one of the violinists wasn't happy when I started putting rubber bits between her strings, but after a while they understood what I meant."

With such attention to performance and his expansive musicality, it is little surprise to hear that Kaada has standing offers to compose for two of the big symphony orchestras in Norway and for the Norwegian Opera. "It will be enormously challenging to play live with all 22 musicians, but we're talking about playing this material with a small ensemble. I've been touring on so many dirty rock stages, it would be really nice to tour old theatres," Kaada muses.

Already an accomplished and awarded soundtrack composer, 'Music for Moviebikers' suggests a very narrative or image driven theme, but Kaada is keen to separate the two with none of his movie soundtracks having been released on CD.

"I'm not a fan of soundtrack CDs. I don't think film music works out of context," he says. "I wanted to make something that worked just as an album. I just brought all the instrumentation and the colourful soundscapes of film music to focus on trying to push moods. I wanted to make an album that wasn't happy or sad, but conjured a bit of both in everything."

Mission accomplished.
Music for Moviebikers' is out now on Ipecac. http://www.kaada.no/