Stian Westerhus is renowned for his experimental guitar improvisations and rich, mood-heavy studio work. He’s just as inventive in conversation.
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Does it feel different to improvise in front of an audience than alone?
Yeah, for sure. Imagine writing a story. The difference is like when you give it to someone to read—say you give that story to three hundred people to read in the same room as you, after you just finished it, and have them react to it. It's the same story, but it's not yours anymore. It's their experience.
For me, even though I don't really care that much about what the audience gets out of my music, I care about the fact that they actually get something out of it. I want an audience to experience the music, and I want the music to transcend me and the instrument.
What is channeled when improvising, and from where?
I used to think that if I pushed my creativity hard enough, had enough focus, I could by the sheer force of my concentration distill music from the instrument. But in recent years, I've realised the fact that the music I've internalised as a listener—like sound you give meaning and have feelings for—are just there for me to manage. You can't escape your own feelings for music you love, and as an improvisor you can't escape yourself, for many of the same reasons.
It's like thinking of music as atomic structures. Like small entities. All I have to do is manage these entities, and their inherent meaning will together form subjective contextual sense in the listener. In many ways it's about channeling your own abstract musical meaning without wanting to control it and the contextual output. At the best of times, the instrument isn't really there—and better still, I'm not really there. It's just music transcending the format. It's both very methodical and total abstract voodoo, and that's what I love about it. It's human.
I’ve seen you say you’ve settled on one setup of pedals—how did you arrive there?
I think you're referring to something I said about my pedals and electronics being the same in all the projects I do, maybe, because the setup keeps changing slowly as things break. But yeah, that has a reason.
I realised that I wasn't really interested in being a good guitarist, but was more interested in expressing myself through the instrument, without the boundaries of what is expected from the instrument. Not that that doesn't make me a technically good guitar player, or that the expressivity lies within the electronics, because that's far from the truth. But it means that whenever somebody hires me to play, I play as myself—be it with Ulver or the South Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra—and for that reason I bring my instrument, which also happens to have a few pedals attached to make that expression clearer.
You’re influenced by quite a wide range of different genres. What common ground do some of these genres have?
Good question. Urgency would be one. It's important for me to hear that this specific music “needs to be played”. That there are important choices made for this music to be what it is, and most of the music I love has a certain transcendence where the music and the musical elements in themselves are so strong that they transcend the format and the artist playing it, be it any genre.
How does your approach to writing lyrics differ from writing music?
It used to differ more, I think, as it was more detached from playing music and improvising, but in recent years there has been a shift to experimenting more with lyrics as I play myself into a composition. But it's a bit of both.
I've always written short ideas for lyrics. Sometimes I'll use them as starting points, sometimes the lyrics just present themselves as whole pieces, and sometimes I have to wrestle out a thematic concept for it to find the way. Like the track ‘Verona’. I rewrote the lyrics for that about four times before I found a way into it. Shakespeare came to the rescue—and mirrored the story of meeting my wife, having kids, and breaking with my family—with the story of Romeo and Juliet in Verona.
You’ve mentioned wanting to challenge your own control—when composing, do we lead or follow music?
My compositions tend to be simple on the surface, but demanding to play. Maybe not from an instrumental technical standing point, but they demand the player to insert themselves into the music.
I always try to show the players I write for where the keyhole is, give them trust and support they need to find their way of unlocking the door—and when they do, push them in to a space where they can experience being able to play music in a way that might not seem logical for them at first. Like when you work with orchestral musicians—they're not used to interpreting music in their that way.
Do we need to unlearn to experiment?
It depends what you mean. But, for example, from my experience as somebody who has too much jazz education, I've always treasured the theory I learned along the way, but I found the real challenge is persuading myself that what is important is what I hear in my hea—not if it is theoretically correct, or has the correct references in some genre I can relate to. Freedom is not something that is easily accessible as a grown-up.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
Hmmm, I don't know. But on the step from the other question; I did a tour with Zach Hill (from Death Grips and Hella) and I told him I really liked the way they had explored extending Hella, which is a duo, to a larger band with a singer etc. for a while. He said he had really enjoyed the experiment as well, but he was not so happy with the outcome in some cases. But he said, “that's how it's supposed to be—it wouldn't be an experiment if it all went well”. I totally agree with that, and I think more people should be less afraid of pushing the envelope a little too far. Do stuff you don't know how to do more often. Be more vulnerable.
There is also the guide to students from John Cage, which is good in terms of attitude towards doing music. That used to hang by my desk.
Are there any artists you’d like to shout out?
Woah—a ton of them, but yeah, well, I can mention two fairly new records out of a massive plethora of fantastic Norwegian artists that are on my playlist at the moment: Helga Myhr's “Natten veller seg ut”, and Deathprod's Occulting Disc; both albums being super strong solo recordings. Very inspiring.
Redundance is available for purchase here.
Interview: Andrew O’Keefe