Known for his work as a singer, lyricist, and composer, the acclaimed cross-disciplinary artist Georg Óskar made his debut as a solo artist with a professional recording in 2021 with the track “Walk on the Water.”
This song gave listeners their first exposure to a gifted and adventurous composer and producer who works in wide strokes, pulling from a hybrid analogue and electronic palette.
Georg Skar is originally from Iceland, however, he has made Oslo, Norway his home and present place of employment. He graduated with honours in 2009 from the renowned Akureyri School of Visual Arts in his native nation of Iceland. He attended the Faculty of Fine Art, Music, and Design in Bergen, Norway, and received his Master of Fine Arts degree there in 2016.
Since Skar’s graduation, his work has been shown in galleries throughout the globe, including in Europe, Asia, the United States, and other locations. The fresh new advanced song “Late Night Good Night” is taken from Georg skar’s upcoming debut album, “Worst Wait of Our Life,” which will be released soon.
“Late Night Good Night” is an experimental piece of electronic dance music that serves as a reflection on love, obsession, and the deterioration of Western civilisation. In addition to that, it is the first release by the artist to incorporate vocals.
The music opens with a timeless analogue bass, followed by some ambient synthesisers. A male singer goes up to the mike and delivers spoken word poetry. The subject matter of the poem is love, desire, and obsession. In response to the narrator’s praise, the film features three stunning ladies who strut their stuff for the camera.
The Debut LP as a whole has a significant amount of narration, an element that is uncommon in music produced nowadays. As a storyteller, he threw in his other artistic activity, which is painting, and this is the method that he used to convey his ideas to others.
Read on as he continues to speak about his music and discusses his whole history as an artist.
Who are your biggest musical influences?
I have so wide range of tastes in music, to name a few :
Aphex Twin, Jóhann Jóhannsson, GusGus, Velvet Underground,
Daft Punk, Crystal Castles, Boards of Canada, Nirvana and a lot of grunge rock and something alternative sounding and experimental. I could be writing this list forever, my influences come from so many directions.
What inspired you to write your latest album/song?
Like so many when the pandemic came, I was stuck at home. Reflecting on what was going on in the world, then looking inwards, also at the world and us as a whole. This was now almost 3 years ago, I am a painter and I was stuck at home, because of the lockdown so I could not travel by train to my studio as usual.
I had to create something, make something happen, so I decided to make music, I sure did have a lot of time on my hands at the time being stuck at home and all that. I had the drive to do something new, so I started making music only with the intention of making something for myself, I was bored. Boredom mixed up with a chaotic world is pretty inspiring. The songs and the album as a whole is reflecting on the time we throw recently.
What message do you hope to convey through your music?
I want to bring mind-liked people together, reach out, and highlight certain places in ourselves that we either have denied or feel that we carry alone.
What was the most challenging aspect of recording your latest album?
As I come from another profession as a painter, I have been working mostly in solitude, there is my comfort zone to stay in my studio and work on something I like to see or hear. Or just for the sake of working, forget and be in a flow state.
For my debut album I invited the musician Anthony Johan Løvaas to play the guitar and take part in the tracks he felt something could be added to. He has the vocals for the track I am dead for example. My friend Þóroddur Ingvarsson, mixed the project and it went for mastering at Glow Cast Mastering in Berlin.
What I am trying to say here and what was the challenge for me was to work with others as I am so used to working alone, both as a producer and then working on my paintings. But what has been the stepping stone for this album to come to be, was teamwork. I learned so much both letting go in some sense, and getting good people to do the things I was no good at. I learned a lot from working with others which is so valuable.
What has been your favourite moment or experience as a musician so far?
This is my Debut album, and the past 3 years or so is very much my first experience in creating or composing music. I was a DJ in my early twenties, playing techno and house music but that is almost 17 years ago.
Then came a long break from everything music related, and it was not until last year I decided to go back into music, but now as a producer, vocalist and creator. I don’t consider myself to be a musician not in the sense I am mostly an artist which has different ways of expressing myself. My favourite thing will always be to create, to dwell in a space of creation that zone is highly addictive.
How do you balance your personal life with your music career?
It’s not a career yet, so it is pretty well-balanced.
How do you handle negative criticism or feedback on your music?
There are many ways to think about this. There will always be people who like your stuff and don’t like your stuff. That’s the way it is. Some criticism one can use and think about, other needs to be tossed out of the window or simply ignored.
I don’t control personal taste, or some specific this and that, maybe people don’t like the vocals or something else and so on. I come from a world of painting it’s the same there, not all like my paintings, will that mean I stop making paintings, of course not. Criticism is mostly a good thing and has to be available.
People obviously have the right to say what they feel when art goes into the world. And when one is so connected to what he or she makes it can be difficult to swallow some hard facts or harsh criticism, but if one can take that to improve oneself, it’s a good thing.
What advice would you give to aspiring musicians trying to make it in the industry?
I have had a very simple and naive theory since I was really young and that is simply if you like it very likely somebody out there will like it too. Keep working hard at the things you like to do in life.
I have not made it in the music industry this is just general advice which helped me in my creativity and kept my hopes higher when I lived in a small town in the north of Iceland, where my hometown was not a boiling pot when it comes to culture, so I had to be naive and simple-minded to get closer to the place I vision for my self.
Do you have any upcoming projects or releases that you’re excited about?
Yes, I do! I have been making music recently, I will let my LP Worst Wait of Our Life, gets its time. Then I start releasing some of my other stuff.
Do you have any plans to branch out into other genres or styles of music?
I can’t stay that, I don’t even know in what genre I belong, I just keep creating things which resonate and makes sense to me. I listen to all kinds of genres myself, but I am less mindful of that when I make my own music. It will continue to be electronic-based with some slow-burn vocals which is maybe the only thing I know for sure.
