When did the initial idea for your latest single come together?
The initial idea actually goes back around fifteen years. I had recently gone through a divorce and found myself spending Easter alone in Trondheim. During Easter, the city becomes remarkably quiet because most Norwegians head to the mountains or their cabins, and that year the silence outside mirrored exactly how I felt inside.
Sitting alone with an acoustic guitar, the two chords and the main melody simply appeared. I had no idea at the time that it would eventually become a seventeen-minute piece.
The second half of the song wasn’t written until around ten years later, during the COVID lockdowns, when cities once again became eerily silent. Suddenly the title Silent City took on an entirely new meaning.
How would you describe the track to a reader that is unfamiliar with the band?
I’d describe it as a slow-burning musical journey.
It begins as an intimate reflection on loneliness and gradually expands into something much bigger. It’s atmospheric, dynamic and patient. Rather than relying on lots of chord changes or constant surprises, it evolves through textures, orchestration and emotion.
If you enjoy music that takes its time and rewards close listening, Silent City might be for you.
Can you tell us a bit more about the meaning behind the track?
The song really reflects two different kinds of silence.
The first is deeply personal—the silence after the end of a relationship, when you suddenly find yourself alone with your own thoughts.
The second is collective—the silence we all experienced during the COVID lockdowns, when cities across the world became strangely empty.
Lyrically, it also shifts perspective. It starts by searching for another person, but gradually becomes a search for yourself. It’s about navigating the constant dialogue between reason and emotion, fear and hope, and ultimately learning to trust both.
How would you say that the track compares to anything you’ve done before?
I think it represents holon quite well while also pushing the project further.
One unusual aspect is that the entire seventeen-minute piece is built almost entirely around just two chords. Instead of creating movement through harmonic changes, I challenged myself to make the arrangement itself tell the story through dynamics, rhythm, orchestration and texture.
It also features Kjell Magne Robak on cello, whose hauntingly beautiful playing adds a warmth and melancholy that became an essential part of the song’s identity.
What was the hardest part about putting it together, and why?
Probably deciding when to stop.
Because the song lived with me for so many years, it was constantly evolving. Every time I returned to it, I had new ideas. Eventually you have to accept that a song isn’t becoming better anymore—it’s simply becoming different.
Creating the accompanying animation was another huge challenge. I taught myself Blender while making it, so there was a lot of learning happening alongside the creative work. Rendering the animation took forever – so I had to rent some GPUs in the cloud to accelerate the rendering. So lots of firsts for me when doing this video.
Why should a reader check out the track?
Because it’s not trying to compete for your attention—it invites it.
In a world where everything seems designed to become shorter and faster, I wanted to create something that encourages you to slow down for seventeen minutes and simply experience it.
If you enjoy music that’s immersive, emotional and rewards repeated listening, I think you’ll find something to connect with.
What else can you tell us about the track that we haven’t covered in this interview?
One thing people might not notice on a first listen is that, alongside the electric and acoustic guitars, I’m also playing sitar on the track. Indian music has fascinated me for many years, ever since I travelled through India several times with my guitar, so it felt natural to let some of those influences find their way into the arrangement. The song also features some traditional Indian vocals, adding another colour to its musical landscape.
Another interesting detail is how the second half of the song actually came into being. During the recording sessions for the first part, after Geir and I had finished tracking the main drums, I asked him if we could quickly record a rough groove in 6/8 with an African-inspired feel, mostly using toms. At the time, I didn’t really know what it was for. We recorded it almost as an experiment, and afterwards it was basically forgotten.
Years later, during the COVID lockdowns, I came back to that discarded drum part. Suddenly it made perfect sense as the starting point for the second half of Silent City. Looking back, it almost feels as though that rhythm had simply been waiting for the right moment to reveal its purpose.
That’s actually very similar to how David Lynch, one of my biggest artistic heroes, has described his own creative process. He often talked about ideas arriving in fragments—that he rarely saw the entire work from the beginning. Instead, individual pieces would come to him first, and only by following those pieces would the larger picture gradually emerge.
That’s very much how I write music as well. I usually begin with a small seed—a melody, a chord progression, a rhythm, or even just a feeling. I rarely know where it’s ultimately going. The rest of the piece reveals itself gradually, almost as if I’m discovering it rather than inventing it. Only towards the end do I finally see the complete picture.
In many ways, Silent City is the perfect example of that process. It wasn’t planned as a seventeen-minute composition spanning fifteen years of my life. It simply grew that way, one piece at a time.
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