Carmen Villain’s world beyond words

Photography by Signe Luksengard I begin our interview by asking Carmen Villain where she was when she recorded the sweeping, decelerated expanses of her new album, Memoria. Filled with crushed samples and movement, the tracks are so vast and layered I find it impossible not to conjure physical space when listening before our call. I picture tundra and craggy ocean, sky and, inevitably, Norwegian fjords. She tells me she recorded some final touches in Cabo de Gata, a volcanic natural park in southern Spain. Ah, I think. This makes sense. The music must be inspired in some way by that landscape; all salt flat, dark rock, barreling sea. But no – the main body of Memoria, she says, was recorded in “a room in an office building, basically.” Her studio, in Oslo. “I don’t think the sounds I make in one place versus the others would be different because of the space,” she says. Rather, her process is like “filling a space with sounds… almost like a metaphysical experience.”I change tack. Perhaps it’s an imaginary place? When she’s listening to the tracks, is she envisioning a space, is there some landscape that she is trying to paint? Villain is kind but firm. “I don’t know if I’m consciou...