Track By Track: Örvar Þóreyjar Smárason Explains múm’s History Of Silence

Experimental outfit múm celebrate their first LP in 12 years

Acclaimed experimental band múm explore silence, play, and muted sounds. However soft, múm surprise listeners with dynamic shifts in tone and intensity throughout their songwriting. Their first LP since the 2013 Smilewound, History of Silence came out of the band member’s shared creative urgency. Working with old and new ideas, the result is a wonderfully cohesive and innovative piece of music which distinguishes itself from múm’s previous body of work. History of Silence is out September 19 via Morr Music.

History of Silence by múm

Miss You Dance

It’s the perfect opening song for the album, in the sense that it lays out the mood for the rest of it. There are so many different elements in it, but they drift quite effortlessly in and out. Different layers of Samuli’s percussion is what keeps the music flowing, but aside from that my favourite bits are the orchestral parts played by Sinfonia Nord in Akureyri that sneak in once in a while and disappear just as quickly. For me personally this song is a strange blend of “Albatross” by Fleetwood Mac, “The King of Rock n Roll” by Prefab Sprout and “Voulez-Vous “ by Abba, but I doubt anyone will be able to hear it.

Kill the Light

There is a feeling of unrestrained drama in this song, I feel like parts of it could have worked well in an ‘80s kids’ adventure movie. But even so, this could still possibly be the most múm-song on the album. The video for this track is set to be released in early September, and it adds a whole new layer to it. It reflects the atmosphere of the song, but shifts it into new territory.

Mild at Heart

The lyrics were loosely inspired by the book I was reading in the studio at the time, The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino, but I think they probably only contain traces of nuts. The song is an ode to kind people, those who are often crippled by their own empathy.

Avignon

The lyrics are about a very fast car ride I had through the tight and narrow streets of Avignon more than 25 years ago. For such a simple song it still took us more than two years to get the piano sound right; we tried recording it on probably seven or eight different pianos in different places until it was finally right.

Only Songbirds have a Sweet Tooth

Possibly the first and only múm Scandi-reggae song, but maybe it’s not a reggae song at all. It starts off with the slowed down sound we recorded from a camera flash going off and is all light from there on. It is quite lo-fi sounding, a four-track cassette beat, mangled guitar, tipsy bass and distorted FX vocals, but keeps a bright disposition throughout.

Our Love is Distorting

I think the strength of the song lies in the way it contrasts between the almost collapsing first half, with its quiet wandering pianos and then the loud motoric drive of the second part. The lyrics are just, “Our love is distorting,” repeated over and over with a gradual swell of distortion on Silla’s vocals. The song didn’t take flight until we ran the vocals through a BOSS Super Overdrive pedal creating that swell. There is even an accidental pitch bend on the vocals where I unintentionally stepped on some random pedal next to it while we were recording. Of course we kept it.

A Dry Heart Needs no Winding

It’s the only instrumental track on the album, and again the title was inspired by what I was reading at the time, The Dry Heart by the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg… but other than that it bears no resemblance. At the core of this song is Róberta’s guitar, beautifully played, textured and full of character.

I Like to Shake

This was recorded on cassette in Prague when I was in film school 20 years ago and remained untouched until SinfoniaNord breathed new life into it last summer. It wasn’t supposed to be on the album, but when the opportunity arose to drape this beat-up cassette recording in lush strings, we of course jumped at it. Gyða’s vocals were added on the very last day of mixing and finally took the song to the place it had been seeking all along.