Kiasmos on finding their flow for the long awaited Kiasmos II

Kiasmos were taken completely unawares by the unexpected success of their debut album, a huge catalyst in the careers of both members. It also left the duo unsure how to approach a second record. The side project/supergroup of producer and songwriter Janus Rasmussen and BAFTA-winning composer Ólafur Arnalds, they released the self-titled Kiasmos back in 2014, and ten years later, Kiasmos II is finally here. The pair chat to Headliner about the surprise journey making electronic music for fun has taken them on, and how they found their flow again to create this brilliant new record.

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“I was in an electro-pop band, as the singer and synth player,” Rasmussen says when asked about how he met Arnalds. “We played a lot downtown in Reykjavik, at a venue called Oregon. And Óli was the in-house sound technician. At one point, we released an album and went on tour around Iceland to promote the album. We brought along Óli because he already mixed us a few times. And in the van, while we were bored driving between cities, we discovered that we had a similar interest in a type of club music that was going on at the time; fast and darker club music. So we started hanging out and making that kind of music. And we even made some beats in the van on the tour.”

There are some who may be less familiar with Kiasmos but are acquainted with Ólafur Arnalds, not least because his solo piano music helped pioneer an entire music scene and genre alongside his contemporaries Nils Frahm, Dustin O’Halloran, and Peter Broderick. There may be only two full Kiasmos LPs, but there are six Ólafur Arnalds albums on top of innumerable EPs, soundtrack albums and collaborations.

The fascinating thing about the debut and breakthrough Kiasmos album was how it intersected so naturally with this scene, dubbed ‘neoclassical’. Not merely because half the duo was making this music anyway, but other electronic artists also seemed to be circling in its orbit: Jon Hopkins’ IDM and techno albums would also include solo piano pieces, Rival Consoles is a label mate to Kiasmos on Erased Tapes records, and Max Cooper often performs at similar venues such as the Barbican in London.

Regarding the album unexpectedly lifting off the way it did, Rasmussen says, “It hit the right timing, the sound was just fresh at the time.” Arnalds adds, “I think it's opened up a new avenue for my whole career. It's inspired a lot of the stuff that I've then gone on to do with other projects. I think it's really good to have this variety in what we do. It's good to take a break from whatever you're doing like the solo stuff that I work on way more than a full-time job; every now and then to step away from it and work on another project.”

With the debut, self-titled album (or Kiasmos I as you could perhaps call it now) leading to countless festival bookings around the world and becoming a highly influential phenomenon in the dance music genre, you could be forgiven for thinking Kiasmos would have had more urgency to make and release a follow-up. But its 2014 release means it’s now been ten years since that release, with only the four-track Blurred EP in 2017 to fill the gap.

“We've been writing it for a while, on and off, and tried a few times to really get into the groove of making an album,” Rasmussen explains. “The oldest song on the album is from 2017 and then we didn't write much for the album for another two, or three years. Then we went on a trip to Bali to write some songs and three or four tracks there, and then another two years had to pass for us to meet up and finish the album. But once we decided we wanted to make and finish the album, it all came together pretty quickly.

“There was a little bit of expectation with this album that wasn't there when we made the first one. Back then, we barely knew what we were doing, so we just made whatever we wanted. But with this new album, people already have an idea of what Kiasmos is, so we always want to do something new."

"It's not a project we want to do unless it feels right in that moment,” Arnalds adds. “We can't be doing it because our fans or management are asking for it. It has to be because it's exactly what we want to do creatively and energetically. Because we also have the realisation that once we start down this road, we're going to be on it for a little while. When you do an album, there's usually a year of touring, and you need to be ready for that and actually want to do it.”

The greatly anticipated Kiasmos II announcement was quickly followed by the arrival of lead single Flown, accompanied by a gorgeous black and white music video in which an elderly gentleman has become obsessed with building a functioning pair of wings, sharing a spiritual moment with a crow in the process (as you do). It’s instantly one of the very best tracks the pair have put out — the percussive, plucked instrument intro will already have your hairs standing on end before the bass and beat hits, and this is all before a classic, descending Arnalds piano motif arrives with strings swirling around.

Arnalds then talks about how Flown is a great example of his creative process with Rasmussen, saying, “It's a fairly standard way for us to start a song where Janus brought a few beats he’d been working on, and we listened to them all, to see which one would give us the most instant inspiration to create a song around. I then found the main chord structure using a weird, plucky string-like instrument that I had been experimenting with. We simply spliced that together with the beat that Yanis brought. Then we spent the rest of the time together making the rest of the song elements, like the piano melody, strings, and other synths, and working on the beat together.”

One new element for Kiasmos II was recording in Bali, bringing back field recordings and new sounds. Rasmussen then talks about some of the other new audio joys they brought to the table. “For the newest songs, we used a lot of new synths, including the Osmose from Expressive E, which we used quite a bit towards the end. We also used the C-15 from Nonlinear Labs, both of which have a more digital sound, even though we're known for using very warm analogue synths, which we also used on the album.”

Arnalds chimes in with some of the staples from his solo and Kiasmos work, including the “Korg PS-3100 synthesizer from the 1970s is something I use very frequently. It's my favourite synth, and it's featured in most of our music. The PS-3100 was quite pivotal in the making of this new Kiasmos album as well. A lot of the piano on the album was recorded using my AKG C12A microphones, which I’ve had for a long time. I always use them for string recordings as well. For the orchestral stuff, we used them as the main mics, as I was able to borrow a third one to set up a mic array. I also have the AKG C414s, which we used to record in Bali, including for some of the piano parts.”

Just like the first album, Kiasmos II feels like a seminal work. After ten long years, it’s finally here for your listening pleasure. They are embarking on a huge tour of European festivals, Japan, the US and Mexico, and one of their biggest headline shows to date at London’s Troxy in September. Let’s savour this Kiasmos run while it lasts and put our hands together and pray it’s not a decade until the next one.

Listen to the full interview with Kiasmos on Headliner Radio, here: