Interview originally conducted for Clash in March 2012.

Things have been quiet from the Sigur Rós camp of late, but Jónsi has been typically hard at work. The band’s softly spoken frontman has spent the best part of 2011 hidden away preparing the soundtrack for Cameron Crowe’s We Bought A Zoo, an unlikely collaboration that’s resulted in a lush ambient soundscape. And it all came about entirely by chance, as Jonsi explained to me recently.

You’ve had your music used in films in the past, the most notable use for me was on The Life Aquatic, but some people may be quite surprised to see you working on a family blockbuster. What drew you to the project initially? 

I think probably how it started out was I was in Reykjavik and I was watching TV on Friday night and Cameron’s film came on, Almost Famous. And I just remember telling him how much I liked that movie and I sent him an email telling him how much I liked that movie and he came back to me right away and told me that they were in the middle of shooting We Bought A Zoo and that they were kind of inspired by the documentary we did, Heima, and that he’d listened to the solo album I’d done, and did I want to score a movie? So it was quite accidental in a kind of nice way. So I think that was a good starting point.

How did you find the process of composing for a feature film compared to writing music conventionally?

I guess when you’re writing your own songs you’re just thinking about yourself and just trying to make something that makes you feel good basically, and you’re just doing it for yourself. But when you do soundtrack work, it’s kind of different. You have to think about the movie and the director and characters and the build up of the movie. So it’s a very different approach I think. But also a really good learning experience for me.

I understand you’ve had a working partnership with Cameron Crowe since Vanilla Sky. He’s been very vocal with his praise for your music and its influence on his work. How did his support influence your work on the Zoo soundtrack?

He was really supportive and he was really open minded and just encouraging me to try whatever I wanted basically. So it was just super.

You also wrote a track with Cameron didn’t you? How did you find that collaborative process?

It was good. I had already written the song and I needed lyrics so I don’t know. Cameron’s just obviously really good with words and he wanted to write lyrics with me. So we kind of just met in his back garden and wrote some words together. And it’s kind of different. It’s sometimes difficult to work with other people because they’re not used to it. But it was quite easy with Cameron. I think you just have to kind of open up a little bit. He’s a person who doesn’t do this normally so it’s challenging, but it’s very good.

How did that differ to your experience collaborating with the band? 

It’s quite different because when you’re with the band it’s all of us playing together. We’re not talking that much actually. We just kind of play until something happens and then you kind of mould that in to a song.

Your sound, be it solo, or with Alex or Sigur Ros, has come a long way from the darker tones of Von to the lighter celebratory style we’re familiar with today. Is that a reflection of where you were personally back in 1997?

Yeah, I think so. When we were doing the Brackets album we were kind of doing the whole second album thing. And yeah, I think it was kind of quite difficult. Getting known and talking to a lot of record companies and lawyers and shit like that. So we had a bit of a hard time. But yeah, I guess some of the stuff we wrote then was kind of darker.

Is that a style that you would be keen to revisit again in the future? 

Yeah, we’ll be tempted to do that again actually. I think it’s important for us to do that soon.

There’s something inherently cinematic about your musical style. Is that something that influences the sound of your music?

I think everything basically influences you. Yeah, probably. Some movies and some films influence you in some ways, I think.

Is there anything in particular or anyone’s work that inspires you?

I like Darren Aronofsky who did Black Swan. He makes really good movies. And Wes Anderson of course. There are so many directors. I think I just really like this form as a media. Moving images and words. Dialogue and music. Acting. There’s so much of everything in one. It’s a powerful medium to play with.

Is that something you’re keen to explore yourself? Beyond Heima and Inni do you have any more aspirations to experiment with film as a band in future?

Yeah, definitely. I think, like I said, yeah I love this medium. It’s so powerful. It’s kind of the ultimate medium and I would love to do something more in movies.

Do you have any ideas about anything you would like to do?

I guess I would like to start working on scoring another movie again or something like that.

Is there anything in the pipeline in terms of that at the moment? 

No, I’m working with Sigur Ros at the moment. We’re doing another album. So I’m putting all my focus on that at the moment.

When can we expect to hear that?

Hopefully it’s coming out in the beginning of next year. I guess it’s kind of like… it’s going to have a slightly darker undertone than our other stuff.

Generally, what’s your response to the use of the band’s music in the mainstream?

Erm, it’s alright. I think some songs get more focus than others and I guess the focus in recent years has been this celebratory and upbeat music and some songs have been overused and guess that’s just how it is. When you have this blanket agreement like you do with some radio stations and the BBC and stuff like that, you can’t control it that much in some ways. So that’s just kind of how it is I think.

Do you ever feel that songs are misrepresented?

Yeah, but I think you just have to let go of that feeling. When you release a song it’s just kind of out there. It’s gonna be used in my different purposes than you ever imagined and I think you just kind of have to let go of some of that pride and stuff like that.

How do you tend to choose between languages when writing? Is that something that develops gradually?

Yeah, basically all of us write the music first and then we start there. And we’ll listen to my guide vocal and usually that’s where we’ll start writing lyrics by listening to the guide vocal I did. I’ll listen to that and try to see if there are any words or hidden messages in those lyrics or that voice performance. Sometimes I hear something in Icelandic, sometimes I hear something in English. It’s always different. I think it just happens quite naturally.

Do you have more plans to work with Alex again the future?

Yeah definitely. I think we worked really well together and I think the big plus for me is that he knows me so well and it’s really easy to work together. He understands me really well and we work really well together.

When doing solo projects, how do you make the distinction between something working as a Sigur Ros song and a Jonsi song? What’s the distinction for you?

I think it’s how Sigur Ros works together is so different from working on my own. There we meet with four of us together and we write a song, you know. And it’s usually always together. We just write everything together. So if I write a song I wouldn’t normally give it to Sigur Ros because we write our stuff together. If I write a song I’m just at my house doing a song for me basically.

Now you’ve got this established working relationship with Cameron, has he expressed interest in working with you again on future projects? Is that something we can look forward to again in the future?

Yeah, it might be. I’m not sure. We haven’t talked about stuff yet. He’s shown interest in working on some other stuff, but we can’t be sure what that is. I think at the moment he’s just working full-on doing this movie and getting this off the track.

But for you has it been quite a gratifying experience to watch the project grow with your music? 

It’s definitely been a good learning curve for me, and I learned a lot on this. I think that was just a nice thing for me. That’s what I took out of it the most. That’s what’s gratifying for me. For me to get this sneak peak in to this crazy world of Hollywood, so it was good for me to learn a little bit about that.

And it hasn’t scared you away at all?

No. I think Cameron took good care of us. He had all the sharks hidden away so he took really good care of us and had us hidden away in a studio with no visitors. It was a great environment.