press
Remix
2003
by Gerald Gibson
Stuck To Me
As the home of Royksopp and the Kings of Convenience, Norwegian city Bergen has been proclaimed dance music's latest Detroit style hotspot and all eyes and ears have inevitably turned to whatever other musical talents the town might hold.
One such act is Magnet, aka Even Johansen, whose debut album, 'On Your Side' has just been released through British label, Ultimate Dilemma, which is also home to the likes to Zero 7. However, to lump Johansen in with the likes of Royksopp would be a mistake. For one thing, the nomadic Norwegian has only just returned to live in Norway after several years abroad.
"I lived in Bergen for a long time and then I moved to Newcastle, Bristol, London and then Scotland," recalls Johansen, who has gotten up at the crack of dawn to speak to REMIX. "I'm very restless. My girlfriend is very restless too byt we've decided that we're not going to be restless anymore."
Johansen also maintains that the influence a particular place can have upon music is over-rated. "I've discovered that where you live has no bearing on what I write and ho wmuch I work," he states. "It's funny, Bergen is a small place with only about 250,000 people so we all know each other and we get on. But it's not like we're best buddies and we go and drink coffee and red wine together, although that happens occationally. Bergen is a very healthy place to be musically at the moment because of the vibe of how it is. For years, Norwegian musicians have been trying to emulate what they do in Britain but then it was almost like everybody wen 'fuck it, no-one's paying attention to what we're trying to copy so we might as well do out own thing, do what we want to do.' The paradox is that as soon as people start doing their own thing, people start paying attention. I think everybody's been slightly surprised by the reaction."
According to Johansen, he has been into music since he was a child. "Like everybody else, I've played in many bands but one thing that shaped me a little is going on tour with my Dad's band when I was young," he recalls. "It was like joining the circus. You kind of become the woman with the beard for a while. You get used to getting looked at and it was good to see what kind of lifestyle it was. How incredibly glamorous it was for them and how incredibly unglamorous it was for me. It's a strange thing. I've always been a musician. I've never taught myself to do anything else."
Johansen is nicknamed 'the Bergen cowboy' because of his interest in country music, the wild west and Americana. "Someone described my music as electronicana, which has got a kind of humble and grandiose feeling to it, if it's possible to be humble and grandiose at the same time," laughs Johansen. "One of my greatest heroes is Clint Eastwood. There's a certain personal freedome about all the spaghetti westerns because [the cowboys] do what they want to do. There are no rules and regulations that apply but they are their own ones. They don't give a shit about the law itself beacuse the law itself is not really there anymore. There's certain drama and dynamics about that and obviously the music [by Ennio Morricone] is incredible in some of the spaghetti westerns."
Why did you cover Bob Dylan's 'Lay Lady Lay; with Gemma Hayes? "I'm not a bidy Bob Dylan fan but I think the song is very good," says Johansen. "Lyrically, it's an expectant, optimistic but inconclusive look at a situation and I think 'On Your Side' as an album has got that feel as well. It's expectant and, in my opinion, optimistic and uplifting but it hasn't really got a conclusion. 'Lay Lady Lay' was a very natural song to pick because I wanted to have something a little bit sweet in there, to life the album and break it up from just having me there. With Gemma, we played some concerts with her last year so it was a natural thing. She kind of picked herself. She suited the part."