Eivør Pálsdóttir, simply known as Eivør, is a name you may not recognize, but you are guaranteed to have heard her ethereal voice in the numerous soundtracks she has been a part of lately. The Faroese singer/songwriter is known for her unique vocalization techniques such as throat singing which she explains has Nordic cultural roots. Eivør’s latest work includes the video game soundtrack to God of War Ragnarök and the accompanying soundtrack to the hit Netflix series, The Last Kingdom. In creating these grand and otherworldly soundscapes, Eivør and her collaborators use both classical and modern instrumentation, along with Eivør’s voice to complement the visual narratives. mxdwn had the honor of talking with Eivør about her latest release, The Last Kingdom: Destiny Is All soundtrack, how she uses her voice as an instrument and how audiences react to her voice during live performances.
mxdwn: First off, how are you doing and where are you currently in the world?
Eivør: I’m doing great! Right now I’m in Denmark where I spend half of my time, and I’m usually in the Faroe Islands as well. But right now, yeah. These weeks I’ve been spending them in Copenhagen.
mxdwn: Being from the Faroe Islands, how do you feel like your geographical origins incorporate itself into your music?
Eivør: I guess where you come from is always a part of your inner landscape. And creatively for me that has been a huge inspiration in many ways on many levels in my songwriting and in my productions and sounds and stuff. I draw a lot of inspiration from my roots.
mxdwn: You have been doing quite a bit of soundtrack work lately from The Last Kingdom and God of War Ragnarök. What has the process of working on these soundtracks been like and how do you immerse yourself in these visual worlds through the music?
Eivør: It was quite new to me when I first started working with The Last Kingdom. And now it’s about eight years ago that the first episodes were recorded. I remember that John (Lunn) contacted me, the composer of the series and he was looking for a female vocal. And he flew me over to London and we tried out some things. From there it kinda escalated further and we ended up co-writing the whole score for the whole series. And one thing led to another and it became a huge part of my creative life all of a sudden, to be creating film music. It’s been really inspiring in so many ways because usually for me I’m a performer and I release my own records, and this was a different space for me to move in, in a way. Because when you create the music for film and picture, you have a different kind of frame to work in. And at the same time, there’s a huge freedom.
In The Last Kingdom for example, I have thought of my voice much more as an instrument, part of the instrumentation. And it’s wordless vocals, it’s more about the emotion of the scenes. It’s been really fun and really inspiring. And the same with God of War. Video games are quite similar to films these days. It’s very much about getting the emotions out of the scenes. And there’s a huge spectrum. Like a huge contrast, very emotional scenes and then there are the more aggressive battles.
mxdwn: When working on these soundtracks, what’s the initial process of making the music? What helps you more, is it the concept of a story and characters or is it have a clear visual representation of the world you are trying to create?
Eivør: It’s all about strengthening what’s already there. If I get a scene from John, he would send me the scene that we’re working on and maybe some thoughts behind it like what’s happening in the scene and what do we want to bring out emotionally for this scene. And then I just go from there and try to capture that as much as I can. You never want the music to shadow over the scene, you always want the music to carry it. To make it even stronger. I think that’s the job for when you work with film and TV.
mxdwn: When working on a soundtrack for a historical piece, how important is it to be culturally accurate? What does that research process look like when you’re trying to make something especially with music?
Eivør: Yeah, both these things are very Nordic, and based on the Nordic sagas. For me that felt kind of natural to draw inspiration from my roots in Faroese folk music which is very much based on all the Norse sagas. I think it’s important to have some kind of red thread in that sense that it’s historically correct, both lyric wise and things that you use or get inspired by from those things. But because I have strong roots in Nordic music it felt very natural for me to draw inspiration from.
mxdwn: In the The Last Kingdom: Destiny Is All soundtrack, there’s a lot of contrasting sounds clashing like classical instruments with electronic noises, and very loud, grand vocal passages with soft, gentle singing. How does this clashing of different sonic elements help define the tone of the show?
Eivør: I know that when John started working on the music for the soundtrack, he wanted to create some contrast by instead of using old Nordic instruments which you don’t really know what they are, he wanted to use analog synths which is a modern instrument, but it’s also very organic and alive. When you create something with an analog synth, it’s almost impossible sometimes to recreate it because it’s very much, almost like the human voice in the moment where you capture some kind of mood with the synth. And that electronic world combined with the vocals I’ve been doing such as throat singing and primal sounding vocals somehow have created the world, the sound world which is filled with contrast like you say. I think it’s able to capture some very primal sounding thing combined with something more modern.
mxdwn: I know that you talk about using your voice as an instrument. Were there any specific vocalization techniques that you had to learn on these projects? And were there any challenges you faced when trying to find how your voice fits into these different worlds?
Eivør: Yes, funny you ask that because I’ve always been really curious with the voice and I’ve always been experimenting a lot, vocally. I’ve always been curious about what the human voice can do. And this series really gave me the freedom to play around with all those crazy sides of myself, if I can put it that way. I think I’ve used a lot of the techniques that I’ve been working with during my career. But I also definitely discovered new sounds in my voice for the series because you get all these scenes and I would just play around with them very freely. For example, there are a lot of battle scenes where I’m using a more, almost like growling voice which I haven’t done much of before. I think just naturally I discovered a few new things through this.
mxdwn: And one of the vocalization techniques that you have used in the past is called throat singing. Can you explain the origins of that and how you first incorporated that into your music?
Eivør: That started for me many years ago, maybe 15 years ago. It kind of happened quite naturally on a live show once. It’s not something I had been thinking about so much but it was more like a thing that I all of a sudden discovered in a live show where I was performing with my drum, and I was improvising some of these more guttural sounds just started to pour out of me. After that I started experimenting more with it. And I think that what I landed on today is probably a mix of throat singing from all around the world. It’s inspired by old traditional Nordic way of singing which is very raw in a way. But also I have been very much into beat-boxing earlier in my life and gotten a lot of ideas from other Inuit throat singers and people from Greenland as well. I think it’s kind of my own interpretation of how throat singing could sound like in a Nordic way.
mxdwn: Obviously you have all these different vocal stylings that you’ve tried out before. What kind of music were you listening to when you were younger and how did the progression of all the different music you listened to get you to where you are today?
Eivør: I’ve been listening to so many different kinds of music, everything from classical to rock, jazz. I think there are many different things that have inspired me. And I’ve always loved folk music, the music that comes from the people. And hearing folk music from different cultures is always quite special because it reflects so many things. It reflects the landscape and the people so much. That’s what I love about it. I’ve been listening a lot to a singer called Mari Boine. She inspired me a lot when I was a teenager. She has that primal way of singing. Everything from that to Maria Callas to Robert Plant to Björk to Kate Bush, I just love an expressive singer. It doesn’t matter what genre as long as it’s powerful and expressive.
mxdwn: When listening to all this music, it’s willingly. One thing I’m interested in hearing about is how it feels for you to have your voice embedded in a massive video game franchise like God of War where players reluctantly hear your voice sing rather than willingly?
Eivør: That’s really crazy to think about sometimes that people hear my voice when they’re playing that video game. I’m not a gamer myself so I don’t really know how they experience it but it’s really cool.
mxdwn: You have these amazing, beautiful live shows you put on. When performing these songs live, do you think the songs, especially from these different soundtracks, tell a different story when they’re on stage rather than when paired with the visual they are usually tied to?
Eivør: Oh, definitely. That’s a very interesting question because in general I’ve always felt this with music. That you record an album and it has a certain meaning to you, each song. Then you take it to the audience, live, it all of a sudden becomes something else. It becomes their story too sometimes. It kind of opens up a little bit and I definitely feel that with the soundtrack music when I can perform it live for an audience. It all of a sudden has room for much more interpretation and emotions all depending on the audience and the mood in the room. That’s always an interesting thing with live music.
mxdwn: What’s the most interesting reaction you’ve seen throughout the crowd when you’re singing your songs?
Eivør: I’m always astonished that audiences all around the world sing along to my songs because they don’t know Faroese but I still see their mouths moving in Faroese, and that always fascinates me. I’m like, “Wow! You’re singing along and it’s not even a language you speak.” It’s always nice to get reactions from audiences. It’s my favorite thing to share music live with people. I’m just really grateful for the audience that come to my shows.
mxdwn: Even if there is some language barrier, I feel like music is very universal where it doesn’t even matter what the language is, you just feel it and I love that.
Eivør: Yeah, definitely. I love that too. You don’t always have to understand the lyrics in order for it to touch your feelings. Sometimes maybe it’s even better because it creates a more open space for interpretation.
mxdwn: Thinking about the future, what other worlds do you envision your voice encompassing? Whether it’s through soundtracks or your own solo work, what kind of soundscapes do you wish to create with your voice?
Eivør: Well, now that The Last Kingdom is over and they made the final movie, I hope that I will be doing more music for film in the future, definitely. On a personal level, what I want to do with my voice, right now I’m working on a new album which will be out next year. And I’ve been experimenting a lot with vocals and different layers of vocals. And I guess I’m doing that even more for this album than I’ve done on my previous ones. It’s probably because I’ve been working on soundtracks and stuff lately. I take it one step at a time and I don’t know what I’ll be doing in ten years. But right now I’m just trying to create something beautiful and something that can awake some feelings in people’s hearts whether it’s something dramatic and rough, or something soft. It doesn’t matter so much. I like to work with the contrast and to create interesting spaces with my voice.
To keep up to date with everything Eivør has coming up including tour dates and new releases, check out her website. And don’t forget to listen to The Last Kingdom: Destiny Is All soundtrack, available to listen to on all streaming platforms now.
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