Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy)

A few years ago I did a tour opening for Björk, and I met this guy, Valgier Sigurdsson, who was doing programming and engineering stuff for her. We’d hang out sometimes backstage and talk about the possibility of recording things together in Iceland. I was flattered and happy that he was so interested, and it seemed like an interesting adventure, but ultimately not a very feasible one.

Later, as I was working on new songs, I was eventually asked by Björk to come and sing on a song she was doing for Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint film. So I went and did that and ran into Valgier again. He asked me again about coming to Iceland to record, so finally I was just like “Okay, let’s go.“ We were in Iceland for a couple of weeks and it was winter there, so it was pretty disorienting. It was always dark.

V Mag, July 2006