An in-depth conversation with Ivan Ave
by Nikita Chistov.
A few months back I linked up with one of my favorite artists in the game, Norwegian rapper Ivan Ave of Mutual Intentions, hoping to have a face-to-face chat with him in the heart of Oslo. Sadly, the coronavirus outbreak made it impossible for me to leave the Czech borders, and we had to content ourselves with a mere FaceTime talk. It was a warm, fruitful one, nonetheless, and definitely a highlight of my quarantine. I hope that you’ll find this exchange as eye-opening as I did and continue staying home for the sake of yourself and others… to the sounds of Ivan’s brand new saudade-drenched Double Goodbyes LP, of course. Peace.
My funny quarantine
Nikita: Hey Ivan! How is the corona situation over in Oslo?
Ivan: Hey man! It is pretty chill, not as panicky as in the very beginning, but not normal by any stretch of the imagination. I think we are about a month deep right now. So people have adjusted a little bit, and I think that the kindergarten is open back up today. The schools are still shut though.
N: I’d like to discuss the situation a bit further, as it’s our reality for the time being, and I think it is good that we at least briefly touch upon the pressing matters. How are you keeping your mind fresh during this madness?
I: The first weeks were the toughest. I cannot necessarily say that I am keeping my mind fresh. For me, it’s been a very fluctuating mental state. One day I’ll be full of hope and feel inspired because the situation is so new and unprecedented, but the next day I will be depressed and really needing a hug, but there is nobody to give me one. It’s definitely ups and downs, but now that we are about a month into it, I am doing pretty well at getting out at least once or twice a day to have a bike ride or to kick a soccer ball. I am also trying to see at least one friend every day while keeping a distance.
I’ve been doing that for the last two weeks, and it’s really helped. I am ready to ride this out and get through it with some new experiences and maybe some new skills as well. Although I am trying to not be too productive. A lot of people are burying themselves in work right now, trying to make the most of it, and that’s not my approach, though I am also trying to come out on the other end of it with some new knowledge or wisdom.
N: I see, you are trying to strike that balance between developing your own personal abilities while also spending the time with your closest folk and keeping calm.
I: Yeah! In Norwegian, we have this saying to sit quietly in the boat. It’s pretty much like don’t rock the boat. I am staying chill and waiting it out while also trying to build on this moment.
Playing ball, doing me
N: Right off the bat, I’d like to travel with you way back in time, a couple of decades back, in fact, to your childhood spent in the Telemark county of Norway, to set both the scene and the atmosphere for those reading this interview. If I were to come to your family place back in the day and be given your family album, what are the kinds of things I would likely see there? A lot of friluftsliv, I reckon? (friluftsliv: literally open-air life, a key term in Norwegian culture denoting spending time outdoors)
I: Yes, man, a lot of friluftsliv! Camping was a big thing, a lot of roadtrips — my dad had a minivan. We also had a dog, a golden retriever called Gabi. Some marching band stuff…
N: Kids marching bands are a thing in Norway, right?
I: Yes, and my father played the trumpet in the same band that one of my sisters played in. I was never in a band though.
N: Sounds like real happy times.
I: It was a good time for sure.
N: I am quite sure that in one of your previous interviews, you’ve discussed the role and significance of children having their own creative space to grow and express themselves. Do you feel that you yourself were offered such a creative space as a child?
I: It’s a good question. I think I was given a lot of freedom but within a small community, so it is not like the options were plentiful in terms of getting into different interests. But that was beyond my horizons anyway. I didn’t know that I might have been missing out on learning fencing or whatever. So in my childhood, my parents were good at not forcing me to do too many things. They did have to force me into friluftsliv sometimes. But I didn’t do music school. All my three sisters did, and it’s not like they were forced into it. It’s just that I wanted to run around, play ball, and do me. There was that freedom, and I think it’s also why I ended up doing music for a living. There was never anyone who would force me to do music. No one taught me at a too early age what music is and how it’s supposed to be done. I still feel that freedom of rediscovering music every day.
It can be restricting to do music professionally, however. Because at the end of the day, it is your job. It comes with a lot of responsibilities. But having said that, the moments when I do feel the most inspired when I get a kick out of music is when it surprises me. Music can surprise you by showing you a different side of what it is. It can be so many things, serve so many purposes and functions, and be made in infinite ways, so I think that when I enjoy the process the most is when music surprises me, and I surprise myself.
Nu Path(s)
N: Do you think that, in a bit of a paradoxical manner, because you and your Mutual Intentions crew come from one of the coldest countries in the world, you make some of the warmest music out there? Do you think it has to do with the cult of, excuse my Danish & Norwegian, hygge and koselig in Denmark & Norway? (some of the cultural staples of Denmark & Norway, denote a feeling of content, warmth, coziness but do not have a direct translation to English)
I: I think it’s a pretty natural journalistic angle because it would be such a good story if that was the case. I am not trying to downplay the question, though, because it’s interesting, but I don’t think you can jot it down to temperature, the long winter, or the cultural need to be warm and together.
For us, it’s more on the nerdy level. A common denominator for all the members of Mutual Intentions is growing up looking for something that wasn’t put in your path by everyone around you. Also, there is a spiritual dimension to it where we all respond to deep art and music. When we started the crew, it just became very natural to develop that interest further. It is more about curating the type of energy that you want in your life, and I don’t see the clear connection with hygge and koselig from the art point of view. I think it’s been more of a path less traveled for most of us. More so than a product of some cultural composite.
N: I am just trying to spot all kinds of connections, and in my case, for example, I am from Russia, and I can see that sometimes, in the cultural sphere, there is this tendency or strive towards warmth, towards the other end, that a lot of artists express. Because we have too much cold, brutality… cold-bloodedness. So we naturally reach out for the other stuff, the good stuff.
I: Right, you are also describing what I am getting at — you are looking at what the mainstream culture is not necessarily providing you. I think that’s been a key factor for us, that’s where MI grew from. I don’t actually think of temperature in terms of sound. I think about color a little bit, about texture a lot, but temperature never comes into my metaphorical language when I work on music.
Some names and gems
N: In your interview with Ali Shaheed Muhammed, you discussed the mission of labels like Habibi Funk to seek out and resurrect obscure gems. Is introducing audiences to dusty Scandinavian grooves or Norwegian music in particular something you see yourself and the Mutual Intentions crew doing some time down the road?
I: Not really, because, in my opinion, there are very few danceable records from Norway from the mid-60s through the 80s. I would say that there is way more of an intention to bring forth unknown gems in general regardless of where they are from. So for us, it’s never been a very patriotic project. It’s been very godless in that sense — whatever is good is good. We obviously wanna bring people the music that we make locally, but we don’t see it as a Norwegian project. We see it as a community project. We wanna show people that Oslo is a good music city, but we don’t think of it as exporting Norwegian culture or Scandinavian culture even. We see it as partaking in the global conversation — that is, music production and DJing.
N: You are really trying to show that it’s on the map while acknowledging a variety of influences in your collective system.
I: Yeah, and I wanna add that I am speaking on behalf of a lot of people right now. I don’t know if Fredfades would give you the same answer. But I think that for us it’s been more about introducing the world to our scene than it’s been about introducing the world to Norway or some kind of cultural heritage.
N: Even if it’s not danceable, or not a disco or a boogie hit, is there a certain track, and artist, or an ensemble you have in mind that you would want to introduce to larger, non-Norwegian audiences?
I: I would say that one of my all-time favorites is Karin Krog. Jazz singer. My go-to for bragging rights. She has a dope record with Steve Kuhn called We could be flying.
N: I’ll be sure to check it out! I also came across one artist a few years ago, and he is a Norwegian trombone player, so you might know him. His name is Frode Thingnæs.
I: Yeah, he is dope. The jazz scene is definitely some names and some gems. But I was talking more from a DJ perspective earlier. The scene was and is very much alive, even more so in Sweden and Denmark. The jazz community is still strong, too. Even from our output with Mutual Intentions — we put out some innovative jazz projects.
I’ve got a favorite series of club nights that’s been held in Oslo and Bergen for years and years. It’s called Jassbox. A night like that where you can go dance to nice jazz DJs — for me, that’s one of the things that proves that Oslo is a great music city. This is a small city — about 750,000 people in the core of Oslo. For its size, I feel very at home when it comes to music.
Digging: a noble quest
N: As many people know, you are a seasoned crate digger. Could you please share some of your strategies digging-wise? What are your go-to record store sections, for example?
I: I usually head to the library section, meaning records that were made for film and TV production in the late 60s through the 80s. That’s always an interesting section because a lot of that music never got used for anything. And it’s very hit or miss, the real treasures are few and far between. From a producer’s point of view, it’s always an interesting crate — there you can find so many interesting sounds and often pretty open tracks without too many vocals. It’s a kind of crystallized genre when it comes to music production. And then obviously the jazz fusion crate. Maybe ambient and new-age sections as well. That’s where I usually spend most of my time.
N: Any ambient favorites of yours?
I: Let me see what I got lately. *walking up to his vinyl shelf* This record right here is pretty crazy. It’s called Empathy and is by Bill Reddie from Channel 1 Records.
N: No clue who that is, but it looks dope. Are there any insane digging stories and finds associated with them that you would be willing to share?
I: What sticks out is finding your own records in the early days. If I were in New York and found my own record in the used bin, it would be like wow, my record is out in the world, but also like someone did not want this and got rid of it. Other than that, I’ve had my own little come-ups here and there, where I found very rare and expensive records for very little money. It still happens but not as often anymore now with Discogs being such a big part of the digging ecology. Every time you find something that you didn’t know you were looking for — that’s my favorite moment in record stores. Discovering something that when you hear it, you know that you need it in your life, but you didn’t even know it existed before you heard it. That’s what happened to me a bunch of times, but it’s still a very rare and beautiful moment.
N: Does digging have the same therapeutic effect on you, just like lyric-writing does? I dig myself from time to time, and I’ve had fellow diggers sharing with me that there is something soothing in the repetitive shuffling and sorting process.
I: It’s definitely a good day if you have a good trip to the record store. Some days it’s work for me, and if you don’t find anything, then it’s the opposite of therapeutic. But I would say the act of looking for beauty is a noble quest, so it does feel like the right place to be and the right thing to be doing a lot of the times.
Dooblé’s Shout Outs
N: Out of all the people you have had a chance to work with since day 1 — producers, musicians, singers, other rappers, graphic designers, painters, audio engineers,— who do you feel you had the strongest or the tightest chemistry with? And why is that?
I: I am considering all my close collaborators as friends and family. I would say that Fredfades is my number one mentor and partner to this day; Mndsgn is a dear friend and kindred spirit; Dirty Hans, who does all the design and typography, is a beast and idol, and I’d also like to mention Deckdaddy who mixes all my music. He is such a knowledgeable dude, but he spends the time with me that I need to figure out my mixes so that collaborative process is very dear to me. Now I am just listing all of my close friends.
The last one I wanna mention is Nick Dahlen who did the paintings and illustrations for this album, and I definitely wanna keep working with him. He’s got such an honest and naive truth in his work, and that’s what I am trying to aspire to as an artist myself. A lot of the times I work with visuals before I do the music, so his art definitely inspired a lot of the details on this album. And I wanna keep that collaboration going.
N: The visuals do look fantastic.
I: I didn’t do any of that, so I can just go hell yeah, it looks amazing.
N: Can you also please speak to working with the guru Dâm-Funk a little bit?
I: He’s like a big brother to a lot of musicheads, because he is so down-to-earth and humble, and still he is this icon and an innovative force. I don’t know him too well personally, but we had him here for a party, got to know him a little bit, and then we linked on a track. It’s been all love from here. I still have to remind myself every now and then — yo, it’s Dâm-Funk. I grew up listening to his music. He is one of those people in the game that you just appreciate having crossed paths with.
N: I am also in love with his stuff, and I was trying to interview him in Osaka, but he was too busy. I just saw him running out of the club and into the night to go dig.
Visionaries
N: The idea of vision, perspective, and retaining a fresh and keen eye seems to permeate all of your work and, especially, the track Young Eye. The idea itself and the track really resonate with me on a deep level, because I am a big fan of deep, attentive looking and listening, and I can feel that you are the same way. What do you feel has contributed to your attentiveness, paying extra attention to nuance in both music and life?
I: I think a lot of it comes down to the belief that you can bring great value to the listener if you make something that is worth hearing over and over and worth keeping in your life over a longer period of time. The music I listened to the most in my teens and my early adult life still resonates and still feels interesting, because it is layered and multi-faceted. You can tell that someone really put the time in to make it holistically solid. If anything, that’s me trying to pay that forwards and add to the culture that gave me so much.
I am not saying that it is the responsibility of every artist. I think there is quick art that can be interesting and serve a purpose, but for me, the process is more enriching when I do try to make the piece outlive me, my career, or this year’s trend. I want these songs to be like a piece of furniture in my listener’s life that they know they will move with them when they move to a new spot. To build a good piece of furniture you need a good simple idea that you can elaborate on, the right tools, and that attention to detail you are talking about.
N: It’s like having a keepsake that you hold dear to your heart, right?
I: Yeah, but these songs will never be that for me because I am sick of them by the time they’re done. But hopefully what remains is a fresh idea that was not overcooked but given the nurture and love that it needed to live a long life.
Double Goodbyes
N: Do you have any close friends that you stay in touch with over at Jakarta Records?
I: Yes, I stay in touch with Jannis who runs Habibi Funk and Malte — the other executive there. I still stay in touch with Blustaeb and Juju and a few of the other guys who have been involved with Jakarta. So Jakarta is very close to my heart.
N: Is there a possibility of the two labels coalescing into one label entity for some time or collaborating on a special project or a party together?
I: There could always be a possibility for that. Nothing in the works right now, but we did do a joint dubplate a few years back, so if anybody has the money, they should try Discogs for that. I am always open to bringing good people together and I am obviously one of the links between the two labels. I feel at home in both places, because it is like-minded people.
N: We’ll be looking forward to that! Do I understand correctly that your newest record, Double Goodbyes, that is coming out very soon (already out by the time this interview is released), will not be released on Jakarta but on Mutual Intentions?
I: Yes, that’s correct.
N: Can you please, in a few sentences, try to summarize the essence of this new record?
I: I’ll tell you what my thoughts about it just for today are. It is a record that came out of a difficult phase in my life where I had to step back and rebuild on a personal level. I also needed to rethink not only the music I was making on the creative level but also what kind of good I want this music to provide me.
It is definitely an experimental record from my point of view, but that’s because my whole life was in a phase where I needed to work my mind out and get back on my feet, so the title is inspired by trying to change habits, trying to move on but always catching yourself drifting back into a pattern and then saying goodbye to that pattern again. It is a kind of position a lot of us find ourselves in where you thought you had made changes but then you realize that you are still you, just in a different outfit. The record is definitely about self-help and healing. It is kind of a new-age take on rap and the RnB genre.
N: Would you say that we, as listeners, are in for a more insular, introverted, confronting-yourself-kind of ride this time around?
I: It is definitely more humble, because when you get older, you just get humbled by life. I don’t feel like it’s a very boastful or confident album. It is more me cutting it back to the essentials and working on my self-worth and my foundation as a person. Having said that, most of my albums can be described as introspective. This one might be just a bit more intimate.
N: Was the process of making the record in any way different from that of making the previous albums?
I: For sure, this time I am heavily involved with the production. I’ve had a hand in almost every track in terms of the actual music production, the mixing from scratch, and this changed the way I write, because now I have more freedom in terms of the arrangement, whereas on previous albums I mostly looked for beats that are already done. This time I was able to sculpt, from the very beginning, the whole thing. This is definitely the most fulfilling project for me on a creative level and it also makes for a more consistent and whole listen. It feels to me a lot more whole than a lot of the albums that I’ve made.
N: Any specific experiences, movies, albums, books that you sourced inspiration from for this record?
I: I’d like to bring up the novel East of Eden by Steinbeck that I read during the recording of the album.
The visuals
N: One of the first tracks that you released off of this new record was Triple Double Love, for which there was also an excellent music video with a bit of an absurdist take on duality. What was the inspiration for this curious fellow, who is unable to pull dance and basketball moves apart?
I: My friend Mohamed Chakiri and I had come up with an idea for the video before I made the song. It was more so a film idea, and then I had to make a song to go with it. The idea is mainly supposed to illustrate our defense mechanisms and our patterns that we slide into when confronted with pressure or the need to adapt. This guy who starts dancing when he has to make a shot — that is meant to be symbolic of how we all hide behind these subconscious behavioral patterns to avoid getting revealed for who we really are.
N: I am just trying to dissect the whole concept, and to me, it’s similar to getting out of your comfort zone. The dude in the video was trying to do the things he is really good at, but you as the coach were trying to make him stick to his routine.
I: Yes, he goes to his safe place when feeling threatened. You said it way better than me!
N: Thanks, do you enjoy playing these funny odd characters in your videos?
I: I am not really interested in taking it further than my own music videos, but I do enjoy creating with Mohamed not only because his ideas are good, but also because the process is always very relaxed and fun. It’s always great to do something a little different than a regular rap video.
N: In the Young Eye video, you were also this Waldoesque character hiding in various spots.
I: Yes, some sort of guiding spirit.
N: Talking about Young Eye, I am absolutely in love with the track itself, as well as the visuals for it. Was that filmed in Norway?
I: No, that was actually Morocco. We went to Muhammed’s homeland, where he both directed and shot the clip.
On blasts from the past
N: You’ve once talked about establishing a bridge between two times in your music. Would you consider yourself a nostalgic person?
I: I try to not let that define me as an artist, but as a person, I definitely have a tendency towards nostalgia and melancholic moods. I spend most of my time digging for old music, so I guess I am nostalgic.
N: Don’t you think that Yogisoul’s Kodak Gold featuring you and MoRuf is a kind of nostalgia anthem?
I: Right. The thing is, we never really know what the future is, so we never know what to say about it, and the present is oftentimes difficult to see for what it is, but you can make up what the past was. I might be lazy for writing about it so much because it’s kind of easy to use the past for poetic purposes.
Now You See Me… Now You Don’t.
N: You’ve already been on the COLORS show, you were one of the cats presenting Norway for Boiler Room, you received the Bendiksen award last year… Do you ever get a sense of yes, that’s it, baby, we made it? And if you do, is this something you like or try to banish?
I: I don’t get it for my own successes, but I do get that feeling with the Mutual Intentions crew, if we organize a good party, make a good night for a crowd, put out a dope project that is done really well. I think I am more of a team player when it comes to celebrating or winning. It doesn’t really feel like a win to me unless I can share it.
I am also weary of focusing too much on success, because I’ve been fortunate to have some success, but I also live a pretty humble life, because I am not making a killing doing this, so to me, the way to stay afloat is to not focus on the successes too much, because I know I’ll still have to go home tonight and keep the process going. The process to me has become the win.
Snack bar
N: Finally, can you name one track that keeps your head bobbing and one snack that you really dig these difficult days?
I: Do you want one of my tracks or any track?
N: Anything you want.
I: Alright, I would recommend salt and vinegar potato chips.
N: Oh, what a beautiful track name.
I: I mean… This is the snack.
N: OH.
I: I would have you listen to Space Commercial by Eddie Harris.
N: Alright, I will try that combination.
I: Please do, man.
Double Goodbyes is now out on all platforms.
