But I think with Waiting Room, I wanted to write in a way that was more open-ended and less straightforward. I wanted the imagery to be more about the feeling rather than a direct narrative. So, there are a lot of images that are more about setting a mood or a tone rather than telling a specific story. I wanted to create a sense of atmosphere and emotion that could be interpreted in different ways by different listeners. So, in that sense, I think the language is becoming more elusive and subconscious with each record, as I try to delve deeper into the emotions and feelings that inspire my music.
Can you tell me about your experience in Iceland and how that influenced the creation of Waiting Room?
I went to Iceland last year because I wanted to get away from my normal surroundings and immerse myself in a completely different environment. I ended up staying in a small fishing village in eastern Iceland, where I rented a room in a disused fish factory to work on the album. The environment there was so stark and isolated, with the harsh landscape and the constant darkness of the winter months. It really seeped into the music I was creating.
I spent a lot of time just sitting in that room, listening to the sounds of the factory and the surrounding environment. I recorded a lot of field recordings that ended up on the album, capturing the strange, otherworldly atmosphere of the place. It was a very intense and immersive experience, and I think it really shaped the sound and mood of the album. It was like being in a dream, where everything is familiar but slightly off-kilter, and I wanted the music to reflect that feeling of being in a liminal space.
What was the recording process like for Waiting Room, especially in such a unique setting?
The recording process for Waiting Room was very different from anything I had done before. I was completely alone in that room, with just my instruments and recording equipment for company. I would spend hours just playing around with sounds, experimenting with different textures and tones. I wanted the music to feel raw and immediate, like a direct expression of my emotions in that moment.
I also did a lot of improvisation during the recording process, just letting the music flow organically and following where it led me. I think that spontaneity and openness really comes through in the final album, giving it a sense of intimacy and vulnerability that I hadn’t captured before. It was a challenging process, both emotionally and creatively, but I think it was worth it to create something that feels so personal and true to myself.
What do you hope listeners take away from Waiting Room?
I hope that listeners can connect with the emotions and moods that I tried to capture in Waiting Room. I want the music to evoke a sense of introspection and reflection, to transport them to a different place and time. I hope that the album can be a space for people to explore their own emotions and experiences, to find solace and comfort in the music.
Ultimately, I just hope that the music resonates with people in some way, that it can touch them on a deep emotional level and maybe even inspire them to create their own art. Music has always been a source of comfort and inspiration for me, and if I can pass that feeling on to others, then I’ll consider the album a success.
Listen to Kathryn Mohr’s debut album Waiting Room, out now on the Flenser.
It was really eerie because it was very dark, but then you’d walk into a room and there would be a light shining through a hole in the ceiling, and it would be very bright in that one spot. I loved exploring those spaces because it felt like I was walking through a maze, and I could imagine all the people who had been there before me, all the stories that had been told in those rooms. It was very magical in a way, but also a little bit scary because it was so isolated and desolate. But I think that environment really allowed me to tap into those deeper emotions and let them out in my music. It was a very special place to create in.
Some of the areas were left exactly as they were when the factory closed. There was a locker room, and some of the belongings of the people who worked there were left behind. No lights, lots of dust, old cans of asbestos; it was very haunting. I love abandoned spaces because I love to just stand in them and feel their energy, and there’s so much energy in there because that used to be the main hub of Stöðvarfjörður; it was the life of that town. When it shut down in 2010, the town’s population dwindled down. All the people had to leave because there were no other jobs. Knowing that it used to be full of life and then was just emptied out made me feel a lot of emotions and think about the people who worked there, the families they might have had, the feelings they might have experienced. Being in a big concrete space is always very religious to me, I guess. It definitely had an effect on what I was writing.
I wonder if you feel like it’s more the building, the isolation, the history, or the actual mode of living that affected you the most while making Waiting Room.
It was very much the building itself. The way it was built was very interesting because it had started as a small concrete building, and then they just kept adding parts onto it, so it’s labyrinthine. It’s really big, but you could see where there had been an old building that they built another layer on top of, and then they built a side, then another side. That connects with so many dreams I have. I talk about the building specifically in one of the songs, ‘Rated’. I had no structure to my day, so that was different, but I had to create a structure. I’d usually go into the factory in the morning, work until I couldn’t anymore, and then in the afternoon, I’d have lunch and just go hike in the mountains. There were no trails; I’d just cross-country wherever I saw a big mountain and go towards it. That was magical. There were no fences. It’s kind of like a common area with the sheep grazing, and people won’t, like, shoot you for being on someone else’s property. It’s land, which is how I dream of all land being.
Do you feel like your sense of time was kind of warped and distorted, too? I feel like that’s something that feeds into your music generally.
Yeah, not having any structure was really freeing. I feel like that’s how people should live, honestly, without the normal 9 to 5 sort of thing. But of course, there was also the fact that the sun was up for like 11 hours a day, and it wouldn’t go down until almost midnight, because I was there in August. That was really disorienting and beautiful. I had no sense of time; I forgot about which day it was, I didn’t look at clocks. It didn’t matter. I was like, “Okay, I’m hungry, so I’m gonna eat a meal.” I loved that. I wish I could always live like that.
Did you change how you think about the past or trauma?
It didn’t really change how I thought about the past. I was trying not to think about the past too much, but when it comes up, it comes up, and I will do with it what I will. But yeah, everything in the past is very hard for me; it’s not simple or linear. The brain doesn’t work that way. Memories are not static; they’re warping. Sometimes they feel much longer, and sometimes they feel much shorter, even if they’re the same amount of time. That’s always been something I’ve felt, and it didn’t really change by being there.
You talked about how the factory was in the process of being remade, and I’m curious if and how you see Waiting Room, too, as a project of reworking memories.
Yeah, it’s all a processing of memories. Every time you think of a memory, you process it a little differently, and that changes what you remember. All of Waiting Room is my brain processing something and making sense of a lot of emotions I was feeling at the time – not necessarily very old memories, but recent things that were happening in that moment or just before, and also just general feelings about being alive. A lot about closeness and love, as at that time, I hadn’t been close to anybody in about five years. Learning about how to open up, to take that risk, to care about someone else and be cared for when it’s so much easier to just cut yourself off, like I had been doing for a very long time. So it was very much a processing of the idea of loving somebody else, how to approach it when it feels so impossible.
What was it like when you came back from Iceland?
It was pretty jarring. At first, it felt pretty easy, and then I kind of went through a lot of emotions. But I always have a lot of emotions and ups and downs. I just readjusted. It wasn’t such a big difference for me, making that change. I love chaos, so having to adapt from one life to another one was something I enjoyed taking on.
What about the songs you made during that time? Did you start seeing them differently?
That yeah, definitely. It’s kind of torturous working with music. [laughs] Sometimes I wonder, “Why do I do this?” because it becomes so hard to hear my own music, especially after I produce it and listen to it a million times. I start to go crazy; I can’t hear my music anymore. I don’t know if it’s good. I have to trust that at one point I liked it, so I have to trust that initial feeling, because the more I listen to it, it just becomes noise.
“Regresando de Islandia y escuchando de nuevo, a veces pensaba: “No sé qué estoy escuchando”. Y luego, en otros momentos, podía convertirme en un oyente. Recuerdo que una vez, cuando vivía en San Francisco, salí a caminar y puse mi álbum para escucharlo a través de mis auriculares. Pensé: “Expresé lo que quería expresar. Esto suena bien”. Se me pusieron los pelos de punta. Y luego, ya sabes, volvía a escuchar y pensaba: “Sí, no me gusta esto”. [risas] Pero tengo que tener mucha fe en esos momentos en los que puedo escucharlo, no como yo mismo, sino tal vez como alguien más. Es un proceso muy difícil, pero creo que todos los músicos lo atraviesan.
El EP Holly fue producido por Madeline Johnston de Midwife. En términos de producción, ¿fue un proceso diferente para ti tener menos influencia externa en este disco?
Sí, fue realmente maravilloso poder dejar ir mi música y dejar que Madeline la tomara en sus manos y trabajara en ella. Eso requirió mucha confianza y fe en Madeline. Fue hermoso dejar ir ese control y experimentar cómo se siente ponerlo en manos de alguien en quien confío, pero también fue difícil. Definitivamente me encanta cómo salió Holly, y aprendí mucho de Madeline. Siento que he utilizado ese conocimiento en Waiting Room. Hacerlo todo yo misma puso más presión sobre mí, pero también tenía todo el control, y creo que en el pasado, realmente no confiaba en mí misma para tomar el control total. Con As If, no sabía lo que estaba haciendo en ese momento, y está bien que suene como suena; a algunas personas les gusta que suene tan lo-fi. Pero con Waiting Room, fue difícil, y perdí la noción de cómo suena, pero simplemente confié en mi oído. Me permití hacer lo que tenía que hacer, sin renunciar al control, y creo que salió bastante bien. En el futuro, me encantaría trabajar de nuevo con Madeline, o con alguien en quien confíe y admire. Tener el control total versus ceder el control a otra persona y confiar en ellos: esas son dos experiencias maravillosas y diferentes en la música.
¿Cómo lidias con permitir que una pieza de música alcance un punto de finalización mientras te mantienes fiel a una experiencia que todavía se siente fragmentada? ¿Es eso un desafío para ti?
Definitivamente es un desafío saber cuándo una canción está terminada. Siento que me resulta bastante natural saber cuándo una canción está terminada. Por lo general, sucede cuando estoy exhausta y ya no puedo escucharla más. Pienso: “Esto está hecho. No hay nada más que quiera mejorar o cambiar”. Es algo que simplemente sucede. Ya sea que la canción sea una expresión exitosa o si es una buena canción, no puedo pensar en esos términos. Después de tanto tiempo con la canción, tengo que confiar en que, “Bueno, esto salió de mí hace un tiempo. He dedicado mucho tiempo, trabajo y enfoque en ello, y simplemente lo voy a lanzar”. Incluso si no es particularmente exitoso para mí, tal vez afecte a alguien más. La música se trata de sacar las cosas, no de matarlas.
Esta entrevista ha sido editada y condensada para mayor claridad y longitud.
Waiting Room de Kathryn Mohr se lanzará el 24 de enero a través de The Flenser.