Andy Heck Boyd / Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: Ideas On Tape

Navel-Gazers #63 is an interview with Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Andy Heck-Boyd who are going to talk to us about Ideas On Tape. Easily my favourite release of 2022, I recall what first caught my attention, it was that title: it seemed to denote something fundamentally vague, non-committal, perhaps unfinished even, and yet - to my ears - simultaneously mythic somehow, or conceivably so and that’s how I’ve come to regard it. If you’ve not heard ‘Ideas On Tape’, prepare to be pleasantly bewildered as its creators conjure 39 minutes of material in a format which drifts between real- and deeply unreal-time, each taking turns muttering into the microphone in ways which are remarkably consistent in terms of a certain offhanded tone of delivery from the two artists but which vary in all other observable aspects. The vocal passages here range from found text to self-referential narratives to totally wordless ghostly wailing. Playback timbre and speed fluctuate wildly. And amidst it all, an element of sparse instrumental and environmental accompaniment serves as a foil. After repeated listens I’ve never quite gotten to the bottom of ‘Ideas On Tape’, and my curiosity about the underlying collaboration has really intensified leading up to this discussion. Let’s see what - or what else - these guys have to say!

AC: Thanks for joining me on Navel-Gazers! We’re here to talk about ‘Ideas On Tape’ but before we get to that, why don’t you each tell me about yourselves, your background, and how you know each other?

Andy Heck-Boyd: My name is Andy Heck Boyd I grew up in New Hampshire where I lived most of my life until moving to Kentucky a few years ago, I am quiet and fairly shy, I have been making sound recordings and other types of art, paintings drawings and comics and movies - things like that since the early 2000s, i have been making voice recordings on tape and other kinds of media since about 2017, Sigtryggur and I met on instagram and i was very intrigued and inspired by him and started talking and soon became friends - but we havent met in person.

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: Hey hi Andrew, thanks a lot for having us! i´m sigtryggur berg sigmarsson, people call me Siggy, Sig or just Berg, like they do here in Germany where i´ve been living on / off since 1997. I was born in Iceland, up north in a town called Akureyri which is the second biggest "city", but moved with my family to Reykjavík which is the capital of Iceland when I was only 5 or 6 years old. I often wonder what my life would be like today if we had stayed in Akureyri, something that I have not yet come to any conclusions after years of consideration.

Music was my first love, so very early on it was a dream of mine to make and release music. I was obsessed with vinyl records, the cover art and just everything about it, especially if the release had a gatefold sleeve then I would open the gatefold and cover it over my face while playing the vinyl. I remember spending a lot of time just laying in bed listening to records and being mesmerized by music. I would also picture my name on the backside of the record covers, like imagining my name being on the "thanks list" or being credited as the photographer of a band for their back cover sleeve or something like that.

As a teenager I was in a couple of grindcore bands before becoming a member of Stilluppsteypa which was for a long time a trio but now a duo since 2002, if i remember right, putting out stuff with BJ Nilsen, as well as being a member of Evil Madness since 2006, again, if i remember right, and more recently of Jeugdbrand which is a Belgian/Icelandic trio together with Dennis Tyfus and Jeroen Stevens, as well as putting out solo recordings since 2000, if i remember right, and I´m probably forgetting a few other things already.

Before getting to know Andy personally I had read a couple of interviews with him and had seen his visual art online, all of which I found great and interesting!

I was a bit late to the Instagram game as i didn´t have what we call a smart phone until 2019, not that i´m bragging or trying to come off as a smart person but I had a laptop and so it never crossed my mind to get one. But i´m very glad i did and through instagram got to know my dear friend Andy.

AC: I’ve been to Akureyri believe it or not! Andy you mentioned that you’ve lived in Kentucky for a few years and also that you started with voice recordings in 2017, it made me curious about your local environs in Kentucky, what is your day-to-day life as an artist like out there?

Andy Heck-Boyd: well my wife kasper melted and i have lived in a few different places in kentucky over the years, we've lived in a tent for a whole summer, we've lived in some apartments in different towns, we've travelled a lot, always exploring places, but we currently live in a small farm house in a little valley surrounded by small mountains and each day is always a little different from the previous one, usually wake around or before sunrise and have something to eat and then check messages for a bit while listening to music, then start recording intermittently into my tape recorder or mini-disc recorder little phrases or things that i find interesting, and ill continue to do that throughout the day, for errands and trips ill bring the recorders with me while driving, eating, walking etc, i like to find new places to explore and hike and sightsee, some other things ill do on typical days include taking snapshots with super8mm camera, draw, read fiction/non-fiction and comics, work on some projects and spend time with kasper and our two gerbils fizzy and motor oil, i dont really have a regular daily routine but i always carry around a tape recorder of some kind always on me and thats my constant regular sort of thing.

AC: You guys have already answered one of my questions about ‘Ideas On Tape’, I wasn’t sure whether it was a remote collaboration. Could you tell us how this started, was this your first collaboration or is there any previous material to check out? How did you approach the project?

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: it´s weird going back to those 2 years (2020 - 2022) during the covid pandemic/lockdowns, it´s like getting lost in this big grey hazy cloud. So it´s interesting also in contrast to the "ideas on tape" release come to think of it.

But I still do remember though that my good friend Matthew Green, who runs the label Radical Documents out of Chicago, asking me if I´m up for another release on his label as he had released a solo album of mine called "I say to you" a few years before and at that same time he had asked me for another release Andy and me had started talking nearly daily, sending each other every day tons of voice mail messages, as during the pandemic I took these long walks just to stay in shape and get a bit fresh air and i would use the time during those long walks and send Andy voice mails, and Andy would send back voice mails which i would then listen to the next day due to the time difference, in those voice mails Andy had been telling me that he´d been enjoying very much playing the guitar and also doing recordings on a new tape machine he had gotten, and so my brain went: "I GOT AN IDEA!". So I first asked Andy if he´s up for doing a collaboration with me and release it via Radical Documents. Andy was down with that idea and then I asked Matthew and since he was already a fan of Andy´s he was totally up for this, so yeah, that´s how "Ideas on tape" started.

That was the first time that we collaborated, there is another thing that came out in 2023 up on bandcamp via a digital label called Why Keith Dropped The S.

I know Andy made a very limited edition tape release of the material, which is quite different from the "ideas on tape" release and focusses quite a bit on the voice mails we had sent each other amongst other things. It´s called "Shortly After He Died He Wrote a Book" and can be found here.

Andy Heck-Boyd: ya we were talking and siggy brought up the tape release and that was a great thing and we thought itd be good to send some things back and forth and i sent siggy some recordings of things i was working on and planning at the time and he edited it and thought it was a perfect oppurtunity to collobarate with siggy to make some recordings, so i began trying out some new recording methods in the process getting into it like acting out scenes in a movie but not actually thinking i'm in a movie but the transformation of self through speaking while thinking differently and that was for some of the recordings but not for all like the guitar etc, of some of the stuff i worked on for ideas on tape, yes.

AC: Constructing an album entails some decision making. How did you guys collaborate to decide how to arrange all the different sections across the two tracks? Are we always hearing exclusively either Andy or Siggy, or are there parts where you are heard simultaneously/layered?

Andy Heck-Boyd: what youre hearing with the sections and everything put together is siggy and then i'd listen back and say "yes yes yes" but yea it was decided in the beginning of the project how to contribute to different parts, i supplied audio and the cover art and siggy supplied audio and designed the structure and titled it.

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: it all fit and mixed nicely together, the stuff from both of us, also during sections where it´s mostly andy reading a text of his or talking i would add little background sounds etc... we worked on it for 2 or 3 weeks, i would spend a lot of time listening to the stuff over and over again, like i always do, kinda obsessively and changing a few things here and there and then send over to andy by the end of the day for his approval and then he would send me more files to work on.

i remember the very first try went so smoothly that it was kinda scary and made me a bit nervous. like the first batch of soundfiles that andy sent just fell perfectly into the things that i had already been working on with our collaboration in mind, then i added a bit of voice on top of what i had mixed together with the files andy had sent over and bounced that back to andy and we were both happy with the way things were working out after such a short time.

when i´m working on stuff, whether it´s new recordings, painting or drawing, if things just effortlessly work out right away it makes me nervous about how things will develop after that... my son is getting into heavy metal and so i took him to see obituary a couple of months back and the show was so insanely good, i was actually really surprised, they just totally nailed it and both of us loved and cant stop talking about this gig, and so i started thinking: "damn, it was my son´s first metal gig... so after this every metal gig is gonna feel mediocre"... you know what i mean?

AC: Yes I guess we don’t really want things to happen effortlessly but maybe we can trace it somewhere further upstream. Like in order for those pieces to slot together so easily, you each had to have the ideas for those pieces to begin with, then you had to have the wherewithal to commit them to tape, combine them etc.

I’d like to ask about a couple of specific passages. Firstly Andy, from 11:05 of track 1 mr trampoline man you have an extended, seemingly self-referential monologue. Could you explain the process and the thinking as you are reading that out? You get into a bit about storage, was this a consideration for you during the project?

Andy Heck-Boyd: ya for that i was recording with a digital field recorder and wanted to originally use the setup just as a way to jot down quick notes or monologues etc anything really that interested me and so by leaving the digital field recorder set to voice-on-record option the idea is i'd walk in the room and start talking and recording but something else happened once i started trying that out, the voice recorder itself was too much of a distraction to me to focus on talking about other things (wondering if its recording so i have to check it which defeats the purpose of using vor) and then the interest of experimenting with words and recording turned towards myself in relation to the recorder and i played around with that for a little bit. but yea i got into about storage too as another aspect to looking at recording itself but it was part of the monologue sort of investigating looking around.

AC: Another section I’m curious about is from around 13:00 to the end of track 2 nevermind cd hidden bonus track, Siggy I think that is you singing? The whole passage is so puzzling on a technical level, I can never quite make out whether what I’m hearing is layered, delayed, backwards, repeated, sped up, slowed down, etc… or not? What’s going on there exactly?

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: ha ha ! funny you should say this - because that´s actually EXACTLY what´s going on there ha! i had to go back to the tape now and listen to that section again before replying, and yes, it´s three different files of my voice mumbling this melody which had been living rent free in my head for a few weeks back then ... which i then mixed together, i get super OCD when mixing things like layers of voice like with this one where it´s the same melody colliding into each other... i can stay with stuff like that for a long time, even though in the end it doesnt show how much time was spent on it ha ha ... so, there is this one part / soundfile which i turned backwards, added some reverb on top and then reversed it again, so you have this effect of the reverb playing backwards... then there´s a slowed down part which i kept low in the mix, hidden in the back but still has an important role as it keeps things nicely together.

the "delay" you mentioned is a natural one as i made the recordings in this small room we have at our flat which is kept pretty empty and it has that kind of "room reverb" sound to it... during the pandemic, when everybody stayed at home, i got asked to do a few live stream performances, and i did about three or four different ones just using my voice and i performed in that empty room, just using my phone as video/mic and it had a nice sound to it. unfortunately, i don't have any of those recordings as each time was a one off thing.... maybe i had some of those recordings but now lost, like most of my memory of that period.

AC: Thanks for the scoop on these sections! Quick one: who is the tiny voice saying "help" at 10:05 of that second track? Is everything ok?

Andy Heck Boyd: oh yea lol thats siggy saying that.

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: ha ha ! the idea to sneak that "help" voice in came from a time my girlfriend and i had a bit more laundry to wash than usual so i just stuffed the whole thing into our washing machine and as i pushed "start" and it was already rolling i had a bad feeling that it maybe wasn´t such a good idea as i have had it happen that a machine broke down from overload, like a work burn out, and in the middle of a pandemic lockdown it would have sucked to have your washing machine break down... and at one point it sounded like the washing machine was screaming for help, like a silent scream, i thought i was going crazy hearing voices but my girlfriend heard it as well and we were laughing in the kitchen... so that´s where the idea came from.

AC: Andy that cover image, it’s not one of your most elaborate visual creations but it really caught my attention and for some reason - not sure why really - strikes me as humorous. What is it?

Andy Heck Boyd: ah yea that is a collage like part of a section of a cartoon universe or something but its a bedroom with usually one door and different colored circle doorknob and filled with stuff all kinds of stuff like all are favorite jpg images cutout and placed in a collage space format of things i like and its also a double framed xerox copies of sygourney weaver who is someone i like shes cool and thought it was a good way to show i think shes cool, and i originally used those framed images in a black and white super 8mm movie short it was a prop in the movie.

AC: I thought that was Sigourney Weaver, wasn’t sure. A potential Siggy/Siggy connection occurred to me, just after asking that question!

What are you each up to nowadays? Any projects coming up you’d like our readers to know about, or final comments?

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson: thanks so much for the interview, it has been fun thinking back on this particular release and back on the time getting to know my good friend andy. i think every friendship should start with a collaborative tape release!

also happy that you got in touch asking questions about a release that came out 3 years ago - as i feel like so much stuff gets released and after it´s only a few months out it´s already OLD news but it could just be me, like an "old man shouting at cloud" thing ha ha ha... i tend to be a bit slow, and it helps me out that people post their end of the year best of lists, so it gives me a chance to catch up on some good stuff.

there are a few things happening this year that i´m super excited about, like a show of drawings and paintings at a gallery in hamburg called kleine gegenwart which opens in february, there´s gonna be a third Ghost of Dada release, Ghost of Dada are Ross Scott-Buccleuch, Andrew Sharpley and myself, here´s our last one if interested.

there´s gonna be a new Stilluppsteypa LP coming out soon called "Schokolino Choco Loco" on the Futura Resistenza label, and then some more Jeugdbrand releases and live gigs are lined up ... so yeah, good times ahead!

Andy Heck Boyd: thanks andrew this was cool and fun and good time and great to interview with siggy.

i have been working on my novel, bone thunder, a story/workbook about a pair of ghosts under white sheets and sunglasses that will be out soon just for fun by myself no label, and you can check out my youtube channel, i post videos and music things on the regular, and i just finished my short film dracula citgo about a vampire that needs more blood for his race car and that will be out sometime soon too, take it ez yall :)

Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson can be found at https://sigtryggurberg.bandcamp.com/.

Andy Heck-Boyd can be found at https://muckadoozie.bandcamp.com/.