I’ve been thinking a lot about silence and how it can be deployed as a tool. In music notation, the rest sits, entangled in the staff, occupying the space of a note. In a symphony orchestra, a rest doesn’t halt the moving musician— the rest catalyzes a collective inhale; a jerk of a hundred chins; a synchronous expansion of sternums.

In Okay Kaya’s music, silence certainly invites a similar locomotion. The Norwegian-American singer, known for her unique, blunt production and wounding lyrical prowess, releases her fourth album, Oh My God - That’s So Me, today. The record, which was entirely produced by Kaya, is suffused with bone crushing stillness and blustering joy, all complemented by her signature meandering prose. Preempted by singles and accompanying music videos “Check Your Face,” “Undulation Days,” and “The Groke,” Oh My God - That’s So Me is influenced by the affective power of isolation—the singer recently moved to a remote island, only accessible by boat.

In the month ahead, Okay Kaya will embark on a US/North American tour and a European tour. She will interact with thousands of people, in crowded rooms and airports and bus stations. Once-naked silences will soon be filled with the sweaty friction of bodies rubbing against one another; mistimed coughs, drunken giggles. For now, though, the singer takes a pause to talk with me Oh My God - That’s So Me, its endless personifications; its silences; its empathy.

Where are you right now?

On the island 

Can you talk a bit about the making of Oh My God, That’s So Me – how does it feel different from SAP/The Incompatible Okay Kaya?

The album's point of departure is in the sentence of the album title. The working title for the record was “The Art Of Poetry,” which is a song about the world's first poet taking in the moon, then pointing at it and exclaiming -Oh My God-That’s So Me. As a songwriter, I usually work with questions around identity, consciousness, everyday life and sexuality. For this record in particular, I asked myself questions like: Is it possible that you find the core of people best through fiction and fables? How important is recording or writing down in the age of documentation? Do we understand human actions in retrospect? Or told through archetypes? What makes a person bond with a story (subject) or an object? Without necessarily finding the answer to any of these questions, they sparked and/or honed the songwriting process.

You moved to an island last year, which seems to have informed this album in some capacity. Would you call isolation productive? Is productive a term that ever comes to mind when you’re creating art or music?

Productivity does not interest me as a term, I’m not a “good, well oiled machine girl” I deeply cherish the time and space I’ve been able to carve out for my practice and play, I believe that for me personally, solitude can be a good starting point for things to be combed out, and looked at.  We can get scared of loneliness and therefore sometimes miss getting our solitude fix? 

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about poetic space. Do you feel this sense of weighty emptiness in your production? Do you utilise it in your music?

Cool! I’ve been thinking a lot about that also.  I definitely use space/blankness in a lot of my production. My productions vary quite a bit in genre/instrumentation, hoping that my vocal and writing carries the red thread as we say in Norwegian, making for something consistently inconsistent. But the use of space is something I keep going back to, pauses. 

Your songs personify a number of everyday ideologies: minutiae, common sense. Do you feel that having empathy for these kinds of phenomenons is a reflex you have? Is it a reflex that most artists have?

Possibly!  I find a lot of beauty in the unexceptional, can it reel in the present? The song about common sense is about wanting to get ones sense of humour back in order to enjoy life. The song ended up being about someone who is trying to seduce their own senses back somehow. It is taken from the Clive James quote:“A sense of humor is just common sense dancing”

Do you feel that time moves differently in different places? How does it move in concert venues? How does it move in your home? How would you like it to move?

‍Certainly. I think moving to an island has created a strange balance.  There is a contrast to life on tour in big cities and my home life. This contrast is welcome and is beginning to suit me just fine. I get to decompress and work in solitude and I get to see friends and see shows and drink wine while on tour. This also affects my sense of time, very live fast, or very live slow. Though exhausting sometimes, I feel very, very lucky to be able to make and perform.  ‍

In regards to your upcoming tour– I have a friend who saw your concert in SF about a year ago. She couldn’t stop talking about your presence on stage and the animal figurines you used as set pieces. How do you design your tour space to reflect the music?‍

Ah, my band!  I made a miniature clay band and put them on a revolving pedestal and we live streamed it onto a screen behind us.  It was made as a gentle sad nod to not be able to afford playing with other human musicians on tour. (We were a 13 piece band at one point, until they got lost on a baggage carousel in Chicago. They’d had enough, they unionized against me and are forever on strike, but I have made more.) I work with clay sometimes for visual art so it made sense to use for the Sap Tour, as Austin Lee and I had made a sticky, goopy music video universe. Being alone on stage, versus being alone on an island for example, can feel a bit vulnerable, especially with some of the songs performed. So it helps to deck out the space a little.  I’m flirting with a pop up tent for the next tour, we’ll see!

‍What can we expect from the forthcoming tour?

‍Playing gigs with excellent guitarist and person Oli Burslem. Working on new visuals to project. Some very special shows are coming up, NY show on sept 5th with Nebulous Quartet who I’ve performed with once before, very excited. The show in LA on sept 13th will have some special moments with my friend Baba Stiltz and I, we have been working on music together.

‍When was the first time you fell in love with a crowd, or the most recent?‍

Hearing a crowd sing “Sex with me is mediocre” back at me has me in stitches.  I really enjoy playing shows now after many years of scary stage syndrome. The people that come to the shows have been loving and cool. I’m very grateful for them.

‍What still scares you about making music?‍

I’m not sure! I try to use fear to my benefit, reminding myself that if something is scary it’s worthwhile. That old chestnut. 

‍

‍