Carmen Hillestad, the artist better known as Carmen Villain, thrives in uncertainty. In a musical world where the only constant is change, the Norwegian-Mexican artist takes a chameleonic approach to both composing and arranging a broad spectrum of leftfield music. After turning her back on a career as a model, she pivoted towards life as a singer-songwriter, making dream pop and guitar-driven indie-rock in the early 2010s before taking another hard left turn, edging further into the world of downtempo experimental electronics.

Conveying a love of woodwind instruments and a voracious appetite for dub-inspired loops, Hillestad's music today is a wispy mix of trippy bass explorations, contemporary sonics and ambient fourth-world esotericism. There's an ongoing feeling of progress in her body of work, and each of her four solo albums represents a different chapter in a sonic development arc that culminated in her 2022 opus, Only Love From Now On. A career-defining record, it's full of twists and turns, with spellbinding melodies, stunning flute work (from her regular collaborator Johanna Orellana) and moments of pure bliss.

Hillestad has collaborated with the likes of Actress, DJ Python, Parris and Jenny Hval, and has taken her music to one-of-a-kind destination venues such as an oratory in Milan, a forest in the Azores and the ICA in London. These days, she's obsessed with percussive loops and acoustic harmonics, intrinsically drawn to the more subtle sounds that evoke organic textures like "breath"—sounds that are anchored by a deep groove that puts you in a "woozy space," as she puts it.

Earlier this year, Hillestad and I chatted in her cosy studio on the second floor of an unassuming building on Kongens gate, the oldest street in downtown Oslo. Bits of hardware, trinkets and artefacts painted a tableau vivant of her life in Norway. Old duvets had been stapled together on the ceiling for a rough-and-ready sound insulation solution, and on the door was a tattered disco poster—a relic left by previous occupant Todd Terje. There's history on the walls, but Hillestad wasn't fussed by any of it. She's more interested in cracking on with her next album.

After turning her back on a career as a model, Hillestad pivoted towards life as a singer-songwriter in the early 2010s before taking another turn into the world of downtempo experimental electronics.

Let's start with this studio. Can you tell me about its history?

I've been in this hallway since 2015. I ended up here because all the space disco guys—who either are or have all been through Smalltown Supersound at some point—previously had their studios on this floor. It's one of the few places where you can get some cheap studio space in Oslo, and you can make a lot of noise here and nobody complains. I have to cross the main shopping streets to get here every day, which is not great. But that's an okay trade-off.

What's important to you about being here?

What's important to me… is just to sit at my desk, most of my focus is created that way. Unless I'm working from home, or Johanna [Orellana] is here and we're recording with microphones. I try to do that on weekends because it's not a microphone studio to be honest. It's quite noisy here. You can hear everything, even when people walk in the hallways.

How often are you actually in here?

As much as I can, it's been a bit on and off the last nine months because of touring. I haven't gotten properly focused back on a project since the last album. But I've done little projects here and there in between. I learned that it's extremely stressful and difficult to make new stuff while touring. I will have to try to separate those modes a little bit more in the future.

I read that you first began dabbling in electronic music when you were around 22. Before that, what sort of musical upbringing did you have? I also read that both of your parents are guitarists.

Well, they're not professional guitarists. My dad used to play in a band and my mum, who is Mexican Catholic, played the guitar and sang in church a lot. When I was a very young kid, they played a lot of classical music at home, not the very complicated stuff—you know, all the classics. I grew up playing the piano at home and clarinet in a marching band. I quit playing the piano when I was 15 because I didn't want to practice, I wanted to drink and smoke weed with my friends. I used to love learning piano pieces off the top of my head, by ear.

I played them twice as fast and with the reverb pedal on all the time. The piano teacher was like, "oh god," but I just loved the sound of it. Then when I started travelling for work, I stopped playing anything altogether. I picked up the guitar again later, around my early 20s. As a teenager in the late '90s, I listened to a lot of hip-hop and R&B, which is still very influential on me in many ways.

Smalltown Supersound is a longstanding gateway between pop and electronic music, and it has played a pivotal role in your career. How does the label being based in Oslo interface with your work?

When I make music, nobody else is really involved until I've finished something. Or at least when I've finished enough of a body of work that there's something to choose from, in order to put together an album. Joakim [Haugland] and I have a close working relationship. There's so much trust there. I mean, he's been putting out my music since the start and it's changed so much over the years and has always seen that sort of red thread in something that actually fits into the Smalltown universe. He works very intuitively, and so do I. We have that in common.

OK, time to get serious about production. Would you like to start with the acoustic instruments or the hardware?

I don't mind. You tell me.

Ok, let's look at the woodwind instruments, which feel quite central in your work. Johanna Orellana plays the flute on your records, and you dabble in the clarinet. Correct?

Dabble is definitely correct. I'm not an instrumentalist. I can play a few, but I play them badly. If I can just get them to do what I want, then that's fine! Johanna is the proper musician, and I'm the one that makes weird noises [laughs]. I'm actually quite pleased with how I've progressed with the clarinet, even though I have no idea what notes I'm playing—my breath has gotten much stronger in the last few years. And I mean a 2.5 reed is not that big of a deal, the people that play proper classical would laugh at that. But, for me, that's quite an achievement—I was on a 1.5 last year.

Hillestad in her cosy studio on the second floor of an unassuming building on the oldest street in downtown Oslo—which was previously occupied by Todd Terje during the heyday of the Norwegian space disco.

Can you explain the difference between the thicknesses of reeds?

You get a better tone the higher you go. There's still an occasional squeak when I play low, but that's okay, I've only been playing properly for two years. I played it in the marching band but that was when I was about ten. I bought it into the studio two years ago, initially as a bit of a joke—then I was like, there are actually quite a lot of interesting things you can do with this thing!

So, what draws you to woodwinds in general?

I think it's just the presence of breath. It brings humanity in very strongly, it makes things more intimate somehow, which is the key. The flute is my absolute favourite woodwind instrument because it really emphasises the breath.

Do you find the flute harder to play than the clarinet?

I cannot play the flute. It's a whole other technique. I've tried it and you have to use a lot more air! You really really need to have lungs of steel, which I don't.

What would you say your core pieces of kit are?

Core, core, core... I have to say Ableton and all of the plugins I have in there. It's just astonishing how much you can do in there. I was using Logic before for live, and I learned it was too difficult to do what I want to do live with it.

Is there a pride-and-joy piece of hardware in your studio?

Currently, I'm really loving the Digi R1 by Tasty Chips. It's a granular synthesiser. I just got this last year, so I haven't spent days and days with it yet. It wasn't even used to create the last album. Actually, none of these things—Tasty Chips Digi R1, Hologram Microcosm and Bastl Thyme—were used for the last album, but they have become part of my live show.

How often are you researching and buying new equipment for the studio or live performances?

I feel like I'm super restrained. I sometimes tell myself off and say, "Actually, you can spend a little bit more money on equipment." The most important thing is just it's not really how much of what you have, it's just what you do with it. That's my motto—or excuse—but I do try to buy some stuff when I'm at the beginning of something because it helps with inspiration. It makes it fun. It opens fresh gates of curiosity or interest. A lot of the time it's just replacing old broken stuff. I had to get a new MIDI keyboard last year. But that's not very interesting at all. It's just a MIDI keyboard.

Do you graduate to a new piece of hardware or kit every time you start a new record?

I do. That's exactly what I do, and I buy lots of new plugins. 90 percent of the last album was made with my own samples and recordings. I'll take patchworks of old samples and new samples put together with the Korg MS-20. I used that to get really nice saturated bass sounds. You can't go wrong with a classic. I usually start by recording tons of stuff in one go with it, for about two hours. Then I'll go through it and make samples or stretches, which I'll pop back into later on to look for loops. I usually don't get bored while doing that. Almost everything happens through a microphone somehow and then gets just chucked through loads of plugins afterwards.

What role do the Bastl Thyme or Hologram Microcosm play for Carmen Villain?

I use both for my live show. I got the Thyme around Christmas two years ago. It's a tape emulator. It's fun to manipulate the wave functions and interact with playing live. Usually, I'll run an outboard through there. If I play the clarinet, for example, it goes through there and then into Ableton.

How about the "crappy" flea market zither?

I paid ten quid for it and it's super out of tune all the time. It was used on Both Lines Will Be Blue and the tape I did for Geographic North, Sketch for Winter IX: Perlita.

What else from this room translates to the live show?

Currently, the clarinet, the Bastl, the Microcosm, the MPC, which I use to trigger samples, the MIDI keyboard, the computer… Oh, and the Roland SP-404 sampler, those are so good. It never breaks down.

Can you tell me about your workflow and creative process? What's the jump-off point for you on a studio session?

Usually, I'll just grab a sample and chuck it through some stuff and see what happens. I might record a bit of clarinet or use something that I recorded on a field recorder, like a random sound. It doesn't have to be all birds and forests and stuff like that.

Not the Norwegian fjords?

Exactly. It might just be throwing sounds and seeing what comes back. I'm always looking for interesting loops. Just anything that might trigger some sort of idea. I find it really difficult to just sit down and start sort of composing something from nothing. I've done it before, but I find it much more inspiring to have something to jam along with. Because that might actually give me more ideas when it comes to harmonics or melodies or something that might actually just spring out of sound.

You've mentioned plugins a few times now. What were some of your go-to's on Only Love From Now On?

One that I used quite a bit was the Glitchmachines Palindrome, which I bought for about ten quid. It's a granular sampler. I used it on quite a few of the tracks, like "Silueta," to create these moving parts. It has four different sample motors, you can sort of bring them in and out and so there's a lot of automation there but it's just a really nice way to make different samples interact with each other. I also used the Universal Audio Lexington 224 reverb plugin, Ableton's Simpler and the stock Granulator a lot too.

It's pretty well documented online that you started out making guitar-driven, psychedelic pop before drifting towards leftfield electronica. How did that arc happen and how much of your setup changed along the way?

[Points to fender guitars, bass guitars and a graveyard of guitar pedals in the corner of the room]. There's the evidence over there. I don't pick them up very often anymore to be honest, but bass guitars do make some interesting sounds. So I might record them sometimes. And I do still bring them in, but it sounds more orchestral than a real guitar.

I feel like you can hear the transition on tracks like "Connected" or "Borders" on Infinite Avenue, which feature sonic textures that you've embraced more on the more recent records.

Infinite Avenue took me ages to do because there were massive changes in my life [moving from London to Oslo] at the time. I had no idea what I was doing. I was having so much fun. I co-produced some of it with this guy that was here. And that was very inspiring at the time. After that record, I was like, "Jesus, I have to stop singing," because it was exhausting and I felt like I had nothing more to say.

Hillestad is drawn to more subtle sounds that evoke organic textures like "breath"—sounds that are anchored by a deep groove that puts you in a "woozy space," as she likes to put it.

Let's talk about mixdowns and arrangements. You do all your own stuff, and you also arrange for others, including, recently, Johanna Orellana.

Johanna has an idea about the music, but then when we record it's all about catching her improvisations as they happen. And then after that, it's mostly just mixing and placing things. A lot of it was just her playing one part. I wanted things to be super close because with her it's so personal. And again, to catch that human side of breath, but also all the effects the flute can generate on its own. It's an insane internal clock that she plays on, she'll record one part and then record another part and then play them on top of each other. She's just like a metronome.

You still get your own records mastered, though?

Oh, for sure. I never get the bass strong enough in my mix. It's always nice to get some extra life into that by mastering it. The last record was done by Rashad Becker and the two before that were Matt Coulton.

Everything so far feels quite live-oriented. Is your workflow shaped with that in mind?

Not really, but it's something that I started thinking about more. I would like to make a record that was more with playing live in mind. I'm not really manipulating that much when I play live. For the arrangements of work, I feel like I'm still quite fixed because the tracks are shaped already. At the end of the day, I just have to do what works to make something work.

What are your thoughts on AI and music—have you incorporated it or any generative production methods into your workflow?

I haven't really put that much thought into it except what I've heard come back from some of the people who are doing it. Holly Herndon's work in particular is really interesting. It's still a collaboration between humans and AI because the human has to make the final decisions of what actually gets put into the release. It's just another tool.

The whole idea of AI creating a shitty ambience for something like Spotify doesn't interest me. But AI is definitely happening, isn't it? How are we gonna deal with that politically? Hmmm… If AI took over now, everybody would be fucked, financially.

That's a nice segue into collaboration. You've got your regular collaborators, but I was wondering how often you have other guests or musicians in for one-off studio sessions?

I really want to do more of it for my next record. But in a different way. I'm hoping to bring in a couple of more instruments. But I'm thinking not in a very present-on-top sort of way like Johanna or Barbara did on the last one. More like, I'll take it on as a sort of sample.

Dark ambient, drone, folk, dub, fourth world, jazz, kosmische—these are just some of the tags associated with your music. What is your relationship with genres and labelling?

Oh my god. Of course a lot of people operate within very specific genres, but I don't feel like I am. If I was making punk or psytrance, fine. Some tags feel like they fit better than others for sure. I don't know if dark ambient fits though.

That's the name of a curated Spotify playlist that you feature on.

No comment [laughs].

How would you describe your music to, say, your auntie?

I find it really difficult to describe my music. I would say to my auntie, "It's weird electronic stuff with flutes, and you might find it interesting." I guess that's what they would understand the most. I don't think they would get the term "experimental"—but it depends on the aunt.

Only Love From Now On resonated with a lot of people on a deep, emotional level. What does the record symbolise for you?

I feel like things were already changing in a really good way before it, but it's the first record where I've felt really happy, from A to B. I still really like it, which is kind of a miracle after having played the material out live for so long. It was relatively easy and rewarding to make, which makes me feel quite scared, because it's the classic thing of how am I going to follow that up? Not that it's like the best thing in the world, but it's tricky, because I just finished the album cycle.

"I grew up playing the piano at home and clarinet in a marching band. I quit playing the piano when I was 15 because I didn't want to practice, I wanted to drink and smoke weed with my friends."

How emotionally involved would you say you were in the electronics on Johanna's latest record, compared to your solo material?

That record is just Johanna. That's her emotions and her journey. I just received it and created the space for it. Of course, I invested myself in it, because we've become really good friends and she's such an amazing person and friend.

How differently would you approach making those longer more sequenced pieces of music to the dubbier tracks like "Subtle Bodies"?

Those are arranged with space created for the melodies to be present, right? Whereas "Subtle Bodies" is all about the beat developments and just the woozy space. To be inside of it, you just go in and get carried off by a cloud or something. And that was just all about creating development and the track but not in the melodic sort of way with top melodies.

Who are some of your favourite dub techno producers?

Brian Leeds [Huerco S./Pendant], of course. Biosphere is super inspiring. He lives in Tromsø in the far north of Norway, where it's dark all the time. I also love Parris. We did a live commissioned performance here in Oslo a few years back as well, which is how we got to know each other.

Your Living Monuments project sounds a lot more ethereal and restrained, a different side to your music. I guess it's a different approach for fulfilling a conceptual brief to accompany a performance piece.

It's a very different approach because it was a very collaborative project. I worked closely with the choreographer, and it was more about setting a soundscape for what was going on onstage. It was interesting to me, but I wouldn't have come up and made that stuff just by myself in the studio. I wouldn't necessarily sit there and make a drone record. And all that stuff you've heard, it's all edits, it's been shortened because that whole performance was like two hours and 40 minutes, or something. It's almost more like a performance installation, which is slow and driven by colour, a collaboration between lights and performers.

The choreographer gave me a lot of interesting cues and briefs for what she felt for each of the colours and scenes. It's like a living painting. I saw it once at the premiere in Bergen a year ago. It was a commission for Carte Blanche, a national organisation for contemporary dance based in Bergen. It was shown here at the opera just for like the end of last year. Joakim came to see it, and he was like, "You have to put this out!" To me, it feels funny to release something that's made specifically to exist in that space but, again, I trust him.

Last year you performed in a forest in the Azores, an oratory in Milan, the Surgical Science Museum in Chicago and the ICA in London. How different was your approach and setup across those shows?

The Azores show was part of a week-long residency called Terra Incógnita. The music was made there together with Tropa Macaca and was made for accompanying listeners on a hiking trail walk. When we did the initial walk, it was in a super hazy fog. There was so much of it. The trail has this insane view across all these lakes, but we couldn't see anything. We could, at best, see maybe three metres ahead of us. So the music was really influenced by that instead. We did an improvised performance in the forest on one of the days. Another site-specific work I did a couple of years ago was at the Vigeland mausoleum here in Oslo.

The guy you told me about earlier today?

The statue guy, yes. His brother made a mausoleum for himself and the inside is covered in frescoes of naked people, who all die. It's quite the place. Sound wise, there's like a 30-second reverb on the low end, it's just incredible. We did a show there. And that was definitely a site-specific project because you can't really do anything with drums or anything in there. Music changes so much from space to space. And the space really can really emphasise and enhance a live experience.

What's life like at the moment after a busy year of touring?

I've had a bit of time off now, which is good. There are a few more shows coming up. I want to continue getting into the right headspace to make a new record. I'll see what comes first and what seems like the most intuitive thing to start on—then we'll see what happens.

You mentioned working on new material.

I've mostly just started thinking, reading and trying to do a little bit of research. I think I've made something that I like and it's a good starting point, even if it doesn't end up on there in the end, because it's just killing your darlings a lot of the time.

"Music changes so much from space to space. And the space really can really emphasise and enhance a live experience."