She has written a chart-topper for Kylie, but Icelandic singer Emiliana Torrini doesn't have a secret formula, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea
So what's a half-Icelandic, half-Italian singer-songwriter doing in Brighton, you might ask? Here's the answer: the rather exotically named Emiliana Torrini - the woman whose voice guides Gollum's Song on the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers soundtrack, and whose diverse songwriting talents have provided a worldwide number one for Kylie (Slow) - is in Brighton because it's a bit like Reykjavik, the city she lived close to before moving to the UK. In a peculiarly charming manner that seems to be indigenous to the Icelandic race - her English is perfect, her phraseology is quirky, her metaphors endearingly strange - Torrini mentions the south of England town's air of freedom as being one of the primary reasons: "You can walk away and get lost if you want to."
She talks about the culture shock she experienced when she first stayed in London. Torrini had thought the city would be one big bang of spontaneity; after a while, she grimly realised that time is money and pretty much everything is planned accordingly - "I'm not much of a time planner," she chirrups positively.
Between her liking for getting lost and her indifference towards diary appointments, you might be thinking that Torrini is as fey and wafty as one of Tolkien's elves. Yes, there is a touch of the will-o-the-wisp about her, but her music is grounded in a type of transparent intimacy that holds up under pressure.
Torrini has been developing as a singer and songwriter for a few years, operating very much under the commercial radar, yet making friends in all the right places. Her 1999 début album, Love In The Time Of Science, introduced a singular talent that fused elements of her Icelandic background - "you start out being a little bit of a spoiled brat in Iceland because you get away with a lot; where you were raised you take with you in life, without even realising it" - with vague yet gorgeous trip-hop.
Her new album, Fisherman's Woman, starts with a whisper and ends with a sigh. A lot had changed in Torrini's life since recording her début: loss of innocence in Iceland ("Reykjavik has become like so many other cities; I'm 27, but some people look upon me as a grandmother when I return home") was compounded with the more serious loss of a friend ("my favourite person; I don't remember the half of it, but I had to express it somehow").
"I was homesick all the time," says Torrini, "and that feeling of loss and separation got stuck in my brain when I was writing music. Your mouth shapes the pictures in your head, and the pictures are very often of home and people. The first record is what it is, but the new album is more like life firmly gripping your hair and hitting you in the face with a big frying pan."
She prefers not to talk about her soundtrack part in Lord of the Rings: Two Towers ("it's possible I was a last resort, as I wasn't really famous") and downplays her part in taking Kylie to the number one spot with Slow.
"IT HAPPENED DURING the making of Fisherman's Woman, and my co-songwriter and I entered a stage where we became quite tired with it. We needed a holiday but without stopping the creative process; we just needed to go a bit crazy, go somewhere, come back and be inspired. We were asked to write a song for Kylie. I had never done it before, but within half an hour we had written Slow. We then went to the pub, got drunk and thought she would never even look at it."
Writing a song that was far removed from her standard style was, says Torrini (and here come idiosyncratic metaphors again), "like opening the windows and doors of an old house and letting out a disco diva that had been locked in for many years".
"It's very important to do things you think you can't do, because when you prove yourself wrong, you become a happy person. Writing the Kylie song was like going on a holiday, where you step into a different world and become someone else. But then the holiday is over and you cannot wait to get back into your own world. It reminds you of how happy you can be in your own place."
And what about the money she has earned from Kylie's worldwide smasheroo? How happy is she about that? It's nice to have it, she avers, but stresses that if money starts to become a primary motive for creativity then people end up doing work they might not be very proud of. "I never, ever allow myself to think in that way. If I am asked to write for a specific artist, then I won't just say yes for the sake of the money. It's about liking the artist I've been asked to write for and doing something that maybe I think I can't do. It's a challenge and it's fun.
"I never considered myself a writer or artist and it's a much healthier way, I think. I'm much more of a treasure hunter or explorer; that world is better for me. A lot of the time the music just happens. I'm supposed to have all these amazing poetical, intelligent answers as to why my music happens. But the answers don't exist; it's just about putting headphones on, and dancing and singing. Doing your thing. There's nothing intellectual about it; it's about doing what you do."
The creation of great music, it is often said, is a natural gift; it is something that is bestowed and not worked for. Emiliana Torrini agrees, but reckons the gift of making music is also supernatural.
"Often it is like that. You write a song at night, wake up the next morning and wonder did you really write that song. It's a magical experience. Some people wake up every day and write music, but I have never been like that, possibly because I'm so scared of it. I make excuses not to write music, which for me is healthy because it's good to talk!"
With economic exactitude possibly unbecoming for one who likes the thrill of spontaneity, Torrini says she never writes one song more than she has to.
"It depends on how you use music, how it comes into your life. I like to use it as a healing tool. It's a very baffling mystery to me, and to be honest I'd like to keep it like that way."