Tell me a little about your electronic duo Pr0files.

It's myself and my friend Lauren. It started about one and a half years ago, although we'd collaborated on another project six or seven years ago. We've been friends for quite a while, and we decided to make music together. It wasn't something I was too serious about at first. Then, about a year ago, we released the song Call Yourself a Lover. Pretty much from then on, we realized we have to be pretty serious about this. The response was pretty incredible. That was like a sign, let's throw everything else to the side, and let's focus on this.

Let me just get it out of my system: Call Yourself a Lover is the most adorable, lush and addictive piece of synth-pop I've heard since the more frugal days of Soft Cell, Erasure or Depeche Mode. The production is polished to perfection, yet does not become sterile or a-septic, which is so often the case with technically brilliant productions. How do you do it?

That is an incredible compliment! I love Erasure and Depeche Mode. Me and Lauren, we weren't trying to sound like anyone else, but you can probably hear all of our influences in there, like Depeche Mode and Air (Air featured in this Elektron Talk). Writing the song went relatively fast, it just came out of of us. It wasn't planned or contrived at all. I think the lyrics in a song play a huge, huge factor. A lot of times, in electronic music, the production kind of masks the lyrics. That was a big thing in the song, to make sure the lyrics come through. It was instant magic there, between the music and the lyrics.

Will you tour Europe anytime soon?

We're currently touring the US but we hope to make it to the UK and Sweden next summer!

You’ve got an Octatrack. Did you use it on any of the Pr0files songs?

I have, yeah! I got the Octatrack six months ago. Until then, all programming and samples was done using Pro tools. When I got the Octatrack, that was a brand new thing. I can do stuff now that there was no way I could have done it before. It's adding elements to our music that are absolutely incredible. I was fortunate enough to have Daniel Troberg do an Octatrack demonstration and when I saw what it was capable of, my mind was blown. I had to have that.

At what age did you realize you had a knack for making music using electronic instruments?

I started playing music with a tiny guitar when I was ten years old. When I was 18 or 19 I started listening to Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails (NIN featured in this Elektron Talk) and began using Pro tools. It was only out of necessity that I started producing electronic music, because I couldn't afford to record live drums. It kind of snowballs from there. I started listening to the musical productions of Air. They became huge influences and opened up a whole new world for me.

What, do you reckon, is the more important quality of a synthesizer - letting you have total control of the sound, or, conversely, baffling you by taking the sound to places you had no idea existed?

I like the synth to have a personality of its own, and not having to dial something in completely to make it usable. When you're writing stuff, it definitely becomes a challenge if you have to spend a long time dialling something in from the very beginning. Afterwards, I go back and do the details, adjust the filters and all those little changes. I think the thing that makes the Octatrack so great is that you have the best of both worlds there. There's an incredible amount of control that you can have, but it's also relatively intuitive. Creating sounds almost by accident is also really exciting to me.

Do you remember when and how you were introduced to the Elektron instruments?

I do. The introduction was actually through samples that I had. I'd gotten the M-Audio samples of the Monomachine and the Machinedrum, and I'd been programming with those for quite a while. Then a friend of mine, Christoffer Berg (featured in this Elektron Talk), who has been using the Machinedrum a lot, opened my eyes for Elektron hardware.

Apart from the Octatrack, is there another prominent member of your rig?

I have a Korg MS-20 which I use quite a bit.

You've made the music for nine documentaries on the works of Kevin Smith (Zack and Mindy, Chasing Amy, Clerks, et cetera). Smith is a cult legend in the US, as famous for his off-screen persona and activities as for the films he has made. Tell me how you got to score the life and times of Kevin Smith!

Kevin Smith, yeah. I have been working on these projects for the past nine years. A friend of mine, Zak Knutson, has directed most of those documentaries. He's a long time friend of Kevin's and he has also acted in several of his films. When Zak heard my music he really loved it, he pitched it to Kevin and then Kevin loved my music as well, and from then on they've hired me for a lot of their projects.

Clerks II got an 8-minute standing ovation at the Cannes film festival in 2006. How important is it, commercially and artistically, for an American to get a European accolade like that?

It's a huge, huge deal. Especially for someone like Kevin Smith, especially for a sequel, and especially for a film that was so iconic. Such a great reception, it doesn't really get much better that that.

Your most recent film score is a documentary about John Milius, who wrote the screenplay for legendary films like Conan the Barbarian and Apocalypse Now. He's written some of the most memorable lines of dialoge in Hollywood history (I love the smell of Napalm in the morning). How did you approach that project, musically and conceptually?

That was a challenging project, musically, because there were so many varying styles of music throughout the documentary. There were probably three or four cues of music that were licensed, outside of what I'd written. Aside from that, I was doing everything from 1940's style jazz band music to electronic-based drones. There were a lot of ups and downs throughout the film, emotionally, so it was definitely a challenge working on that. I learned a lot through making music for that film.

Have you used the Octatrack on any of your film or television scores?

I am right now. I don't think it's been announced yet, but I'm scoring something for Marvel Comics. I'm using the Octatrack to make some of the really abstract elements of the score. It's cool, very action-hero, it's what you'd expect from Marvel!

Please share your favorite use of the Octatrack.

For a live show, I enjoy live sampling during a song, then using what I've made as a transition between that and the next song. Using those samples and tweaking them, it's pretty cool.

Interview by Daniel Sterner