Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.02.2016, Blaðsíða 19

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By John Rogers – Photo by Art Bicnick
In a dimly lit, pin-drop quiet Mengi,
young composer and musician Bára
Gísladóttir lies onstage on her back,
behind her double bass. Barely visible,
she starts to make sound—a breathy
growling, that builds into a throaty
roar, and then a howl. Bára battles
with the strings a little, and then starts
building again, making a guttural gur-
gle that builds into a scream. The au-
dience is enthralled, some sitting in si-
lence, whether stunned, hypnotised or
giggling with bewilderment.
“I was hoping nobody would see
me there, lying there behind the in-
strument,” Bára explains, later. "I actu-
ally don’t know where I got this idea,
it seems pretty strange. That piece is
called “Rooftops of Prague,” so I guess
this piece is what Prague inspired. It’s a
bit of a satanic city. That architecture…
and, the atmosphere is full of surprises.
It’s romantic, but in a punk way—the
kind of romantic that I like.”
Spank de bass
The performance was to celebrate the
CD & vinyl release of her crowdfunded
debut album, ‘Different Rooftops’, and
featured live debuts for several of the
works contained therein. Bára’s play-
ing style changed dramatically from
piece to piece—at one point, accom-
panied by groaning saxophone and
with an intensely furrowed brow, she
snapped the strings against the neck
violently, as if punishing her bass. At
another, she grappled the wide body as
if trying to stop it from escaping, wrest-
ing with the bulky instrument before
bowing the strings emphatically as if
sawing wood. It made for a nervy, dis-
concerting tableau of sound and a ro-
bustly physical performance.
In the most theatrical and visual
piece, “Rooftops of Berlin,” Bára was
wrapped in a long white cloth band,
with four people standing around her
in a diamond, tugging at the material
to spin her around until she became
hopelessly entwined. In the end, her
attempts to play were thwarted as the
material finally muted the strings.
“I like the challenge of extended
playing techniques,” says Bára, “and
the physical performance adds another
element—whether I’m hiding behind
the instrument, or fighting it, or trying
to escape from it. What the audience
expects shouldn’t always be what hap-
pens.”
Push the boundaries
The album was written during Bára’s
MA course at the University of Co-
penhagen. It’s a devoutly experimental
work that displays a restless curiosity
about the potential of the instrument,
and about composition itself. “My peers
gave some mixed reviews,” says Bára.
“Most of them thought the album was
a bit too long, and maybe too deep into
the same colours—this oily-textured
mass. But that was kind of what I was
going for. I like music to be a challenge,
and I don’t feel that everything needs
to always be accessible. It’s so impor-
tant to push at the boundaries, not just
in music, but in our life experiences in
general. It sounds like such a cliché to
say it! But it’s true.”
This enthusiasm for exploration
is a key part of Bára’s process. In fact,
the album was inspired by travel—the
sounds, sights, smells, sensations, and
feelings she experienced whilst walk-
ing the streets or viewing the skylines
of different cities.
“The work is based on cities that
I went to between 2009 and 2015,
and felt inspired by,” she explains. “In
some of these pieces, like ‘Rooftops of
Prague,’ I had this overview of the roof-
tops, the city, and the atmosphere of
the place—then the meat on the bones
is details, and things I’d see in the
street. But then, in ‘Rooftops of Berlin,’
you never get close to anything. As the
performance goes on, I get more and
more stuck in the band. It doesn’t have
a happy ending—I get stuck and can’t
go any further.”
Marrakech was a very different ex-
perience. “I was there in the summer,
during Ramadan, and there was a heat
wave happening,” recalls Bára. “It was
chaos. There were a lot of intense sales-
men in the streets, but it was so hot
they’d be lying in their stalls scream-
ing after you to buy things. That piece
is more about that intense experience
of being there. But in all of the cities,
I’d been up to the rooftops. I do love
rooftops, both to look up and see, and
to look down from.”
The sound of colour
Bára often talks in visual terms when
describing her music, associating notes
with colours and textures. In fact,
painting is also a part of her writing
process.
“I would come home from these
places feeling inspired, and paint,”
she says. “It was very freeing, because
it’s not something I’ve ever trained
in or taken seriously, so I can just ex-
periment. When I was in Barcelona, I
went to the Picasso museum, and saw
some paintings of rooftops from his
blue period—one flat and dark blue,
and one lighter. I’m synaesthetic so I
started imagining these tonal views. I’d
experimented before with the connec-
tion between visual and audio arts, and
decided to continue the idea, and make
a system that would include both ele-
ments."
By processing her memories into
colours, Bára was also designing a mu-
sical palette that would come to form
the basis of her compositions. "To me,
the note C is a yellow colour,” she ex-
plains. “And Marrakech is yellow, or-
ange, pink… Berlin is blue and grey.
What I did was to paint these thoughts
of the cities, then look at what I had,
and think “Okay, here I can use an A,
that’s red,” and so on. It became a little
set of notes to be used for development.
The paintings and music are two things
that reference each other.”
“I like numbers and systems,” she
finishes. “but when you’re composing
you can get a bit stuck in the details,
and you can accidentally end up on a
totally different branch. That’s when I
can look back at the painting, and say,
‘Ah, yes, that was the thing.’ It guides
me, and reminds where I started from,
and where I’m trying to get to.”
And it’s an interesting point to ar-
rive at, indeed. But Bára’s wanderlust,
both musical and literal, is nowhere
near sated yet. The album is a desti-
nation reached—and the first step in a
longer voyage.
“Marrakech Is Yellow,
Orange, Pink…”
Bára
Gísladóttir
melds
experience,
memory,
place, and music
theory on her
innovative debut LP
“It’s a bit of a
satanic city. That
architecture… and,
the atmosphere is
full of surprises.”