Reykjavík Grapevine - 23.09.2016, Qupperneq 36

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Gyða Valtýsdóttir sits at the table
of her large, wood-lined loft apart-
ment, cradling a cup of coffee. She
stares into the distance, pondering
the question. Most known as one
of the original singers of múm, she
left that band’s first incarnation in
the mid-2000s and quietly vanished
from sight. So: where has she been?
“I ask myself that question too,”
she smiles, after the long silence.
“For almost five years, I lived out of
a suitcase. I didn’t have a home to go
back to. It was great, I really loved
it. But when people asked me that
question, sometimes the answer was
New York, or Istanbul... but I really
didn’t know where I was. I didn’t stay
anywhere for more than a month.”
Her time off the map—or on
“a different kind of map,” as Gýða
would have it—led to many chance
meetings and collaborations. She
toured with Josephine Foster, liv-
ing and collaborating with her for
two months in Morocco, and trav-
elled to take part in various projects,
pausing sometimes to record new
work of her own. Along the way, she
was one of the musicians in Ragnar
Kjartansson’s multi-screen installa-
tion ‘The Visitors’, shot in a mansion
in the Hudson Valley and currently
showing at London’s Barbican Cen-
tre.
“That was such a fun project,”
says Gýða. “A lot of amazing stuff
happened to me—I feel very lucky.
I was improvising. The dots I was
jumping were connected by music
projects. Because I didn’t live any-
where, I would just go somewhere
and then stay until the next project
came. A lot of strange adventures
happen when you’re just out there.”
Creative flow
The journey began after her time in
múm. “Múm got a lot of attention
when we started,” Gýða explains.
“And I was like: ‘I’m definitely not in
it for all that’—to think of music as
a profession. It felt very uncomfort-
able. Then I saw this frame drum
player, channeling all his energy into
his performance. It made me realise
what I was searching for in music.
And I just needed time to find it.”
She flew to Russia to study clas-
sical cello, before finishing her mas-
ter’s degree studies in Switzerland.
“When I look back on it, it’s such a
weird road,” she says. “But for me,
it was an alchemical process. After
the classical studies, it made sense to
improvise, and say yes to everything,
and try different things. It was very
important to get the creative flow
back.”
This summer, Gýða quietly re-
leased a new album, ‘Epicycle’, on
Bandcamp, with a physical release
in the works. “The idea has been
with me since I was eighteen,” she
explains. “I wanted to introduce all
the classical music that I was find-
ing to my friends. So I had the idea
of covering classical music from the
last 2000 years. It was recorded here
and there, all over the place, on my
travels, in different ways.”
She produces a delicate piece of
paper bearing download instruc-
tions, and a short text: “Please plant
me / I will grow a red poppy / in a
sunny bed of soil / and water plenty.”
I turn it over in my hands, feeling
small bumps inside the paper. “The
papers grow flowers,” says Gýða. “My
mom planted one, and now they’re
growing. That’s when I felt the con-
clusion of this record, when I saw the
flowers.”
Seeking and finding
Gýða has played with múm periodi-
cally over the years, and will join
the band onstage once more at the
Airwaves festival, accompanied by
the Kronos Quartet. “What hap-
pened there is maybe a bit odd,” she
explains. “It was my band, but when
I rejoined, I was more of a session
player. I wasn’t really writing. But
it felt very natural, as I was playing
with lots of other bands, and it was
natural to start playing more of the
old songs.”
Settled in Iceland, for the time
being, Gýða speaks of other future
projects, including recording her
solo work, and perhaps a period of
focussing on the cello. “I like to al-
low things to happen naturally, in
their own time,” she says. “I don’t
feel like I need to push anything into
existence.” She bursts into laughter,
saying: “Maybe I’m almost too re-
laxed about it!”
“You go a whole circle,” she fin-
ishes. “When I started múm, we were
just curious about sound, banging on
stuff, and being like: ‘Hey, listen to
this!’ But you have to go through an
alchemical process, to come all the
way back to that curiosity again.”
LISTEN AND SHARE:
gpv.is/gyd15
Airwaves Festival
A Differ-
ent Kind
Of Map
Gyða Valtýsdóttir
touches down
after a five year
journey
Words JOHN ROGERS
Photo ART BICNICK
36The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 15 — 2016