Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.09.2017, Page 28

Playing The Air
Hekla, her theremin, and the possibilities
With her theremin, Hekla pulls haunting
electronic music out of thin air. Named
after its Russian inventor, Léon Ther-
emin, this futuristic looking apparatus
conveys a certain eerie timbre, often as-
sociated with sci-fi or spooky goings-on.
Frequently used in movie scores—and,
famously, in Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta
Love’—it has recently featured increas-
ingly in avant garde and contemporary
electronic music.
Hekla Magnúsdóttir seems to feel
more at ease discussing her instrument
and the music she creates with it than
she does talking about herself. As she
shows me the various gadgets in her Ber-
lin home studio—including three Moo-
gs and a custom-built theremin—she
switches one on and plays the lovely hook
from Ellý Vilhjálmsdóttir’s ‘Sveitin milli
sanda’ to check if everything is working
as it should, then lets me have a try.
“The right antenna is the pitch,” she
explains. “The closer you are to the an-
tenna, the higher the note is, and the
deepest note is by your body. You tune
it to your torso every time you play. The
left antenna is the volume. If you put
your hand down there’s silence, so you
can separate the notes, but usually you’ll
slide between them.” I make an honest
attempt to play, but it sounds like feral
cats in different stages of dying. I quickly
give up.
Rowdy and vulnerable
“Training the ears is the most impor-
tant thing, because there’s nothing
physical to touch,” Hekla explains, reas-
suringly. On stage, performing songs
from her forthcoming solo album, she
can look like a sorceress, conjuring mu-
sic from this mysterious box. “If you’re
playing with a band, you can technically
wear headphones and preview the pitch
so you hear the note ahead of everyone
else,” she says. ”If you’re coming in after
a long silence, you’ll know what note to
hit. It’s just not as cool!”
She recently had one of her ther-
emins overhauled, as years of red wine
stains, pizza grease and chewing gum
had ravaged its outer casing. After all,
she’s also a member of Bárujárn—a surf
rock outfit known for their rowdy gigs in
sweaty bars. The group has a new album
on the way, to which Hekla is contribut-
ing from across the North Sea. “We’re
making a conceptual surf symphony,
consisting of allegro, adagio, minuet
and rondo sections,” she says. “It’s
gonna be epic. Being in a band is such a
good time—the company, the partying
and the support. There’s less pressure;
you’re not on stage by yourself, vulner-
able.”
As a kid, Hekla started out learning
the cello. When introduced to the ther-
emin by an artist friend Darr Tah Lei,
she was intrigued. “A few years later I
saw one in a shop and bought it on the
spot,” she says. “I quit music school,
joined Bárujárn, and partied. I didn’t

“The
theremin
has so
much left
unexplored.
It offers
things that
people
have yet to
discover.”
28 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2017
Ris og rof
Out now on
Bandcamp
Words:
Steindór Grétar
Jónsson
Photos:
Sigga Ella
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