Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.10.2017, Qupperneq 34

Our Gods Never
Existed
Bára Gísladóttir's music mass
Words: Elías Þórsson Photo: Art Bicnick
‘Mass For Some’ is the new album
by composer and a double bass play-
er Bára Gísladóttir. It’s a strange
avant-garde concept album based
around the Christian mass, but in a
way, it deconstructs it and turns it
on its head with terrifying effects,
random guttural laughter, and the
bone piercing screech of strings.
“I think the album is a bit out of
place and I am working with quite a
bit of black humour, even though I
might be the only one to find it fun-
ny,” says Bára. “But I’m in no way
making fun of the Latin mass for-
mat; I think it’s great.”
I nostri dei sono morti
One of the more stunningly dis-
turbing songs on the album is titled
‘I nostri dei sono morti-—Italian
for “Our Gods are dead.” Despite
sounding like something carved
into the walls of the seventh circle
of Hell, this is related to the hard-
to-describe levity of the album.
“When I was living in Italy I used
Duolingo to learn Italian, and once
this sentence came up and I thought
it was hilarious to get the satisfy-
ing “bing” sound when I wrote ‘Our
Gods are dead’,” Bára says. “It’s also
quite a statement, but I don’t think
our gods are dead. I think they nev-
er existed.”
The word “mass,” in the context
of the album, also takes on another
meaning. When you listen, you feel
engulfed in the pure mass of sound.
It’s immensely uncomfortable, yet
strangely soothing—sort of like if
Wes Anderson did a remake of ‘The
Exorcist.’
The album is also deeply per-
sonal—it’s second song is entitled
‘Afi,’Icelandic for grandfather. “My
grandfather was the biggest charac-
ter I’ve met, and my soulmate,” says
Bára. “He died in 2013 and now my
dad owns his house.
It stands empty and
I decided to record
my entire album
there. It was strange
recording there, especially during
the night when I could hardly see
anything. I felt like an intruder, cre-
ating all these strange sounds and
screechy noises.”
The burnout that lit
creativity
In recent years Bára has been a
sought-after composer and instru-
mentalist. Her success has brought
with it an emotional strain. “I’ve been
blessed with being fully booked for a
while, but this summer I just burned
out from work,” she says. “I’d started
to feel like I was doing office work.
I love to compose, but what people
often don’t realise is that writing
music is not just creativity—it’s also
a lot of hard work and manual labour.
Writing things down, and making
sure they look right.”
It brought her to the brink and she
didn’t want to make music anymore.
She felt she didn’t have anything to
offer and decided to leave Copen-
hagen, where she’d been living, and
travel to the remote Borgarfjörður
Eystri to stay with a friend who was
working there. “I managed to get
some sleep and I didn’t have to an-
swer emails,” says Bára. “I realised
that I actually had time, and began
thinking about this project through
the night. It came to the point where
I had to make it happen just to save
my sanity.”
The result of this sanity-saving
operation is a remarkable album.
There doesn’t seem
to be a more apt
metaphor for it than
the beeping sound
of Duolingo success
when you type in “I nostri dei sono
morti.”
Music 34The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 19 — 2017
gpv.is/music
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Bára Gísladóttir taking mass
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