Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2018, Page 35

Borko, aka Björn Kristjánsson, is a compelling character.
With his impressive, well-groomed beard and his intelli-
gent eyes behind old-school glasses, he seems like a person
that lives in a cabin far out in the wilderness. A resident of
Reykjavík, he instead goes wild in his music, whether play-
ing percussion with party-band FM Belfast, or keyboard
and guitar with Skakkamanage—or with his very own
indie-pop solo project Borko.
Or, you know... composing music for a theatre dance
piece at the Reykjavík Arts Festival.
12 years of waiting
Borko’s newest release is the soundtrack for Bára Sigfús-
dóttir’s dance piece “The Lover”, which revolves around the
relationship between humans and nature. The two artists
met for the first time around 12 years ago when Björn was
asked to write music for a project by the first contempo-
rary dance class at the Iceland Arts Academy, which Bára
was a part of.
“In 2014, eight years later, Bára called me from Belgium
and said that she had been waiting for a chance to get me
on another project,” Björn remembers. “Now was the time.
And that was ‘The Lover.’”
Durational fun
It was only when they met up at Bára’s art residency in
Brussels that the project picked up momentum. “The first
day we just sat there and talked for hours,” Björn says.
“Then, the morning after, we started working and... it just
happened.” Björn composed the music on his computer
there and then, with Bára performing her dance move-
ments right in front of him.
Four pieces were born, clocking in at 50 minutes of
music. The sound is best described as slowly evolving,
atmospheric and minimal; there’s no underlying pulse
or beat, which gives the music space for movement. “You
have to take time and get into the music to enjoy it,” says
Björn. “You have to focus on it. You can also wander off
with your mind and come back to it again, and then it's not
the same as it was before.”
Not a cocktail party
The creative duo also recorded vocal samples in the hall-
way of an old abbey which Björn consequently manipu-
lated and put into the compositions. “It has electronic
elements, some strings, some vocal samples,” Björn says.
“It's minimal in the way that it's very repetitive and it
always changes really, really slowly. If you listen for a
minute it maybe doesn't change at all but when you are six
minutes into it, you all of a sudden notice that the texture
has evolved from what you’d gotten used to.”
The listening party will be held on June 4th at the Reyk-
javík Arts Festival Hub and will be mainly focused on the
music. The album “The Lover - Music For Dance” will be
released the same day, with a limited physical release
made available for collectors. “Maybe we’ll turn off the
lights and let people sit in the darkness and just listen,”
Björn finishes, smiling. “It's not a cocktail party, it's a
listening party. I want to have it like that.”
Join the listening party at the Reykjavík
Arts Festival Hub on June 4th at 9pm. See
the accompanying dance piece at Tjarnarbíó
on the 7th and 8th of June.
“Björn composed
the music with
Bára performing
her dance move-
ments right in
front of him.”
Music
For
Lovers
Borko celebrates the release of
“The Lover - Music For Dance”
Words: Phil Uwe Widiger
Photo: Art Bicnick