Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2018, Qupperneq 39

Words: Phil Uwe Widiger
It’s one of the first bright days of
the summer in Iceland when I meet
composer and musician Úlfur Eldjárn
at Kaffi Vest. He orders two espressos,
one for him, and one for his brother
Halldór. “One time, when Halldór was
late, the waiter asked me whether
everything was alright with my coffee,”
he tells me. “He thought I had taken a
sip and didn’t like it.” Shortly after, Hall-
dór arrives to complete the dynamic,
original and creative duo. Their newest
collaboration is set to revolutionise the
way you listen to music—and how you
experience Reykjavík as a city.
The composer and
the programmer
The two brothers both have a diverse
background in music. Úlfur, who grew
up in a scene that revolved around jazz
and avant-garde, recently returned to
school to study composition. “A lot of
the ideas that I am working on now
come from this period,” he says.
Halldór benefited greatly from his
brother’s instruments and recording
gear being available to him during his
childhood. While his band Sykur is the
red thread through his musical career,
he has been busy with numerous side
projects along the way.
“I’ve been working with Ólafur
Arnalds for the past two years,” he
says. Halldór studied computer science
and tries to simplify the matter for me.
“The shortest version is that the soft-
ware enables Ólafur Arnalds to play
three pianos at once.”
Right. Who would have expected
anything less?
A new corner,
a new sound
Úlfur and Halldór are now finishing
the last touches on their newest collab-
oration, called “Reykjavík GPS,” which
is set to premiere during the Reykjavík
Arts Festival on June 4th. People will
be able to download an app on their
smartphone, put on their headphones,
and experience Reykjavík’s traditional
centre in a personal way. Depending on
which turns they take, they will change
the soundtrack of their walk.
Úlfur’s task was to compose the
music. “It’s like writing many versions
of the same track,” he says. “It’s going
to be kind of a puzzle where you can
take a sound clip and match it with
many others. Then we’re mapping
them onto the area in Reykjavík so that
when you walk in a certain street you’ll
hear a certain sound clip; maybe a
piano playing. When you walk past the
next corner, something else will start
to happen in the music.”
The area will roughly cover Reykja-
vík’s old city centre, from Hljómskál-
agarður, up to Hallgrímskirkja, and
down to the seaside.
Connecting music
and location
Halldór’s task was to make sure the
technical side of the project was work-
ing. “When I was doing the very first
test, I just created the soundtrack for
my street,” he remembers. “I immedi-
ately started to connect the locations
with the sounds.”
Úlfur agrees. “It’s not just a musical
piece, it’s an art piece, too. It changes
the way you experience what you see.”
Bringing interactivity
to music
“It’s weird that we have all this tech-
nology, but we’re still relying on a very
conservative way of listening,” finishes
Úlfur. “In an era where we have video
games, massive interaction in social
media and all kinds of immersive expe-
riences, I think it’s obvious that there
needs to be more musical experiments
in that field—because music is perfect
for this.”
Take a walk with Reykjavík GPS at
this year’s Arts Festival, and hear the
duo’s inventive ideas bring the city to
life around you in a whole new way. Reykjavík GPS premieres at noon on June 4th
at Hallgrímskirkja. Try it here: rvkgps.com
“Depending
on
which
turns
you
take,
you will
change the
soundtrack
of your
walk.”
Your Own
Personal
Soundtrack
Reykjavík GPS enables the listener to change
the composition through the path they take