Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.07.2019, Qupperneq 40

Smoke, Carbon,
And A Love Supreme
A few of Úlfur Hansson’s favourite things
Words: Úlfur Hansson & John Rogers Photo: Elísabet Davíðsdóttir
Musician
Learn more about Úlfur’s work at
ulfurhansson.com and instagram.
com/ulfur_d.
Úlfur Hansson is a Brooklyn-based
solo musician, film composer and
sound artist. He has released three
albums—2008’s ‘Sweaty Psalms,’ fol-
lowed by ‘White Mountain’ (2013)
and ‘Arborescence’ (2017). He has per-
formed and collaborated with Gyða
Valtýsdóttir, Nordic Affect, Kronos
Quartet, and Jónsi, among others. He
is also the creator of the Segulharpa
(electromagnetic harp, in English)—
an electromagnetically powered
acoustic instrument he invented and
built—which is currently in use as
part of Björk’s ‘Cornucopia’ show. We
asked him to share a few of the influ-
ences that made him the artist he is
today.
Vapour
More and more I enjoy subtle
things; like the way a candle be-
haves when it is dying out. The
flame will begin doing things
candles normally shouldn't do, and
then, as the flame turns to ash,
the sudden burst of vapour takes
its flight with great importance,
it’s as if it instinctively knows
where it must go. Writing music
is a bit like that, but it can be tricky
finding ways to allow yourself to
rush towards your creation, the
part of you that exists fully out-
side of yourself. It’s almost as if
that part of you has been projected
out into the exterior world, and
from that place it radiates de-
sire back into you. This mysteri-
ous circuitry is only activated
through softness and subtlety.

Ghost in the Machine
When electricity passes through
a wire, or a carefully arranged
network of carbon and silicon, the
flow of energy can create distur-
bances in the air, vibrations, which
then enter into the brain through
the ear canals. When the sound is
heard, the complex ebb and flow
of electrons is mirrored within
the listener, as a hologram, and
so the listener has become part
of the circuit—the energy flows
through you before it hurtles to-
wards earth, its source of desire.
It’s such a cosmic thing. Looking at
it this way, I think it’s clear that an
instrument can become so much
more than just a sum of its parts.
A Love Supreme
Can you imagine the world explor-
ing itself through a love circuit
of John Coltrane and his saxo-
phone? The world mirrors itself
within you. Was the world com-
pletely blind before there were
eyes? The world will see itself
through your eyes. The interior
and exterior world meet like two
spheres, and sitting between the
two great pressures is a point of
spectacular intimacy where cre-
ation is happening, burning like
a fire. It may just be the source
of everything, the fabric of the
universe. A kiss. A love supreme.
Miles Davis
I believe nothing exists but
thought and motion, and the im-
permanence of things is the drive
of constant creation. “You have to
play a long time to be able to play
like yourself,” says Miles Davis.
Maybe the end goal is to sound
like the universe. As you keep in-
teracting with the world, you are
driven towards further iterations
of the dream that is your exis-
tence. Creativity is a cosmic force;
it is the only thing that is real.
40The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12— 2019Making Of An Artist
Enter Úlfur Hansson's ephemeral world
“This idea in art
is very important
to me, to have
beauty and the
grotesque, noise
and discomfort.”