Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2021, Side 12

The Dawn Of Eydís
Evensen
Presenting a composer and a
whirlwind emotional journey
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photos: Saga Sig
Album
‘BYLUR’ by Eydís Evensen will be
released on April 23rd.
From the northern Icelandic town
of Blönduós emerged 27-year-old
composer Eydís Evensen, who
burst onto the scene this De-
cember with a slew of gorgeous
post-classical pieces with haunt-
ing music videos to match. She’s
on the cusp of releasing her debut
effort, ‘BYLUR’, which she under-
lines will be a stirring, emotional
journey that’ll bring you to the
edge and back.
A hypnotising start
The album, she explains, is a com-
pilation of her life. “All of the con-
tent of the album is material I ini-
tially started composing when I
was seven,” Eydís says. She speaks
with a light hybrid-French accent,
a result of her time in Paris, she
explains. “I remember the feeling
of [that first composition]. I had
this emotion stuck inside me and
it kind of just hypnotised me and
I just walked straight to the piano,
sat down, and played this piece.”
While the piece has been sub-
stantially reworked in the two
decades since, it’s clear that the
memory is still a deep one for the
artist—the start of what would
later become the biggest part of
her life. And in the 20 years since
that initial composition, Eydís
never stopped writing.
The purest form
Eydís has spent much of her life
working as a model, for years
journeying from city to city and
living out of a suitcase. While
vastly different from composing,
Eydís sees her experiences as a
model shaping her music from a
visual perspective.
“[Composing] is sort of repre-
senting you in the purest form,”
she explains. “But when releasing
music for the first time, I asked
myself, how do I want to create
this visual world? With all these
visual elements that I’ve made to
accompany the music and with
that, just being yourself—it’s been
interesting to create that.”
Emotionally, the jump allowed
Eydís to live fully and authenti-
cally.
“In modelling, you get to work
on beautiful locations with really
interesting people from across the
world, so it can be incredibly ex-
citing. But it was also my job,” she
says. “Versus music, that’s always
been my passion. So throughout
my journey of working as a model
and living in different cities, my
passion was still always music. I’d
always seek out a piano to just get
some headspace for myself.”
Peaceful missions
Eydís released her first song “Næ-
turdögg” (“Dew”) in early Decem-
ber. The track begins like a waltz,
meandering in a soft fog before
moving into a more sensual, in-
stinctual direction. At all mo-
ments, Eydís’s technique is vis-
ceral, physical. Every slight pause
she makes between notes, every
small disruption of the beat, ev-
ery slight change in her force on
the keys is full of meaning. With-
out hyperbole, it’s unusual to find
someone who can make but a few
notes feel so loaded.
“It was something I had been
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V O L C A N O
C O L L E C T I O N
“You have
extreme joy
and being in
love, all of these
incredible,
wonderful
emotions, as well
as melancholia
and my inner
darkness.”
12The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2021
"[Composing] is sort of representing you in the purest form."