Reykjavík Grapevine - Nov 2021, Page 23

23The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11— 2021
The Sound Of An
Apocalypse
Ever wondered what the end of the world sounds like? Well, Sóley will show you.
A master of storytelling through music,
Sóley recently released her fourth LP,
'Mother Melancholia'. Having plunged
herself deep into news of global warm-
ing, Sóley decided to write her latest
album as a eulogy for the planet and hu-
mankind. She refers to the sound of the
album as “chamber doom”, which is a
departure from her earlier releases, al-
though the surrealistic and dewy tones
typical to her music are still present.
'Mother Melancholia' was released
October 22nd, though it had been ready
to go since 2020. Like many other art-
ists, Sóley decided to postpone the re-
lease date to the (somewhat) post-pan-
demic time. Since she looks at her art
as documentation of a certain era, she
wasn’t tempted to make changes to the
album while it was waiting for its time
to be published. However, Sóley admits
to being nervous before listening to the
album after a year of sitting on it. “I was
anxious that I would have grown apart
from it, but luckily I hadn’t. I’m still
really proud of it, and I guess that’s a
good sign,” she reveals.
Translating science and
ideologies into art
After surrounding herself with hope-
less scientific reports and news about
the catastrophic state of the earth,
Sóley had an urge to transform them
into music. She wanted to compose an
album that could serve as a soundtrack
for the end of the world.
"In my mind, the end won’t be like a
zombie movie. It will be more colorful
and quite artistic in its own way,” Sóley
explains. She loves how art can cooper-
ate with science by translating research
into different art forms, offering a new
perspective on the issues. Art helps us
understand what science is showing us.
“It preserves different eras and helps
people to understand what was and is
happening in the world,” Sóley sum-
marizes.
‘Mother Melancholia’ was also in-
fluenced by eco-feminism, a branch
of feminism examining the effect of
gender categories and demonstrating
the ways in which they exploit unjust
dominance over women and nature. For
example, earth is referred to as Mother
Nature, which imprints an image of it
being feminine. As humans continue to
neglect nature, Sóley started to wonder
if gendering the earth has something
to do with it. “What if it’s easier for us
to abuse the earth because we refer to
it as feminine?” she ponders.
When Sóley had decided the concept
for the album, it was easy for her to
compose it. “It’s like writing a book:
You need to know what you’re going to
write about,” she describes. She adds
that visualizing the work is also a big
part of the process: “I tend to see my
music—and especially this album—as
a movie. It just doesn’t have the pic-
ture.” She reveals that films in general
act as a source of inspiration for her
work—in this case Darren Aronofsky’s
Mother! “It was so chaotic and yet such
a beautiful piece of art,” she says ad-
miringly.
Experimenting with new
instruments
Sound-wise, Sóley wanted the mu-
sic to be unpitched. After all, the al-
bum is about the end of the world—it
should not sound perfect. As a classi-
cally trained pianist, Sóley was afraid
she would not be able to let loose with
composing the desired music with said
instrument, so she bought herself a
cello, theremin and mellotron and be-
gan experimenting with them. “I know
the piano too well, and it can be hard to
see the all the possibilities from outside
the box when I’m making music with it.
Playing new instruments I was not fa-
miliar with allowed me to be free from
the complex classical background and
I was able to create simpler melodies,
which was the goal,” she explains.
Sóley self-released ‘Mother Melan-
cholia’, which gave her the artistic free-
dom to create whatever she wanted.
It is most definitely not your typical
pop album with songs lasting less than
three minutes.
“I did the opposite,” she laughs, as
most of the tracks are much longer
than four minutes. “I know it’s probably
not the greatest move when it comes to
Spotify streams, but I don’t care. I did
what I really wanted to do.”
Her lack of concern with what any-
one else thinks of the music definitely
paid off. Sóley says she has been over-
whelmed by her fans’ enthusiastic feed-
back. “People are really sinking into
the details of the album,” Sóley smiles.
‘Mother Melancholia’s story seems to
resonate with listeners.
A cup of tea with your apocalypse?
“What if it’s easier for us to
abuse the earth because we
refer to it as feminine?”
Words:
Reetta Huhta

Photos:
Art Bicnick
Culture