Reykjavík Grapevine - jul. 2022, Side 18

Everything Is
An Instrument
Diego Manatrizio, aka Flaaryr, knows how
to make music even from trash
Words: Iryna Zubenko Photo: Joana Fontinha
As we step into Post-húsið, the
headquarters of Reykjavík-based
music collective Post-dreifing,
we see Diego Manatrizio gestur-
ing over odd-looking objects: a toy
xylophone, tiny piano, alarm clock,
even a traffic cone—like a wizard
conjuring a spell over a bubbling
cauldron of magic potion with
his trusty wand. Well, replace the
wand with a drumstick and Diego
is nothing short of a modern-day
wizard, extracting magical sounds
from ordinary objects. Tonight we
are at ‘Allt er hljóðfæri’ or ‘Every-
thing is an instru-
ment’—one of the
many improvisa-
tion nights Diego
leads.
“Right now I am
a full-time musi-
cian,” says Diego,
who is perhaps
better known by
his stage name
Flaaryr. Diego’s
work knows few
if any boundaries. “I never place
myself in a particular genre,” he
says. “But I think my music has
elements of minimalism, rhyth-
mic experimentation, a little bit of
noise, a little bit of ambient, a little
bit of math rock,” he continues,
noting these are genres that were
very influential for him growing
up. “What defines it more is just
loops and rhythmic experimenta-
tion.”
Finding music in
unexpected places
“I make improvisations out of
sounds that are not considered
exactly musical instruments,” he
says. One example is his “trash
set”—an improvisation in which
he takes objects from dumpsters
and puts contact microphones
on them. “I think the moment
in which I decided to start using
trash with contact mics was when I
thought, ‘What if instead of modi-
fying conventional musical instru-
ments like a guitar, I just put all the
focus on these random objects and
the objects are the instruments
themselves?’”
One of the objects with musi-
cal qualities that surprised Diego
turned out to be a mirror. “A
mirror doesn't have
much resonance. If
you bang on it, not
much will happen,”
he says. “But if you
put water on it and
move your fingers,
it makes a screech-
ing sound that is
really interesting.
Depending on how
much pressure you
apply with your
fingers, the pitch of that sound
changes in a really surprisingly
wide range.”
Guitar or flamingo?
In one of his upcoming shows at
the RUSL sustainable design festi-
val, Diego won’t play guitar at all.
“In that set, I will only play with
a mirror and a garden decoration
that is a flamingo made of metal.
It's gonna be completely differ-
ent from what I have ever played,”
Diego shares. “The theme of this
festival is about sustainability and
reusing objects that are usually
considered waste. I thought that
it was interesting to make my set
very close to the concept of the
festival. It's a good situation to
see what happens if I don't have
a guitar and will have to rely on
these objects that are very unpre-
dictable.”
Intuitive music to the
masses
In addition to prepping for live
performances, Diego has been
working on a new album, ‘Dagur
Tónlistar Innsæisins’ or “A Day
of Intuitive Music, which will be
released in November.
“This is my first composition
project in which I will not be the
performer,” he explains. Starting in
July, Diego plans to launch an open
call for people willing to partici-
pate in the project. “I will invite
24 people who don't know how
to play any instruments. Each of
them will play one hour of impro-
visation, with a lot of instruments
and random objects that I will give
them and I will record them play-
ing solo improvisations one by one.
Out of those 24 hours of completely
improvised music, I will make 24
short pieces only by cutting and
rearranging them, without doing
any sound processing or anything
like that. So I will compose using
improvisations as my source.”
Choose your own
instrument
The idea of the project was born
a year ago when Diego started to
organise improvisation nights, just
like the one we are at while speak-
ing. “The concept is pretty straight-
forward,” he says, adding: “It's just
100% open improvisation in a space
full of instruments. And everyone,
absolutely everyone is welcome
to join and play any instrument
they like. It doesn't matter if you
have never played an instrument
before, or if you are a guitarist and
you want to grab a trumpet, you are
totally welcome to do it. There are
no musical guidelines.”
“The bottom line of this proj-
ect is to tell people that every-
one is qualified enough to make
music. Music can mean so many
things and, in this case, there are
no boxes that you have to tick,” he
beams with a smile so sincere that
you start to believe it is true. “You
can have no training and still make
amazing music.”
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Music 18The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07— 2022
“Music can
mean so many
things. There
are no boxes
that you have
to tick.”
Look at this tiny piano!