Bára Gísladóttir

Icelandic composer and double bassist Bára Gísladóttir has built an international reputation for compositions that sound like living organisms. She draws equally from contemporary classical rigor and the physical thrust of experimental music: heavy metal, noise, drone, techno and electronica are all folded into her meticulously shaped process, topped with a sense of dark humor. The double bass dominates her work, its long strings opening enormous harmonic spaces that can be stretched through electronics and extended technique. The works of Gísladóttir are populated by peculiar biological and environmental systems. She describes the bass as a sort of home from which she observes these transformations, where sound is a creature that consumes and reproduces, immense masses of buzzing frequencies hover and split into microscopia, and electronics liquefy timbre.