SILVA

Bára Gísladóttir is an Icelandic composer and double bassist based in Copenhagen. She is an active performer and regularly plays her own music, mostly solo or with her long-time collaborator Skúli Sverrisson. Additionally, she is the double bassist of Elja Ensemble. Occasionally, she performs as a soloist with ensembles or orchestras, most recently in her own double bass concert, Hringla, with the Copenhagen Philharmonic. Every sound on SILVA is of the double bass, processed to various degrees (with MAX/Live) and layered into a mass of noise.

Gísladóttir describes SILVA as “a work for processed double bass built on the idea of a downward growing forest, living its own secret life of underground raves and meditative cohesiveness.” She continues, “I like to think of different movement and direction in the musical form and was intrigued by the thought of something that would otherwise naturally grow upwards, in reach for light and surrounded by air, rather being drawn in the opposite direction where darkness and solid form serve as the source of gleaming luminosity and breezy surroundings. Both in my compositional and instrumentalist work, in every nook and cranny I’ve been driven to dig as deep as I’ve been able, with SILVA perhaps quite literally so. Although growing up in classical music and predominantly working and living in an environment of classical contemporary/avant garde music, I’ve been very much into other genres as well; alternative, experimental, heavy metal, noise, drone, techno, and electronica, and I believe SILVA is the byproduct of all of that.”

SILVA is a joint release by Sono Luminus and ESP-Disk’. ESP is selling the CD; Sono Luminus is selling downloads here: 

SILVA | Bára Gísladóttir | Sono Luminus (bandcamp.com)

Track Listing:

1. SILVA

Total time: 57:35

Personnel: Bára Gísladóttir: double bass, effects, composition

Press Quotes: "She fully believes in the apocalypse. There's something rock and roll about her. Something Nick Cave-like." – Politiken

"Her performance is both arthouse – a woman sawing away at her instrument with little attention paid to such niceties as accessibility and melody – and thrilling. She does to the double bass what Hendrix did to the electric guitar, using it to coax out thrillingly strange new sounds." – The Guardian

Musicians: Bára Gísladóttir