Bjarni Gunnarsson
Paths
16
CD · 100 COPIES
MAY 2016
Paths consists of five compositions forming a totality of 53 minutes. The music is derived from three multichannel pieces premiered at the Tectonics festival in Reykjavík (2014), the Ephémère series in The Hague (2014) and Présences électronique festival in Paris (2015). These have been further reduced, combined and rearranged resulting in the five compositions found on the album.
We may think of music as navigating between different moments of continuous change. One chooses a starting point and from there tries to reach other positions. The way a contact between these occurs is however always different and depends on the engagement with previous points of encounter. Even very static situations create perceptual illusions of development, producing prolonged and continuous experience. It could be how things change that creates the feeling of time. Perhaps all development is a matter of process, of activity, of change. We have difficulties apprehending what we are but little difficulty experiencing what we do. This behaviour based view is an important aspect of the album that explores previously experienced musical situations, different points of contact, paths through musical material.
About — Bjarni Gunnarsson
Reviews
A CLOSER LISTEN
Gunnarsson’s paths are worth investigating for the sonic discoveries they reveal.
ATTN:MAGAZINE — (U.K.)
The album is pocketed with fierce shifts in state – explosions of change that sabotage the idle trundle of time, demolishing gentle blooms of sound to lay the atmosphere to waste all over again. Abstract sound design can be as much a process of destruction as assembly, and Paths manifests as a visceral embrace of this fact…. A violently unpredictable record.
LE SON DU GRISLI — (FR)
Que faire d’autre si ce n’est entendre / regarder / profiter de ce que l’Islandais nous a préparé? Spatial et plus que spécial!
AMBIENT BLOG — (NL)
Bjarni Gunnarsson‘s trademark ‘sounds focusing on internal activity and motion. Compositions that put into foreground behaviors, actions, fluid sound structures, fuzzy materials or forms. Music without sharp boundaries’.