Gulli Bjornsson
Gulli Bjornsson
Composer
Gulli Bjornsson (b. 1991) is a guitarist and composer from Iceland. Gulli’s music typically blends electronics, acoustic instruments and visuals and has been described as ‘hypnotic’ (News Gazette) and ‘virtuosic & modern, occasionally discordant, but still accessible’ (Classical Guitar Magazine). Most recently he released his debut album Bergmál with his own compositions for guitar, strings and laptop. You can find it on all major online platforms. He is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in composition at Princeton University.

BYLUR I think everyone is familiar with the feeling of being safe inside while a storm is blowing. I would describe the feeling as paradoxical, I feel safe and scared […]

BYLUR
I think everyone is familiar with the feeling of being safe inside while a storm is blowing. I would describe the feeling as paradoxical, I feel safe and scared at the same time. This feeling is the focal point of Bylur, which means ‘hostile weather’ in Icelandic.

The musical material for Bylur comes from a synth I programmed in Max where I re-mapped a keyboard according to the overtone series. The harmonies that occur in this new mapping sounded paradoxical to me as well, I feel they sound pretty and jarring at the same time and in that way match the paradoxical ‘safe and scared’ feeling I talked about above.

The instrumentalists in Bylur play ‘boxed’ musical passages freely, following a counter in Max that tells them when to move from box to box. This counter uses so called ‘drunk’ or ‘controlled randomization’ which means Bylur can be 14-18 minutes in performance and does not need a conductor.