My research catalogue exposition, “Selective Retention: Interfacing the Past through Queries and Graphs”, is now published in the 36th edition of The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).

Fracas is an accompanying Bandcamp release of four 'network pieces' exploring graphs, emergence, and relationships between sound material as it evolves through computational systems.

The title track was first released as a one-track album on Superpang and later as part of their No Catalogue compilation. This new edition places Fracas alongside three related works that have grown from the same research environment.

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JAR, Issue 36:

www.jar-online.net/en/issues/36

JAR article available here:

www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620117

Fracas:

bjarni.bandcamp.com/album/fracas

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UPICS released on Flag Day Recordings

The pieces combined here have emerged as an outcome of my research into database-driven reconstructions based on sound analysis. All the source material has been created with the UPIC system (Iannis Xenakis) a graphical computer system where users draw shapes, waveforms, and modulations on ‘pages’ that form a composition or composed sound.

The material was recorded between September 2006 and March 2007 at the CCMIX institute in Paris. None of those recordings ever made it to a completed work until now, through the use of a newly developed system, SNDArchive (github.com/bjarnig/SNDArchive), that allows to recompose and combine sound parts based on different dimensions discovered through offline analysis processes.

Sounds are analyzed and read to a database. They form an archive that can be queried. The music then emerges through processes that interpret the sound or sound segments, transforming them or developing synthetic sound based on their properties. The idea was to create methods for engaging with sound archives in novel ways, to review them from a different angle, or to reveal previously unknown aspects of material already loaded with meaning.

SNDArchive, software tool available here:
github.com/bjarnig/OF

Anticlines released on Play Neutral

Explores digital synthesis based on dynamic waveforms and atomic sound operations.

Composed using software designed for sound streams and transformation pipelines.

Sound as behaviour, occurring through operations sequences and generative processes.

OF, synthesis framework available here:
github.com/bjarnig/OF

OF, paper accessible here:
bit.ly/3p4GBQb

Cendres released on SØVN

This work contains outcomes of my recent research focusing on interrupts, intervention and dynamic algorithmic environments. It consists of two electroacoustic compositions that have previously been performed in a multichannel setting but since then extended and reworked to the stereo format found here.

Cendres was premiered on the Acousmonium at GRM, Paris in October 2019. The work highlights the relation between high-level control processes and purely computer-synthesized sounds.

Polytree was first performed at the Institute of Sonology in June 2018. It is made through synthetic algorithms and extensive use of waveshaping processes.

The two pieces share an attitude of becoming through synthetic sound. They also both focus on the relations between the processes they consist of, and of the varying boundaries of what is caused by algorithms and what by manual intervention.

New release out on Superpang

Composed through experimental scheduling algorithms that explore the duality of immediate, direct events with gradual and evolving processes.

System and sounds created during the summer of 2020 in Scheveningen, The Hague.

Design: Joe Gilmore

New LP on Tartaruga Records

Lueur consists of four electroacoustic compositions; the product of unfolding and unpredictable generative processes spread across 38 minutes. An exploration of process as much as tone and texture, the album takes shape through a series of ever-changing movements, interweaving dense low passages and abrupt changes of atmosphere and sound.

www.tartaruga.co.uk

[ more info here ]

Album on Granny Records

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.

www.grannyrecords.org

[ more info here ]

Album on 3LEAVES

Processes & Potentials consists of six pieces forming a totality of 48 minutes. The music is the outcome of my work during the past three years and represents my compositional preoccupations during this period of time.

www.3leaves-label.com

[ more info here ]

Safn 2006-2009 was released byLamadameaveclechienin January 2010. The album is a collection of pieces I composed from late 2006 to early 2009. In September 2006 I left Iceland for Paris where I lived for a year. After living there I moved to Berlin where I stayed for two years until I went to Holland where I live now. The record "Safn 2006-2009" compiles pieces I composed during my time in France and Germany and that I found completed each other as a whole.

"...The seven compositions found on this CD share an organic and convolving character which develops in both a very continuous and dramatic way. The sound material varies from voices, violins and percussive sounds, treated in a such a way to give a big impression of a haunting tension and suspense. The intricate proceedings of the flow of sound, rich multi-layered textures and energetic percussive gestures gives the album an unheard quality which has to be experienced sonically to be fully understood. The CD comes in a wonderful organic grey handmade tissue."

Limited to 333 copies
Handmade tissue sleeve + black and white cardboard

Written and produced by Bjarni Gunnarsson
Mastering by Pascal Demez/Herrmutt Lobby
Layout by Patrice Lambenne

You can order it here fromLamadameaveclechien, here from Juno Records, or on Bandcamp here

We are also doing a special edition which includes the new Einóma 12", 'Tvenna'. For this special edition the Einóma EP is pressed on white vinyl and my album has a different color tissue. It comes in a transparent sleeve with sticker and is limited to 111 copies.

Korabie contains six new pieces purely composed or created around improvisations during 2009-2001. The main focus is the exploration of the combination between voice and electronics. On Korabie a dense fabric of sound is brought to existence where voices and vocal manipulations meet drones and microsounds. The music seems to be coming from multiple sources. Dynamic forms emerge and spaces appear from the intimate relationship of the human voice and electronics.

"it’s the crafting of subtle interactions that stand out on this body of work. At times almost silent and alien in construction, voices — both treated and untreated — subliminally reveal themselves as loosened strands forming a web above the uneven electrical landscape. A warm hum of analog synths bend and contort in the most serene patterns as if naturally expelled from the center of the cosmos. Eerie at times, Korabie also blends microscopic audio slivers through a maze of hiccuped vocal stretches. Often crumpled at the edges, these pulses of articulated eruptions ebb and flow delivering soundtrack inspired layers that will either pull you into its disjointed textural hub or deter you from entering altogether. Either way, Korabie is a sublime collision between organic and inorganic ingredients meant for 3am listening."
Igloomag.com

Released 26 October 2011
Music by Marie Guilleray and Bjarni Gunnarsson
Design by Karl Ingi Karlsson

'Lost & Found' is Einóma's new EP, released on Shipwrec records (NL) in 2011 on 12 inch vinyl.

The record features one long new track on the A-side as well as two older and previously unreleased pieces for the B-side. The main track, 'Bla' was conceived after editing real-time and live sessions made for gigs after the release of last years 'Tvenna' EP.The sound material 'Bla' was initially made from was quite old and the idea and title of the EP, 'Lost and found' came about, reworking of older ideas in a new setting. The A-side demonstretes the more dancefloor sides of Einóma while the B-side explores the more dark and dense regions Einóma have become more known for.

"Freaky Techno and electronic beats by former Vertical Form contributors, Einóma. The Icelandic duo have been off the radar since 2009s 'Tvenna' EP, whose recording sessions provided the raw material for the tracks on 'Lost & Found'. Conceived through real-time editing and live sessions, 'Bla' pitches and twists through an intricate and organic 4/4 techno matrix, stretched between dense thickets of noise and sparse, hallucinatory drum patterns. Both 'BF' and 'LF' on the flip are more mutant, HipHop-tempo electronica, amorphous, sinister and slithering. Appears in hand silk-screened sleeves with unique download code redeemable from the label. Limited to 300 copies."
Boomkat.com