Anyone familiar with Björk’s album Utopia – my Best Album of 2017 – will be aware of the ensemble of flutes that features prominently in most of its tracks. Seven of those flautists, Áshildur Haraldsdóttir, Berglind María Tómasdóttir, Björg Brjánsdóttir, Dagný Marinósdóttir, Sólveig Magnúsdóttir, Steinunn Vala Pálsdóttir and Þuríður Jónsdóttir, were involved in Björk’s subsequent Utopia and Cornucopia tours. They’ve stayed together since then, calling themselves viibra, and have recently put out a self-titled album of their own, featuring works by six Icelandic and Iceland-based composers.
The members of viibra are clearly a close-knit group, and it’s interesting to note the extent to which each of the composers utilises them as a single, multifaceted organism. In this respect it makes more sense to think of these works as primarily behavioural, exhibiting diverse processes and shifting group dynamics.
The simplest is kvoða by Bergur Þórisson, a piece inspired by resin, articulated as a short exploration of foreground and background. The latter takes the form of rich, slow, quasi-consonant chords, and it’s not immediately obvious that it is a background. Until, that is, higher, louder trills and angular shapes appear on top of it, behaving semi-independently though its notes always feel part of the harmonic backdrop. It’s a straightforward, unambitious piece, placing models of melody and accompaniment, fluidity and solidity, on top of each other.
Also simple but very much more extended is Ms. Ephemeris Abyss by Bára Gísladóttir. It’s impossible not to think of Bára’s earlier work VÍDDIR – my Best Album of 2022 – though where that piece was narratively complex and expansive, Ms. Ephemeris Abyss is altogether more restricted and tightly focused. The specific focus is on a number of sustained unisons, creating an interesting tension between individuality and group unity. Indeed, individual actions sound more like textural details – the warp and weft of its fabric – than asserted attempts to move away from or disrupt stability. Of itself, it’s quite fascinating to hear play out, particularly as they negotiate changes in the pitch being focused upon, and the behaviour evolves into highly animated, wild activity. Yet its 19-minute duration feels hard to justify, particularly during a number of longueurs when the music, perhaps aiming at sounding poised, just becomes monotonous.
Another work based on and around sustained pitches is CD Players by Berglind María Tómasdóttir, the amusing title referring to the notes C and D. These drones are less a focal point than a point of reference, a fundamental above which the flutes congregate in a cloud of tones that allude to, align with, yet also stray from, the upper reaches of its harmonic series. Berglind speaks of “an organised chaos that could remind one of a bird cliff” and that’s certainly what comes to mind, though abstracted here into, at its apexes, highly florid, energised acrobatics. These points of peak activity are the moment when the fundamental pivots, first from D to C, later back to D again, as if the sheer weight of group action had caused the world below to tilt on its axis. Almost sounding naturalistic rather than predesigned and structured, it’s a beautiful, mesmerising display.
Björg Brjánsdóttir‘s Eyg explores similar territory, almost as if we had zoomed in from the relative distance that seems to be our vantage point in CD Players, into the midst of the throng. A mass of trilling and vibrating individuals move in close proximity, with occasional high tones protruding outward like strange whistles, breaking things up and making the music temporarily vague. Deep bass tones give stability to this tension, leading to more complex chords emerging, and even wilder cries when it subsequently vanishes. It’s a curiously hypnotic behavioural space, one that’s constantly bristling with highly-charged energy, to the extent that the bass tones themselves eventually start to fibrillate. Whereupon something akin to an antique chord sequence improbably ensues, leading one to ponder whether this was always present, but only now come into focus.
In Mundana X, US-born, Iceland-based musician John McCowen expands viibra with the addition of his own contrabass clarinet and a sine tone. As such, it’s the only work to go beyond the ensemble’s relatively high registral domain and encompass a much deeper sonic realm. It’s also the only work where one’s listening position and posture has a significant effect on the way the music is perceived, altering the nature of the bass and the relative clarity of the pitch elements above, drawing it closer to the world of electronic music. The piece is an exhilarating immersive act, where upper and lower regions fuse into clear but constantly-changing forms of vertical harmonicity. Though continually sustained, the piece undergoes a series of hiccups, moments where its shape-shifting seems to be recalibrated. More than anywhere else on the album, Mundana X strikes a fascinating balance between music as process and music as outcome, the two happening simultaneously, often in such a way that its convoluted harmonic makeup sounds both unresolved and resolved. It’s therefore music that could, if desired, continue for a very long time, without losing any of its arresting grip, yet it’s to McCowen’s credit that he allows himself a mere seven minutes to inhabit this marvellous shimmering, juddering soundworld.
The other highlight of the album, and a work that again plays into the implications and possibilities of group behaviour, is Venutian Wetlands by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, one of Iceland’s most consistently radical and exciting composers. The title implies a juxtaposition of earthly and extraterrestrial, and the music initially unfolds as something primordial: high, trilling formations that start to organise and accumulate in harsh, shrill bursts. A whiff of something lower triggers an increase in filigree detail, extended further when a subtle, shimmering tone (created from pitched-down flutes) materialises. This innocuous electronic element becomes a strange, alien presence, causing, among other things, a brief reevaluation of whether the instrumental sounds we’ve been hearing are real or simulated. It also serves as a slow-acting trigger, after which the entire nature of the ensemble undergoes a more total change than anything we’ve heard elsewhere. The first sign of it comes a little over halfway through, snuffling vocal noises and tics at the periphery; whereupon the group transmutes into a chorus of exotic creatures, gasping, grunting, panting, yelping, accompanied by final flourishes from the few flutes that have retained their original form. Venutian Wetlands is a bewildering, visceral piece that slowly but firmly undermines its opening impressions with more and more quantities of contextual strangeness, becoming something archetypal and elemental, familiar yet foreign.
Released by the Marvaða label on 24 May, Viibra is available on vinyl and download.
