Bára Gísladóttir considers sounds, instruments and ensembles as living organisms. In COR, Hringla and VAPE, the Icelandic composer and double bassist engages with the largest musical organism of all: the symphony orchestra. Inspired by death metal or techno as much as by Scelsi or Penderecki, the foreboding atmosphere of her music is cut through with irony, puns and black humour. After all, organisms themselves - especially human bodies - contain the potential for both comic excess and self-annihilation. In these three works we follow Gísladóttir's fascination with language and coincidence; we hear an uncompromising interrogation of the body's excesses and ailments; and, most of all, we see life, vaporous and between states, neither dark nor light.

Bára Gísladóttir (b. 1989) is an Icelandic composer and double bassist based in Copenhagen. She recently received one of the Siemens Music Foundation Composer Prizes 2024.

This release is a special edition hardback book (15x15cm with 64 pages) with an inserted CD. The book contains an extended essay by Tim Rutherford-Johnson in both Danish, German and English.

Bára Gísladóttir writes music that exists at the extremes. Her music appears dark and troubled at first hearing, but humour and vitality are also an important part of her idea of sound as something alive.

Gísladóttir recently received the Work of the Year award at the Icelandic Music Award for COR. The title plays on multiple meanings, such as 'heart', 'body' and 'choir'. The work climaxes in a 'mad percussion solo' as Gísladóttir describes.

Hringla features Gísladóttir herself as an improvising double bass soloist with electronic projections derived from her bass. Duality of flutter and focus is the essential dynamic of the piece.

VAPE was written for the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. While being revised in 2020, Gísladóttir still regards it as an early work from when she was a student. The composer's prompt for the piece was reading about the Tokyo sarin gas attacks of 1995.