MP3 Machina Mundi - ELECTRONIC: Ambient

amorphous ambient time worlds; ever shifting and altogether mesmeric.

4 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Ambient, ELECTRONIC: Experimental

Details:
The brilliant New Zealand sound sculptor Abby Helasdottir (aka Gydja) has crafted a complex lifeworld on Machina Mundi. As Abby describes "the original idea was based around Newton's clockwork universe." The listening experience brings to mind vast images of an entire floating planet-- translucent like a post-industrial snowglobe--revealing intricate machines, plant life, and weather systems moving apart, together, in a strange otherworldly ballet.

About the Artist:

Abby Helasdottir has been creating music since 1995 under the name Gydja (an Old Norse word for priestess). Initially, the aim of the project was to create music that could be used for magickal and shamanic purposes. Some of the earliest ideas involved using field recordings, and basing whole pieces on these sounds in a largely unprocessed way. This is still a concern of Gydja, but with more emphasis now being placed on abstracting these sounds so that, whilst they retain a sense of their original source, they become something else entirely.

The current style of Gydja differs from the initial intentions of the project, with music of both a mundane and magickal nature being created. And whilst the music is usually linear and could be defined as a soundscape, it is also not necessarily always dark ambient in style, embracing electro-acoustic and experimental techniques. Works designed specifically for magickal use sit alongside explorations of sound for sound's sake; and in a third tier, some exploration of sound contain magickal themes, even if there is no practical magickal application intended.

The magickal side of Gydja often takes the form of dark ambient, and features in works such as Rokkrsong, and Liber Babalon (2001). The two disc Liber Babalon depicts a journey that begins with the birth of Babalon, explores the mysteries of the Gnostic text Thunder, Perfect Mind, travels through the aethyrs of Enochian magick, and ultimately, arrives at the throne of Babalon. The meditative intent of Liber Babalon is repeated in Cold Seed (2002), a single 79 minute of drifting cold ambience, created to assist meditations on the rune of Hagalaz.At the intersection between magick and music, is a work like Rivers⦠(2002), in which the theme is a magickal one (the rivers that act as boundaries between worlds), but the music is more of a microscopic investigation of sound itself. Using techniques such as granular synthesis, samples of water and speech were broken down and then built up again into compositions of electronic tones and swashes.

In addition to her work as Gydja, Abby is also involved with the performance art project Torture By Roses (Sebastian-Salome CD available from Mediatrix Publishing), and the militant industrial formation Clear Stream Temple (XVI CD on Cold Spring Records)

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