GYÐA’s latest release, ‘Evolution,’ has been making waves. Since being one of the founding members of múm, one of Iceland’s best-known early-2000s indie bands, Gyða Valtýsdóttir has taken her career in many new directions, composing for herself or others. Most recently, she won the 2019 Nordic Council Music Prize, and for good reason. Her soulful, at times ecstatic songs transport the listener to another dimension. Which is pretty fitting, considering the title of her latest video, “In Another Dimension.”. In this video, we witness GYÐA at the beach, practising what appears to be arcane magic rituals. This is no accident, GYÐA explains.
“The song was sort of co-written by a boy who wanted to be embodied through me,” she tells us. “It is about the conception of him in one of the multiple realities, but in this one, he just became this song.” Much of this imagery came from a visit to Turkey, a very personal and magical experience for the artist. “Many times the road would split in two and I had a choice where to go. Now I live in the outcome of these choices. But this song is about another outcome, which I didn’t take. Any creation is magic—everything we do and create is a thought-form moved into the physical, to me that is magic.”
Love within Evolution
Going by this and the video for 2018 single “Moonchild,” connection to the natural world, and water in particular, seems to be a common thread. Is that one of the reasons for ‘Evolution’ as a title of GYÐA’s album , i.e., our own evolution out of the seas? Well, yes, as it turns out, but there’s more to it than that.
“I didn’t even try to find a name for this record, knowing it would reveal itself,” GYÐA says. “When it did, loud and clear, I was quite surprised. I found it unpoetic, but then I started to see all the ways it made sense and the beauty of the word. Evolution comes in the first sentence of one of the songs on the album called ‘Moonchild.’ I find evolution so fascinating, both morphing of matter and the evolution of consciousness, as a collective and individuals. I also like that the word Love hides in there. So yes and no, anyone can read what they want into it, it can have endless meanings because it came through me rather than from me.”
No rest
An ever-growing and ever-evolving artist such as GYÐA is never content to rest on her laurels. True to her nature, there are still many dreams on the horizon for her.
“What I mostly wish for right now is a team,” she says. “I feel the limitation of doing things so much by myself and that it is just more fun to work with others. I’d like to find a manager or a partner in this business that being a musician is. I’d like to have creative collaborators to discuss and execute ideas with, and I believe that resources will come when I find the stream for them to flow through.” Overall, she stresses the importance of artists having the resources they need to attain their dreams—in this dimension or any other.
“I believe that when resources go to creative people, it will be shared and it will grow,” she says. “They’ll create something with it and around that creation so many others will be on board and benefit. Creative people do not sit on their gold because they know it has to flow; everything has to or there will be stagnation, constipation and that’s the end of creativity.”
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