An Album Rises From The Ashes: Gísli Gunnarsson Releases Úr Öskunni

Gísli Gunnarsson chronicles the aftermath of evacuating Grindavík on Úr Öskunni

Úr Öskunni by Gísli Gunnarsson

“There were a lot of different emotions that I went through over the months following all this. A lot of uncertainty at first, and then it turned to just loss and grief. And you go through all the stages of that grief. And I think this album — I wouldn’t say it’s a retelling or a storytelling album, it’s more just a diary of my own emotions going through this,” Gísli Gunnarsson states.

As we speak, the musician is just a few weeks away from releasing his emotional and atmospheric album Úr Öskunni — “From The Ashes” — which encapsulates his experience evacuating his hometown on the Reykjanes Peninsula due to the risks of ongoing volcanic eruptions.

Photo by Caitlin Mclean

Gísli has been releasing music under his own name since 2019, while concurrently contributing to bands, composing for others, and collaborating with artists such as Georg Holm of Sigur Rós and Laufey Soffía of Kælan Mikla. His songs wander between metal, ambient, rock, and orchestral, all pulling from Gísli’s toolbox of genres. In the upcoming Úr Öskunni, he continues a pattern of emotional lyrics and immersive soundscapes, but this album is also uniquely vulnerable.

“It was all written in the months after we evacuated Grindavík, just in different parts. At first, I was living in a summer house that the Red Cross found for me,” he explains. Now, he’s living in a farmhouse in Borgarfjörður with his dog, which he describes as his “first real ‘home’ since we evacuated in 2023.”

Within his album, you can hear Gísli grappling with the volatility of nature and the human experience. On the track “Andlitin í Berginu” (“The Faces in The Rock”), Gísli’s lyrics translate to “As mother burns / The hot blood it runs;” on Tómarúm (a word without an exact translation, that evokes the “vacuum of space” or the “void”), he sings “Am I hot? / Am I cold? / Am I alive? / I can’t feel a thing.”

A unique experience

“It’s fascinating, the music that comes from a very unique experience. Not many people have gone through trauma like this,” Gísli notes. “I can imagine people find that interesting, just like people find volcanic eruptions interesting.”

Throughout our conversation, he’s quick to offer understanding for those fascinated by the evacuation of his town and the eruptions that caused it. We speak about the town of Grindavík; I ask if he’s returned recently, and he says, “It’s not the same. It’s strange, because you go there and you feel like there’s life in the town, but it’s just tourists. Every house is empty. It’s kind of turned into a bit of a spectacle now. I know it’s interesting. Of course, people want to see it. I have nothing against that, but it is difficult to see that happen.”

“I probably have a different experience of eruptions. Most people find them super cool, but for me, it’s a little bit different.”

To Gísli and others from Grindavík, these stories are tender and traumatic. He shares, “My mom, when she listens to some of the tracks — it’s very difficult for her. She could really relate to the emotions that I go through, and for her, it’s quite emotional to listen to.” Simply, he concludes, “I probably have a different experience of eruptions. Most people find them super cool, but for me, it’s a little bit different.”

Orchestral and cinematic

The album brims with theatrical composition, so I ask Gísli how he has developed this musical style. He shares, “I think it was when I saw [Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 movie] Spirited Away, actually, that I really got, like, ‘wow.’ Movie scores were a big influence on me, on the music that I wanted to make.”

“That’s when I started kind of experimenting with those sounds, orchestrating strings, and that’s when I started playing piano,” he adds. “From then on, I’ve picked up influences from here and there, and it’s all added onto this kind of layer cake.”

To pair with the cinematic quality of the songs, Gísli is releasing several music videos for the album. Videographer Nicolas Ipiña and Gísli worked together, along with dancer Ása María Sigrúnardóttir, to create a video for “Andlitin í Berginu.” The dancer performs with emotional and jagged movements, which Gísli explains came from sharing the song’s vivid inspiration story.

Photo by Ólafur Hafsteinsson

“Like many Icelandic people, I like seeing trolls. I don’t believe in trolls, it’s not a literal thing, but if you see the silhouette of a rock and it looks like a person, it’s a troll. And there’s two of them on Þorbjörn, in the mountain that I hiked all my life, that I really liked. I always said hi to them, you know, every time I hiked there. And, I think it was in the lead up to the first or second eruption near Grindavík, they just fell down the mountain there — just gone. And it felt like a loss. And if it was just that, isolated, it wouldn’t be that sad. But it felt like a representation of what was happening, the loss of the whole town and my home and the community. So that song was written from their perspective, through their eyes.”

Release concert

In Úr Öskunni, Gísli presents all the flavours of his musical-influence layer cake. “I really wanted it to be as meaty as possible,” he explains. “The point was to really make this as epic as I possibly could.”

The celebration of the album’s release is no exception: on November 8, he will perform in Grindavík, in the town’s church alongside the Lýra String Quartet and a full band. “I played so many music school recitals there,” Gísli says, smiling. “Since I was like five or six, and I started studying guitar, that’s where I played. Every single recital was there. So now it’s come full circle.”

“I’m so lucky,” he states. “To pull off a production like this, with this many musicians, it’s expensive, it’s a lot of work, but I was able to find a lot of sponsors from Grindavík, and the Red Cross helped me. I have no idea what to expect,” he adds, laughing, “This is my first concert ever. I’m starting quite big. I don’t know if it’s gonna be five people there. I have no idea what to expect.”

Photo by Nicolas Ipiña

Crucially, Gísli will be collaborating with the Lava Show, which will offer free shuttles to Grindavíkurkirkja for his performance. The show is in tandem with Iceland Airwaves, so Gísli is hoping that visitors will take advantage of the free shuttle to experience something outside of Reykjavík and the usual Airwaves programme.

But, as he thinks of this release, the people of Grindavík are at the forefront of his mind. “I’m hoping to make an opportunity for people to come together,” he states. “I think that’s been missing, some opportunities for the community to gather. We’re very spread out now. It doesn’t feel the same,” he adds.

He tells me about asking if he could host the release in Grindavíkurkirkja. “It’s been the same priest. Yeah, it was fun for me to call her and ask if I was able to use the church. She was very excited about it,” he shares. “She said that Úr Öskunni belonged in the church.”

Gísli Gunnarsson’s Úr Öskunni comes out November 7. The release concert will be in Grindavíkurkirkja on November 8 at 20:00. For more information, visit gisligunnarsson.com