Further Information

What is Poco Apollo?

I've always been fascinated by space and the moon landings. When I came across NASA's vast online archive of the photographs taken during the Apollo space program, I was mesmerised by their almost casual appearance. I soon began to wonder what these pictures would sound like if they each had their own unique soundtrack.

That's how the web-based composition Poco Apollo came to be. It's a website that displays random images from the photo collection and transforms them, live, into music. The texture, feel and harmony of the piece is decided by the contents of the image. Listen to Poco Apollo here.

Poco Apollo has also been showcased as an installation in Mengi in Reykjavík, Space 10 in Copenhagen and Bury Art Museum in Greater Manchester. The piece is set to auto-play through series of images and a small robotised melodic harp plucks along.

The tracks on the album

The album is a self contained rendition of four of these pieces. Every time I found a piece that I particularly liked, I wrote it down. You never know exactly what you're going to get with 14.000 generated soundtracks! In the end I selected four pieces and wrote arrangements for strings, percussion and synthesizers. One of the songs, Lending, is in three different versions on the album: the original version, as a cello-solo and as a solo piano piece.

A group of good friends join me on the album, which was recorded in many small pieces over the course of two years, in Mengi Reykjavík and Stúdíó Mosfellsbær. Svanhildur Lóa Bergsveinsdóttir plays the marimba, Matthías Hemstock on percussion, Ásta Kristín Pjetursdóttur and Sólrún Ylfa Ingimarsdóttir on violas, Sverrir Arnórsson on chello, Borgar Magnason on contrabass and Þórdís Gerður Jónsdóttir is the cello solist. String recordings were made by Albert Finnbogason. Mastering by Friðfinnur Sigurðsson. Cover art by Albert Muñoz.

About me

I've been making music since I can remember. I started off as a drummer, and graduated from FÍH College of Music as a percussionist. In 2008 I founded the electro-pop band SYKUR with my friends, and we're still active, just about to release our third studio album. My interest has always been in music and technology, so intertwining the two was an obvious next step for me. I've recently collaborated with prominent Icelandic musicians Björk and Ólafur Arnalds. Those projects revolve around trying to capture their creative powers with computer programs that can work as an augmentation of their live performing abilities. In 2018 the Icelandic chamber orchestra Elja premiered my piece „Voice Memos" written as a commission for the orchestra, but I based the piece on a series of found voice memos from my phone. Earlier this year, I wrote the piece „EFI" for the pipe organ of Hallgrímskirkja church, but it can be fully controlled by a computer over MIDI.

In my works, I aim to bring forward the everyday essence of beauty.

Recently I finished recording my first solo album, Poco Apollo. I want to release it as a vinyl record and hold a release concert to celebrate. To enable me to manufacture the vinyl I want to offer you to pledge to this project by buying the album, a ticket to the concert or a custom pen plotted artwork.