EYDIS EVENSEN - BYLUR

Sony Music

£12.60

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: 19439725202
Release Date: 16th April 2021
Genre: Classical

Icelandic pianist and post-classical composer, Eydis Evensen releases her debut album ’Bylur’ on XXIM Records, Sony’s new imprint for innovative, post-genre instrumental music. Described by Emmy Award-winning, Oscar-nominated composer Dustin O’Halloran as “a beautiful debut full of rich and nuanced arrangements”, Bylur, Evensen confides, “spans over 20 years of my life. It’s all my ups and downs. It’s been a long time coming.” The album was recorded and produced at Reykjavík’s Greenhouse Studios by its co-founder, compos-er Valgeir Sigurðsson, who was raised in the same small town as Evensen and has worked with artists including Björk, Nico Muhly and Ben Frost. It also features a guest appearance from award-winning Icelandic singer GDRN on ‘Midnight Moon’, the album’s only track with vocals. Evenson, who was recently selected by The Line Of Best Fit as one of their ‘Artists On The Rise 2021’, hails from the remote, northern Icelandic town of Blönduós, where, as storms raged outside, she grew up listening to music of all sorts, from Tchaikovsky to Led Zeppelin. ‘Bylur’ takes its name from the Icelandic word for ‘snowstorm’, and the title track is, she says, “quite harsh, but it’s also very beautiful, so it takes you through all these different stages of emotion.” This is true, too, of the album itself, reflective not only of the impact that nature had upon her as a child but also of the personal turbulence she endured after deciding to leave Iceland. Having been drawn to music from an early age and begun piano studies aged six, she abandoned youthful plans to become a professional pianist and instead moved to London, then New York. “I just didn’t want to pursue the typical classical journey,” she confesses.