ABUL MOGARD - HELGI PÉTURSSON - RM HENDRIX & NICO GUERRERO

ABUL MOGARD - HELGI PÉTURSSON - RM HENDRIX & NICO GUERRERO

TJARNARBÍÓ LAUGARDAGINN 5 SEPTEMBER

Ath. Hátíðarpassi gildir á alla 5 dagana (þ.á.m. þennan viðburð).

ABUL MOGARD
Abul Mogard is the alter ego of Italian musician Guido Zen, known for evocative albums and immersive live performances. His work centres on the use of synthesisers and both analogue and digital sound processing. He has appeared at prestigious festivals and venues including Berlin Atonal, Poesia en Voz Alta in Mexico City, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque in Madrid, Auditorium San Fedele in Milan, Le Guess Who in Utrecht, Mutek in Montreal and the Southbank Centre in London.

He was commissioned by the Organ Reframed festival to compose a piece for pipe organ, electronics and trombones, performed at Union Chapel with the London Contemporary Orchestra. He has also performed with the seventy-piece Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, orchestrated by Sven Helbig and conducted by Daniel Bjarnasson.

His work extends to film, including soundtracks for Duncan Whitley’s Kimberlin and Phoenix City, the latter commissioned by the Coventry Biennial. Mary Anne Hobbs has listed his remixes for Carl Craig and Fovea Hex with Brian Eno among her favourite tracks on BBC Radio, and Thom Yorke has included his music in mixes for NTS Radio and the BBC.

His music appears across film, television, fashion, contemporary art and advertising, including the trailer for Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, Shane Meadows’ series Gallowspole, runway shows for Ferragamo, and campaigns for Lancôme and Mercedes.

Recent releases include Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close with Rafael Anton Irisarri and In uno spazio immenso with Grand River, alongside collaborations with Anna Von Hausswolff, KMRU and CoH. His latest album, Quiet Pieces, released on his imprint Soft Echoes, was described by The Quietus as “an album that builds enveloping constructs, reminding us that ambient drone can be as much about space and light as it is about texture and tone.”

HELGI PÉTURSSON
Helgi Pétursson (1962) graduated from the Department of Theory and Composition at the Reykjavík Conservatory of Music where his teachers in composition were Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, Atli Heimir Sveinsson and Þorsteinn Hauksson. Later he also completed an MA degree in Microtechnology in Music Education from the University of Reading, UK.

During Helgi's student years, quite a few of his works were performed in public, including electronic works and works by him were also performed after he finished his studies, including the years when he was employed as a music teacher in Húsavík.

Helgi has for a very long time been very interested in electronic and computer music and also in computer technology in general, and he worked for several years as a computer programmer.

After he retired as a working musician, his composition was mostly stopped, but he picked up the thread again with the piece Blindfugl/Svartflug (Blindbird/Blackflight).

Blindfugl/Svartflug was written in June 2024 and is based on a poem of the same name by Gyrðir Elíasson from 1986 which Helgi reads live in its entirety throughout the piece.

The idea for this piece is very old because it had been Helgi's dream to make this piece almost ever since he heard Gyrðir read the poem on the Icelandic radio soon after it was released. It had a very strong effect on the him as composer.

The piece can be said to be an attempt to emphasize the impressions and moods that the poem evokes using a varied sound world and thus create a kind of sound painting of the poem.

RM HENDRIX & NICO GUERRERO
French experimental guitarist and composer Nico Guerrero and American artist and producer R.M. Hendrix come together for an improvised performance that exists somewhere between drone, ambient, shoegaze, and experimental sound. Rooted in a shared fascination with harmonics, overtones, texture, and resonance, their collaboration abandons conventional song structures in favor of slow-moving sonic landscapes that unfold intuitively in real time.

Both artists—now based in Reykjavík—trace their musical origins to dream pop while pursuing distinct paths into immersive experimental practice. Guerrero's work transforms a single electric guitar into vast, organ-like architectures of sound through extended electronic processing, informed by decades of exploration alongside figures such as Rhys Chatham. Hendrix's work blends effects pedals and field recordings into cinematic composition, creating emotionally charged environments shaped by landscapes and politics.

Together, they create music that is at once fragile and immense—an evolving dialogue of sustained tones, shifting frequencies, and emergent harmonics. Drawing equally from minimalism, drone, film soundtracks, and the aesthetics of science fiction and horror, each performance is unique, guided by careful listening rather than predetermined form.

Their collaboration follows a prolific period for both artists. Guerrero recently released Athanor, his acclaimed collaboration with Rhys Chatham, an immersive exploration of resonance, repetition, and sonic transformation. Hendrix's 2025 releases, YUKS and The Hole, continue his exploration of cinematic atmosphere and emotional landscapes, moving fluidly between ambient abstraction, experimental electronics, and song-based composition.

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