I’m happy to announce that Bilayer is releasing a new album, this time together with Sarah-Jane Summers as a special guest on viola and hardingfele. The album is to be released on Aurora Records 28th of March.
«The delicacy of two distinctively dense musical languages taming each other is what will grab anyone listening to Bilayer. Magnus Bugge is a sound artist who works with visual installations and takes part in projects at the intersection of art and science. For him, music does not replace the subject, it lights it up. The music of trumpeter Hilde Marie Holsen has a palpable link with natural elements, minerals or primitive forms of life that must be preserved. Bilayer’s music does not impose anything. Bugge works in a way where “media is not important. Ideas and works will develop in their own way, and he will follow the process.” This is quite an inviting approach. Listeners then become active and free. They can choose what to focus on. Bilayer, as its name suggests, possesses the art of laying down sounds but also, and this is where poetry comes from, of covering their source with a veil of mystery. Thus protected, each sound blossoms and enriches itself along its journey.
Going against the grain Illrie does not seek excess but space; the music needs it. This second album is about nature, but also about decomposition and decay. This is why the 8 tracks are named after old dialect words from the west coast of Norway, where both Holsen and Bugge are from. “Skogavakse” is the highest line of a forest before the mountainous landscape takes over. “Illrie”, the title track, means “snowstorm”, and “Nattsveve” means “dandelion”. The trumpetist and soundscaper explains the genesis of the album: “Planned improvisations and improvised compositions were recorded and used as raw material for electroacoustic compositions, (then) put together again and produced afterwards”. The somewhat ingenuity of the process brings the sounds of nature back to life.
The dramaturgy of the duo has deepened with the contribution of Sarah-Jane Summers, a guest player on all the tracks. The Scottish musician based in Norway is also a researcher. In addition to the expected classical counterpoint to the electric and electronic sparkles, she brings a vision. Her field of study revolves around understanding and extending the timbral complexity of the fiddle. That is why when she plays the violin and viola, we travel between traditional and contemporary music. Her work, she writes, aims at “creat(ing) radically new perspectives on familiar sounds”. This familiarity is central here as the violin and the Hardingfele are classic contributions in Norwegian music.
With this attention given to the roots of sound, memories, and the familiar forces of nature, Illrie acts as a deep exploration of space and time, offering a very fine specimen of fertile music.»
Anne Yven