Tell us a bit about yourself and/or your project Gydja
I’m a graphic designer, writer and musician, based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Gydja is my dark ambient project of several decades, creating music that more often than not has a metaphysical and mythological component, with a particular Norse and Germanic focus. There is a devotional aspect to this work, hence the use of ‘gydja’ (‘priestess’ in Old Norse) as the name, with the original idea for the project being the creation of music for ritual.
Your track on the compilation is “Hnigin Er Helgrind, Haugar Opnaz”. Tell us about this track: how was it created, what was your inspiration, etc?
I was really inspired by the early to mid-nineties period of Cold Meat Industry, that perfect moment when the clang of industrial was getting a nice lil dark ambient underpainting. Deutsch Nepal in particular were always a huge favourite, the metallic mechanical beautiful otherness of the Benevolence album, or the wonderful gorgeous simplicity of a track like Gouge Free Market: a dense ambient bed, a submerged metallic percussion and the occasionally recurring set of sparsely spaced samples. It’s an approach I don’t usually use, but it felt right for this track, seeking to evoke the feeling of that CMI metal percussion. And thematically, what’s more metallic than Helgrind, the gate of Hel in Norse cosmology. The title references this gate, with Hnigin Er Helgrind, Haugar Opnaz being a line from Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks in which the heroine Hervör, in search of the cursed sword Tyrfing, raises the spirit of her father, king Angantýr, from his grave mound. Angantýr describes the scene into which he has been summoned as a literal Hel on earth, one where Hnigin Er Helgrind, Haugar Opnaz (‘Hel’s gate is fallen, mounds open’).
What attracts you to dark ambient music?
The most attractive aspect of dark ambient is, well, everything about it. Its capacity for creating aural depictions of scenes is unmatched amongst musical genres, as is the way in which it can be incorporated into spiritual practice. I firmly believe in the idea of creativity as an act of devotion or as a spiritual offering, and dark ambient works perfectly for that, with the bonus being that the work created as a magical act can then be used as an adjunct to other magical acts, either as a soundtrack for such, or as, by mere audio playback, a efficacious repetition and reiteration of the intent.
Your most recent album is Ár Var Alda, released in 2021 on Winter-Light. Tell us about this release – the theme, your inspirations, etc.
Ár Var Alda, as its title indicates, is about the past, more specifically the ancient time in Norse cosmology when the cosmos first came into being. The track titles are all taken from lines in two Old Norse poems, Völuspá and Vafþrúðnismál, and so they embody what happens or is seen in each of those little phrases: a chasm gapes, the earth is made, there are nine worlds and nine giantesses and a great tree beneath the earth. The idea was to evoke something unearthly and alien but at the same time with an organic touch, because we are talking of an unknowable. ineffable force creating something almost ex nihilo. I’ve always been an admirer of releases from the Aural Hypnox label, particularly those two wonderful Zoät-Aon albums, as well as the works of Halo Manash and I.corax. They all have a knack for crafting often discordant and atonal sounds that seem otherworldly, like they’ve literally come through a portal from some eldritch realm, so I was hoping for something comparable. Adding to that was a maximalist approach, where sounds were dense and layered so that something is almost always going on and there are new details that one can find on each subsequent listen.
What are your plans for the future?
I have a sequel of sorts to Ár Var Alda coming out soon, wrapping up the final mixes as we speak. While its predecessor focused on the void out of which everything was created, this album deals with Élivágar, the venomous eleven-fold river that flows from it. This continues the same aural approach as Ár Var Alda, both with some unearthly sounds and the maximalist approach. I think that might be the end of this series and particular style, and as I’m always creating music, I’m enjoying making new things that are not so dense and are sparser.