Name: Sunna Margrét
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer, visual artist
Nationality: Icelandic
Recent release: Sunna Margrét's Finger on Tongue is out via No Salad.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Vinciane Despret, Living as a Bird

If you enjoyed this Sunna Margrét interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I guess it all depends on the context. There are all kinds of different levels of listening, and I guess it also depends on where and whom you’re listening with rather than only what.

Today music is mostly consumed through a very stripped down format, mp3, that was somewhat created to be heard with open eyes, or at least made so that you can produce something else while listening. I often prefer more complex aural experiences for sure but I’m also living here and now and I listen to music on the move a lot.

I do also see colour when I’m writing my own music. For example my song ‘Chocolate’ to me is purple and blue.



While ‘Come With Me’ is very metallic, silver and shiny.



How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

I think it’s by going from one to the other that informs you best of the different qualities or colours of the sound and the environment you’re listening in.

For my music I constantly go from headphones to monitors to stereo systems and back again, exactly to hear how the experience is coloured in a different way, one is not necessarily better than the other.

Many ideas and sound treatments from my release ‘Five Songs for Swimming’ come from information given by a friend of mine who swims regularly with headphones (he uses a waterproof iPod Shuffle) and what kind of information would get lost to the sound of the waves and splashes.



The album itself was nevertheless made on dry ground!

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

Nina Simone is at the top concerning the sound of an artist’s voice. She really lived her music and message.



Also the sound of PJ Harvey’s voice is so powerful and consistently honest.



Listening to CAN, I’m a big fan of Damo Suzuki’s hardcore softness …



… and the many moods of Malcolm Mooney.



Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

I’m a mother, and I experienced the shift you make in the early stages of development where you monitor a baby a lot through hearing. And those little creatures have perfect control of the frequencies to keep you most alert.

On another topic, as much as I love Robert Ashley’s work, the sound of his recorded voice triggers me in a way I have a hard time listening. No explanation why that is, though … because I would like to enjoy his work.



There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I love listening to flies that are stuck in a window. It makes me feel relaxed and I guess it’s not common, or is it?

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

Musically I’ve always been fascinated by the sound of contrabass, but of course that’s not an everyday device.

Otherwise the sound of the ocean, of the wind, the snow crackling under your feet, and of life happening, the sound of the people in my life, of my house … but this is common.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

There is this dome in the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, that I had the opportunity to visit during my studies, where you have this enormous echo, something like eleven repetitions.

Now it makes me think about Echo the nymph who got punished for speaking too much and made to repeat the last words she heard, and I think about it in a geopolitical way because this dome is in Iran where people can’t speak much.

Then sound is a cultural experience to make, and speaking about it already makes it sound differently. This resonates a lot with what inspired me when I wrote ‘Figure’ from my latest album Finger on Tongue.



What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I work a lot at home, but playing music in front of an audience is what gives the most.

That moment of communication is a very precious and important thing to experience as an artist.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Yes absolutely, I do think I am working with material. Be it thoughts, words, instruments. It’s energy transformed.

And you make decisions in order to form the outcome. Sculpt and shape the sound if you like.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

On one side of the house I live in is a busy road with the usual motorized vehicles, combustion or electric. On the other side is a garden with many different birds, including a pair of blackbirds that sing in a very complex way that seems never to repeat itself.

What you can hear is that birds define some sort of sound territory with their song. It doesn’t go against all other bird songs or sounds but rather draws a very complex four dimensional map. Vinciane Despret would say that they teach us to create new modes of attention. Stop and listen. Listen again: here and now something important is being made.

When I wrote ‘I, Here in Distance’ I wanted to keep it very simple, two sound elements, a duet between me and my electric piano. It’s a song that made me stop and listen.



Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I’ve definitely ruined some frequency receivers in my ears throughout the years from playing live and just partying. Never thought about it when I was younger because of being young and carefree and all that. Now I always carry earplugs with me when I go to concerts. But it’s also just part of life, our hearing will worsen wether we like it or not.

Hyperacusis seems to be awful to have though. I don’t think I would be making the music I make if I suffered from that.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

‘Silence is sexy’ said Einstürzende Neubauten.

When we remove all source of sound there still is sound, those noises from our blood stream and our nervous system. For me it’s always been a very cosy place to be, I would often close my eyes, cover my ears completely to block outside noise, and listen.

I wrote ‘Í Kviði’ when I was pregnant and I didn’t think so much about it at the time, but the sounds resemble a lot of those inner noises.



I spend a lot of time listening to my inner voices, the ones everyone has, that can get pretty loud and take a lot of space, maybe I prefer to think about unsound rather than silence.

But other than that, I listen to music every single day. And I sing to myself as well, much like Glenn Gould did.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Every sense is culturally and contextually informed, I don’t think there is something like universal way of attention.

It made me think when I read Situated Knowledges by Donna Haraway. She describes how she was partially informed when walking her dog, “wondering how the world looks without a fovea and very few retinal cells for colour vision but with a huge neural processing and sensory area for smells.” I guess listening, looking and all the other ways to perceive the living is a matter of being active and considerate.

I’m a white western woman, I don’t know everything, it’s a partial perspective.