GYÐA VALTÝSDOTTIR announces album 'Mother Pearl', out March 20th on marvaða. Hear three tracks now.

GYÐA VALTÝSDOTTIR - Announces new album 'Mother Pearl' - Out March 20th on marvaða - Hear "White Noise" and "Mirror" - Plus new single "Checking In"

Photo credit: Saga Sig    Today Gyða Valtýsdottir announces her forthcoming album ‘Mother Pearl’ for release on March 20th via marvaða. The album is a luminous meditation on creation, connection and inner life. Across its carefully woven songs, Gyða Valtýsdottir considers how we remain open, empathetic and sensitive without being weighed down by the world. Today, along with the album announcement, she shares three of the album's tracks. “White Noise”, conceived on a fog-cloaked cliff cabin with an ocean beyond view, finds Gyða looking inward, reaching into silence, emptiness and finding “the infinite potential of any creation”. The track has an almost prismatic quality, bursting with scattered light and effervescent instrumentation, enveloped in washes of kanklės played by Merope's Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and harp by Katie Buckley Meanwhile, the dreamy, enchanting waltz of “Mirror” asks us to see in our reflections a shared consciousness; Gyða comments: "We all come from the same consciousness, multiple prisms in separate bodies. This for me is a key for navigating reality. Life is constantly giving us clues, offering guidance to reconnect with the sublime. If we have the gentleness to look at our own refections in other human beings we’ll find that love is. Everything else... a glitch." Finally, premiering online for the first time today, “Checking In” sees a more direct, electronic-inflected approach. Created with her partner Úlfur Hansson at the Old Carpet Factory in Hydra, Gyða explains that the track "started with the lyrics spilling out while lying underneath a constellation painted on the inside of an old fire place. It is a vortex to tune into the collective. Hey guys, how are we doing?" "White Noise" listening options: https://found.ee/gyda-white-noise "Mirror" listening options: Official video | Streaming options "Checking In" listening options: https://found.ee/gyda-valtysdottir The music on 'Mother Pearl' is built from delicate textures and voice-led gestures that move with a quiet, embodied clarity, embracing the listener in spaces that feel both intimate and expansive. Like a finely spun web, the songs appear fragile at first glance, yet reveal a resilient, intricate strength beneath their opaline surfaces. Gyða’s voice, vulnerable yet powerful, encounters cello, harp and electronics in ways that feel revealing rather than ornamental, giving form to emotional and conceptual nuance. There is something unguarded in its delivery, a potent and assured sense of closeness that draws the listener into the song rather than projecting outward.   The album was written in Iceland, Belgium, California and New York City, and the record itself assembled in bedrooms, studios and a summer cabin. At its heart lies the idea of emergence — the place where something enters being from a kind of silent potential — and the title track embodies this idea as “a seed, is potential, is a gift, is… a fertile egg waiting to become.”   Gyða’s collaborators imbue the album with a rich harmonic and textural life: Merope's Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools bring the ancient iridescence of the kanklės, guitar and subtle synth colours; Alex Sopp brings her melodic wind voices; Julian Sartorius plays drums; and harpist Katie Buckley adds luminescent lines. Gyða’s partner Úlfur Hansson recorded the album, played bass, Moog and other instruments, and shaped the cello arrangements and mixes with his distinctive touch.    Gyða Valtysdottir’s music has long invited deep listening. Classically trained yet unbound by genre, she dissolves conventional boundaries between electronic, chamber and improvised music, reimagining them as a coherent, organic flow. She first emerged as a founding member of the electronic dream-pop band múm in her teens before leaving to pursue her own musical path. At 22 she bought a one-way ticket to St. Petersburg to study cello at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, later completing a double master’s degree in classical performance and free improvisation across Russia, Germany and Switzerland. Her first solo album, Epicycle (2017), presented highly personal interpretations of classical works, followed by Epicycle II (2020), a constellation of collaborations with some of Iceland’s most distinctive musical voices. With Evolution (2018) and Ox (2021), Gyða turned fully to her own compositions, blending her classical training, improvisational fluency and electronic sensibilities into original, deeply expressive music — a journey that now finds its next chapter in Mother Pearl.   This is Gyða’s third album of entirely original music. It comes at a transformational moment: the ending of a decade-long relationship and a return to Iceland after two decades of living elsewhere. 'Mother Pearl' looks inward without retreating, making space for tenderness, reflection and the subtle alchemy of becoming. 'Mother Pearl' track list: 1. Mother Pearl 2. White Noise - stream 3. Open Poem 4. Living Waters 5. Mirror - video | stream 6. Checking In - stream 7. Riverbed 8. Horizon 9. Potency 'Mother Pearl' artwork (click for high res): Links: https://gydadiamond.net/ https://gyda.bandcamp.com/track/mirror https://www.instagram.com/gydatru/ https://www.facebook.com/gydavaltys/