Illrie
By Bilayer + Sarah-Jane Summers
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
released March 28, 2025
Sarah-Jane Summers - viola, violin
Hilde Marie Holsen - trumpet, electronics
Magnus Bugge - synthesizers
Recorded at Ugla Studio by Juhani Silvola
Produced and mixed by Magnus Bugge and Hilde Marie Holsen
Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus Lab
Graphic design by Anna-Julia Granberg, Blunderbuss
Supported by The Fund for Performing Artists and The Audio and Visual Fund
Vi bor på en stor magnet
2024. Audio visual concert.
'Vi bor på en stor magnet' (We live on a large magnet) premiered at and were commissioned by Notam for the opening of their new facilities in spring 2024.
The piece is composed using a sonic model trained on naturally occurring radio signals from a solar storm recorded in the forests north of Oslo.
Supported by Art Council Norway and Notam
Verdensteatret
α ζ
2023. Stage art.
In January 2023, Verdensteatret traveled to Mexico City where they collaborated with local artists and visited gardens and parks in the city and beyond. Back home in Oslo, they developed new material which was presented for the first time at Kunstnernes Hus Kino in August 2023. α ζ is an expanded cinema experience, a concert and a performance.
By and with Asle Nilsen, Alireza Djabbary, Alexander Bruck, Anikke Flo, Espen Sommer Eide, Janne Kruse, Magnus Bugge, Torgrim Torve
None
2022. Album, electroacoustic concert, installation.
A machine learning based approach to deep listening, atmosphere and fidelity.
In ‘None’ I became occupied with the vast worlds of sound in latent and liminal spaces that would normally be considered ‘silent’. I recorded such sounds: room tones, barely audible field recordings, tape hiss, gear hum, and processed them in various ways to listen closer. I applied machine learning and trained a model on this desolate sound world. The sampleRNN model is ‘a novel model for unconditional audio generation based on generating one audio sample at a time’. One audio sample is basically the elementary particle in digital audio. It is a single point that is meaningless without the context of what becomes before and after, in itself it has no direction, and crucially, no sound. However, knowing the trajectory and velocity you may predict where it will travel based on an idea of what music is. In my case, the intelligence have never heard music before, only silence, and thus predicts based on this.
Created by Magnus Bugge
Machine learning done at Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts
Handbells by Laura-Marie Rueslåtten
Mastered by Helge Sten at Audio Virus LAB
Cover artwork by Tord K Øverland
Supported by Arts Council Norway, The Composers' Renumeration Fund, Creo, and Tono.
Latent Space Relay Station
2022. Installation.
Verdensteatret
Enter ghost, exit ghost, re-enter ghost
2022. Installation.
By and with Asle Nilsen, Espen Sommer Eide, Janne Kruse, Magnus Bugge, Niklas Adam and Torgrim Torve.
Photo by Kunstdok / Tor Simen Ulstein
Verdensteatret
Trust me tomorrow
2020. Stage art.
By and with Ali Djabbary, Asle Nilsen, Espen Sommer Eide, Janne Kruse, Laurent Ravot, Magnus Bugge, Martin Taxt, Niklas Adam and Torgrim Torve.
Photo by Jenny Berger Myhre
Trust me tomorrow enters experiences of blindness from both lack of light and too much light. It is evoking the possibility of entering darkness as a space for projection, imitation and desire. The interior darkness of a camera and the bright crystalline interior of the eye are both sites of a learning process – guided by the basic attraction to bring movements into light.
A floating composition ranging from the quiet, elegant and introspective to a disturbed and fuzzy mindscape. An occurrence sequence staged in a calm room. Seeking to reveal an alternative time.
Trust me tomorrow is a sensorial and diffracted experience where rendering is happening between the actual space and memory. It speaks to the ability or failure to get into each other’s heads. So it speaks to self-consciousness, subconsciousness and other consciousnesses. Trying to find the railing, a guide, something to orientate by in the groping darkness. In a world that is folding back into itself.
Trust me tomorrow had its world premiere 17th September 2020 at Black Box teater during Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.
Kaya + Kosmos
2021. Theatrical performance for children by Tilta Teater
An epic adventure following 10 year old Kaya and her imaginary best friend Zita on daunting missions to outer space. After a successful mission on the planet Volturion she realises a massive black hole is about absorb her fantasy. As even Zita is consumed by the black hole she sets out on an ultimate mission: to save her best friend – and her own imagination.
Created and performed by Thomas Stene-Johansen (also producer), Petronella Ibsen-Børnick and Nora Svalheim. Also performed by Nami Kitagawa Aam and Peder Kaalstad.
Original soundtrack composed Magnus Bugge and supported by Arts Council Norway
Redundant Location
2020. Installation by Magnus Bugge and Alexander Rishaug
A sonic exploration of time in the old Mack welding workshop and boiler room.
Light Phase
2019. Installation.
Light, shadow, mechanical sound.
Light bulbs, micro controller, relays, discarded radio case.
Jakob
2019. Dance performance by Tony Tran
In Jakob (2019) two male performers depart into an intense elliptic journey that gradually reveals the complexity of their interdependent relationship. It invites the audience into a seemingly playful choreography that investigates the reasons for why we limit our availabilities and our capacities to open up for one another, and to support and accept each other.
With a movement language that generates metaphoric pictures and symbolic gestures, and that is yet emotionally detached, Jakob is the continuation of Tony Tran’s ongoing research on power and identity in human relationships. How does the person or party we are relating to take part in the choices we make? How does this shape our behavior, our individual actions and how we meet the others?
Choreography: Tony Tran, creation and performers: Tony Tran and Knut Vikstrøm Precht, dramaturgy: Thomas Schaupp, music: Magnus Bugge, light design: Tobias Leira, research fellow: Fabian Wixe, video and photo: Andreas Daugstad Leonardsen
Ex Topia
2018. Film/Installation by P L A T E AU R E S I D U E
Ex Topia is a research-based artistic intervention set in the postglacial landscape of Triglav glacier in the Slovenian Alps. The project was created in collaboration with scientists from Anton Melik Geographical Institute ZRC SAZU, a heterogeneous group of 32 participants and music by Norwegian composer Magnus Bugge. Ex Topia is a documented artistic intervention dedicated to the disappearing Triglav glacier, which shrunk from 36ha to 1ha in just 70 years. The project focuses on the landscape under the Triglav glacier that has been transformed due to climate change. The key question was the look and the feeling of the postglacial landscape, and the perception of it among participants that ascended to the glacier for the first time. The result was a multimedia installation, which included scenes of filmed location, interviews with participants and music by Magnus Bugge.
Soundtrack for Webcams
2017. Installation.
Video, sound.
Randomly selected realtime webcam streams,
image analysis-controlled realtime soundtrack generation.
Bilayer
Bilayer is a duo consisting of Hilde Marie Holsen (trumpet/effects) and Magnus Bugge (synthesis). The musicians move freely around in diverse contexts – from minimal arrangements stretching out to the infinity of of time and space, to alien soundscapes of destroying textures and raw emotion.
Since 2015 the duo has been invited to various stages for experimental music: Bidrobon (Oslo), SkRR (Oslo), Friform Kirkenes, Oddnose (Nesodden) Nonfigurativ musikk and Haugesound as well as other venues. The debut album was celebrated with a release concert at Kafé Hærverk in Oslo March 6th 2019.