Creating Music After Losing Home to a Volcano | GÍSLI GUNNARSSON | Oktaves Podcast (Ep.4)

Gísli Gunnarsson is an Icelandic composer and artist whose sound lives between modern classical, post-rock, cinematic orchestration, and metal-adjacent storytelling. In this episode of the Oktaves Podcast – Talks with Musicians, Gísli breaks down how he builds songs like films, why dynamics matter (fragile to crushing), and how his metal roots shaped his taste without limiting his writing.We talk about his recent shift into sync work and trailer remixes, sparked by an Iceland Airwaves masterclass with Iceland Music and a sync consultant who immediately pointed him toward trailer music. Gísli explains the real-world path into that space, what he can and cannot share, and why being in the right rooms (and being a good person) actually changes outcomes.He also shares the story behind his last album, a collaboration-heavy project where nearly every guest said yes, turning what he thought would be an EP into a full album (even a double LP). Each track was released as a single to give every collaborator their own moment, while building momentum in a singles-first world.Then it gets personal: on release day, Gísli had to evacuate his home in Grindavík, the volcano town. Marketing stopped. Life took over. That experience now drives a new album written across the last year, themed around eruption, loss of home, and rebuilding.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Welcome to the Oktaves podcast🎙️ Talks with musicians! Where we uplift local musicians voices.This podcast is about chatting about and sharing with each other tips and tricks on how to succeed in the music industry as an independent musician, with an emphasis on branding and marketing, and overall management, whether your goal is to stay forever independent or get label-ready. We are very passionate about breaking the cycle of gatekeeping in the industry, so we strive towards bringing you conversations where these layers of the onion will be peeled one by one.We are also here to uplift and shed light on independent (or previously independent) musicians in our community, who are so kind to share their struggles, their wins, successes, their strategies, and advice or some secrets possibly to how they got there.🔗 Follow Oktaves:https://instagram.com/withoktaveshttps://facebook.com/oktaveshttps://tiktok.com/@withoktaves