Guðlaugur Kristinn Óttarsson

Guðlaugur Kristinn Óttarsson was born in Reykjavík in 1954 and named after his paternal grandfather Guðlaugur A. Magnússon, a goldsmith and a musician who was at the forefront of Icelandic music in both classical and jazz, as well as being very active in musicians' associations, but he passed away in 1952. Furthermore, his maternal grandmother was Vivan Aurora Signora Holm, our country's first physiotherapist, as well as a piano and a guitar player who played a big role in his musical upbringing.

Guðlaugur grew up at Laugarvegur 22, where there was a direct access to his grandfather's Gold and Silversmith workshop, and that's where he got introduced to the craft and metallurgy of metals and made his first silver piece in 1957. He followed in his grandfather's footsteps and went to Denmark to study silversmithing at the age of 15. Before that, he spent his summers in the countryside with Sigfús Vigfússon in Geirland, who was a mechanic and a master electrician, installing and setting up hydroelectric plants for farmers, and Guðlaugur was his apprentice from the age of 10.

His first public musical performances were on the National Broadcasting Service when he was six, where he often sang solos on children's programs, though no recordings have survived. He was also lucky to have a music teacher at Melaskóli, Magnús Pétursson, and he also benefited from his teaching at Hagaskóli, and composed his first prelude in 1969, which was premiered on national television in 1971.

At the Menntaskólinn at Laugarvatn, he enjoyed music lessons with Guðmundur Emilsson and also played music by Leifur Þórarinsson, whose music he absorbed, while Guðlaugur was in the school's bands all his school years, and during the last two years, this school band also played for two summers in the East Fjords in 1974 and 1975.

Guðlaugur started studying mathematics, physics, and computer science at the University of Iceland in 1975, where his teacher in the latter subject was Dr. Oddur Benediktsson. For his final project, he wrote a program that took in melodies and arranged them for five voices on the university's IBM 1420 computer, so it can be said that it was his first hint of artificial intelligence. The program used 300 chords stored on punch cards that students from the Commercial College of Iceland punched in, and it's confirmed that the band ABBA got wind of this work. At the same time as his university studies, he played with the bands Galdrakarlar and Sextettinn.

At the beginning of 1981, Guðlaugur became a founding member in the reformation of the band Þeyr, which had been a six-member pop band, but now took on a new sound, with their first album being Útfrými. That same year, their albums "Iður til Fóta" and "Mjötviður Mær" were released – while as Guðlaugur's mother taught him, it's best to quit while you're ahead. So, in the summer of 1983, the band KUKL was formed, which was the first Icelandic band to play at Hróarskelda and released 4 vinyl albums that eventually came out on CD.

Guðlaugur's collaboration with Megas started in 1985 with the band MEGAKUKL, which held concerts at Gamla Bíó on September 6th and 7th that same year. Guðlaugur recently released one of the works from those concerts, “Dr. Sölvi,” which can be found online – and alongside KUKL, Guðlaugur and Björk worked as a duo and recorded 11 pieces that went under the name "The Elgar Sisters Sessions," which later became a springboard for both of their solo careers.

Guðlaugur would then go on to work with Megas for 25 years – most notably on Loftmynd in 1987 and Höfuðlausnir in 1988 with Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, and then Hættuleg Hljómsveit and Glæpakvendið Stella in 1990, where he met drummer Birgir Baldursson along with bassist Haraldur Þorsteinsson that would later go on to work with Guðlaugur on his solo projects.

During these years, Guðlaugur also worked with various foreign bands such as Killing Joke, Psychic TV, Current 93, as well as with Icelandic bands like Súkkat and Megasukk. As the 19th century ended, Guðlaugur officially reignited his solo career in 1998 as a classical music soloist, focusing on J. S. Bach—but also composed material which can be heard on his solo album Dense Time from 2005, featuring around 50 musicians. The album's material forms a comprehensive picture of the music Guðlaugur had been composing and working on from 1986 to 2005.

Dense Time got good reviews everywhere, but Guðlaugur's foster father, Guðmundur Jónsson, an opera singer, sang his swan song on the album in the musical piece Sirius, while Guðmundur passed away two years later in 2007.

Apart from music, Guðlaugur has also worked as a scientist in mathematical physics at various startup companies, given lectures, and publishing articles on an international level, as well as teaching mathematics, physics, and electronics at college and university level.

In 1994, he created a system that translated letters into musical notes where B and H were not the same notes, following the style of J.S. Bach, that could play his name as B-A-H-C. Today, B and H are considered the same note, but in 2008 he used this system to turn chess games into music for the film Me and Bobby Fisher — and later held a concert at the Church where Fischer was buried. This film music was released in a limited edition in 2009 under the title 'Post humous art value formula' with 100 copies.

Since 1987, Guðlaugur has gone by the name 'The Third Ear,' which Megas gave him, which is in the back of one’s head and is especially sensitive to silence – because without silence, there is no music, after all, so it's fitting that in 2018, Guðlaugur discovered what he calls 'The Hidden Light,' which all living creatures emit but disappears when the respective creature dies.

That same year, he discovered that Hulduljós from animals is of the same strength as the Hulduljós that mountains give off if they reach a critical mass of around billion tons, and he and his colleagues have mapped Hulduljós on both sides of the Atlantic all the way down to the equator, where both animals and mountains are the subject.

Over the past eight years, he has dedicated his time on research on Hulduljós and publishing his musical works as sheet music, where the first is 'The Seventh Seal,' which he started drafting in 1983 after his band Þeyr came to an end.