ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
Living Room Songs
ERATP037
Erased Tapes 2011
07 Tracks. 23mins01secs

A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN
A Winged Victory For The Sullen
ERATP032
Erased Tapes 2011
07 Tracks. 44mins31secs

Living Room Songs
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A Winged Victory For The Sullen
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Two years ago, Icelandic musician and composer Ólafur Arnalds embarked on a week-long project for which he composed, recorded and released one track a day, which he made available to download for free on a special page, promoted through social networks. To complement these, he asked fans to email him pictures inspired by the music. The tracks were subsequently released as Found Songs. This gruelling schedule has clearly not deterred Arnalds who, last October, pulled a similar stunt by recording seven new pieces in the living room of his Reykjavik apartment, this time adding a new layer to the project by filming his daily performances. The tracks were once again made given away on Arnalds’s website.

Playing piano on every track, Arnalds is here surrounded by friends and, on one occasion, family, who add string works and electronic touches. The music is typical of his work, often melancholic and touching, extremely melodic and nuanced, and partly revolves around circular themes. The addition of video documents gives the music an even greater intimacy, especially as the camera offers extreme close ups of hands, instruments and faces. Unlike with Found Songs, where part of the challenge was to compose a new piece each day, some of the pieces collected here stem from earlier live improvisations (Tomorrow’s Song), failed experiments (Ágúst) or are variations of existing pieces (Film Credits). At times, the set up is somewhat ambitious, as Arnalds enrols the help of his mother and sister on electronics (Near Light) or calls upon a large string formation, as the camera progressively reveals twelve musicians crammed into the composer’s living room on Lag Fyrir Ömmu.

With the closing piece, This Place Is A Shelter, Arnalds hints at the fact that, being away from home for a lot of the time to perform in venues around the world, he was in some way returning the favour by inviting his fans to his home. The track was recorded during a wrap party for the project and sees the performers joined by an audience of friends.

Whilst his studio albums have seen Arnalds venture away from the modern classical, these more intimate and time-constrained projects are much more focused and ranks amongst his most exciting and exquisite work.

The joint venture that is A Winged Victory For The Sullen on the other hand is quite a stern affair. The first in a series of planned releases from Dustin O’Halloran and Stars Of The Lid founding member Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie under this banner, this self-titled release was conceived and recorded in large spaces across Europe using full size concert grand pianos, with additional contributors, amongst which Peter Broderick on violin and Hildur Guðnadóttir on cello, providing orchestral touches.

Here, the music is particularly solemn and sombre, especially on the string-led pieces. Requiem For The Static King parts 1 and 2 are based on slow progressive chords which continuously ebb and flow over the course of these two pieces, evoking wintery plains wrapped in thick layers of fog. It is almost as if time itself was on the verge of stopping. On the second part, a ray of light tries to pierce through when a delicate piano motif slowly emerges, but even its sustained presence never quite manages to lift the mood. With Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears and A Symphony Pathétique take this even further by relying on drone-like formations which, while progressing at an extremely slow pace, allow, at least on the latter, for a more emotive layer to develop above it. The control here is quite astonishing; and at no time is there any feeling that the whole thing could suddenly erupt or collapse. The density of the orchestral part may shift slightly in one way or another, but it remains present in pretty much the same way through the whole of the twelve and a half minutes of the piece.

While lighter in tone, the piano-led pieces (We Played Some Open Chords And Rejoiced…, Minuet For A Cheap Piano Number Two) appear to only accentuate the sombre mood which covers up the rest of the album.

A Winged Victory For The Sullen is announced as a fully-fledged project from O’Halloran and Wiltzie, and on the back of such an impressionist record, it is indeed to be hoped that there is much more to come from the duo, although it is difficult to see just how they could strip the music down any more without compromising it entirely.

Living Room Songs: 4.5/5 A Winged Victory For The Sullen: 4.6/5

Ólafur Arnalds | A Winged Victory For The Sullen | Erased Tapes
Living Room Songs
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A Winged Victory For The Sullen
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PETER BRODERICK
Music For Confluence
ERATP036
Erased Tapes 2011
13 Tracks. 46mins10secs

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Peter Broderick continues to defy conventions with his latest release for Erased Tapes as he brings together various strands of his musical persona. Composed to accompany the documentary film Confluence, directed by Jennifer Anderson and Vernon Lott, Music For Confluence constantly shifts from beautifully crafted piano pieces to swelling orchestral motifs and folk-tinted compositions to create a truly cinematic soundtrack.

Confluence documents five mysterious disappearances which took place in the small town of Lewiston, Idaho, situated at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, between 1979 and 1982, of which only three bodies were ever found. Broderick was commissioned to compose the score for the documentary shortly after he’d moved from Copenhagen to Berlin and had taken over an apartment in the centre of the German capital, which came with a set of keys to the piano store on the ground floor, which he was invited to use as much as he wanted outside of opening hours.

The music was created from this strange set up, with Broderick building up layers of sound and music to complement the mood of the movie, and it rapidly becomes clear that the tone of this album is much more sombre than pretty much anything he has released until now. Broderick leaves behind much of his usual fluid and melodic style to concentrate on textures and tones, at times layering particularly string motifs in the background (We Didn’t Find Anything, It Wasn’t A Deer Skull, He Was Inside That Building), at other assembling desolate constructions (We Enjoyed Life Together, Circumstantial Evidence). Even at his most lyrical (She Just Quit Coming To School, The Person Of Interest) or pastoral (Until The Person Is Apprehended), tension is never far away and continuously sips through. Only The Last Christmas and Old Time seem to escape the cloak of darkness which covers the rest of this record. On the former, Broderick offers a fleeting glimpse of his more radiant persona, whilst the latter, the credits piece, was purposely devised as different from the rest of the soundtrack, as to mark a clear end point to the film.

Here, Broderick never sticks to purely classical instrumentation. Throughout, he uses acoustic and electric guitars to add texture to his compositions and give them a slightly more authentic feel  (In The Valley Itself) or accentuate their haunting nature (Some Fisherman On The Snake River, The Person Of Interest).

Peter Broderick’s music has a natural cinematic flow, yet here he adopts a resolutely darker tone than usual to create a somewhat haunting and slightly unsettling mood. He has however raised to the challenge with brio and delivers one of his most accomplished records to date.

4.7/5

Peter Broderick | Erased Tapes
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In just a few years, Berlin-based pianist Nils Frahm has worked with the likes of Peter Broderick, Greg Haines, F.S. Blumm, Ólafur Arnalds or Deaf Center, but it is with his own work, released on Kning Disk, Sonic Pieces and Erased Tapes that he has gained recognition. With his new album, he explores a miniature nocturnal sound world where every sound of his piano is amplified to reveal its most minute intimate details. Here, he talks about his formative years, how it is easier to like the music created with others and the recording of his new album.

Nils, you started playing the piano from a very early age. Are you from a musical family? What attracted you to the piano in particular?
I started early indeed. My family was always listening to music and my father is a self-taught player. When I was five or six, we always jammed out together, him on the piano, me on the bongos, pretty hilarious. Then I got into banging on our piano, I probably drove my parents crazy, so they thought it might sound better if they would invest in a teacher.

You have received a classical formation in which I imagine you have studied many classical composers. Were there any particular composers who have influenced you in your formative years? Who or what inspires you to compose today?
I think I haven’t really studied. I had a couple years of good piano lessons, but I decided early that I don’t want to go the traditional classical way, too much pressure. Also I wanted to write my own music, so after studying composers like Chopin, Satie, Rachmaninov and others I wanted to learn more about jazz and improvised music. ECM music was an early inspiration for sure and also set a certain approach to music for me.

You released a couple of albums on AtelierMusik between 2005 and 2008, which have only so far been available on vinyl and digital download. Why did you choose not to release them on CD, and can you tell us more about the inspiration behind these records?
My good friend Arne Römer was one of the first people who encouraged me to work on my solo music. Back then I had no idea how to get my music out there, I think I didn’t even use the internet and I was really bad at networking. The typical nerd trap, but Arne was my ‘go to person’ to talk about my work and he still listens to everything I produce first. He is one of my main references. I think I wouldn’t hurt his feelings if I would say that he just invented the label to keep me working on my own work. He is really happy that I receive more attention since though, as he always believed that this would happen at one point, I think I didn’t. In those years I also never felt that my piano playing was worth recording, so I focused more on electronic music.

In 2009, you released a mini-album, Wintermusik, on Sonic Pieces, and an album, The Bells, on Kning Disk, both of which were later re-released on Erased Tapes when you signed with them. How did you get to work with Erased Tapes, and why choose to re-release these albums?
Peter Broderick introduced my music to Robert from Erased Tapes. I have to say that without Peter I wouldn’t be here now answering any interview questions. Robert liked the recordings so much and realised that there were more people out there who should listen to them. The initial releases were both limited and sold out pretty fast. Robert took over and invested in promotion and that kind of thing, which brought things to a whole new level. I am very happy with all the work Erased Tapes put into my music.

The Bells collects improvised solo piano pieces which were originally published as part of the Solo Piano series inaugurated by Peter Broderick for Kning Disk. Does improvisation play a big part in your work?
The answer is yes! Improvisation is the most incredible and fun part of performing music. It is like writing new songs on the move, all in real time and in the best moments improvisation puts you in an ‘ooooh mmm’ kind of feeling. I guess it is some form of meditation as it makes me feel good and balanced; it basically makes me a happier person.

These pieces were quite sombre in mood. What was your frame of mind when you recorded them, and what inspired you for them?
I think the church and the instrument added to the mood a lot, other than that Peter and I had a lot of fun these two nights. Two boys locked in a church at night for two days with a huge pipe organ and a piano, but I also remember feeling a little heartbroken and sad during that period. The beautiful thing about this album is that I never thought about it getting released while I recorded it. It was basically a long concert for Peter.

Last year, you released an album which you recorded with cello player Anne Müller, on which you brought together acoustic instrumentation and electronics. How did the project come up, and are you planning to follow it up with more music together? 
I met Anne in 2007 and we started thinking of recording something together as she’d heard my electronic music and as mentioned at that time, I wasn’t really convinced by my piano skills. So I would never really have dared to record a piano/cello album like I would be able to do now. The record was finished in 2008, but it took a long time until it came out. It was confusing a lot of people, associating me with piano music, which is great as I like confusion, it is the only moment we learn something new. Anne is not only the best cello player I know, but also one of the nicest human being on Earth and I will work with her again soon.

You also released a couple of albums with F.S. Blumm on Morr Music and Sonic Pieces. Did you know each other prior to working on these projects, and how did the idea of the albums come up?
I kind of stalked him. I doubt that there is a bigger F.S. Blumm fan out there than me, I love his music! I met him a couple of years ago in person, and he liked my piano playing, so after a few cups of coffee (I make a pretty excellent coffee by the way) we decided to work on collaboration. It is a pretty funny album, but I am so proud that he choose me to play along with him, it was one of my big dreams coming true. It all happened after I released Wintermusik on Sonic Pieces, so I knew Monique and her stunning label from that release. Since Monique is a huge F.S. Blumm fan as well, it was easy to talk her into releasing it.

You very regularly collaborate with other musicians, and have worked with the likes of Peter Broderick, Library Tapes, Greg Haines or Machinefabriek in the past, and were even part of a band, Übertonmensch. Do you see collaborating with other musicians an essential part of being a musician? What does it bring to you?
Well, the social aspect of making music is really beautiful, you meet up with people and play a tune together. It is a whole different experience on different levels compared to playing solo, and I like both for different reasons. One aspect which is so wonderful about collaborating though, is that you like the music you create much more than your solo work. It is hard to like your solo work, because you need to learn to love yourself first. Loving other people is much easier, so you are especially in love with the part of the other created when you work together on music and it might be the same for your co-musician. That makes it so much more compelling to work in a team. I am not really interested in forming a band though, it is better to have people come and go and work respectfully with them together.

You have a new album ready to be released, Felt, your first proper debut album for Erased Tapes. While the piano sounds on The Bells was very pure, you intentionally seem to place microphones as close as possible to your instrument to capture all the minute sounds made by the hammers, the strings, the keys, even your breathing. You’ve also quietened the sound of the piano by using felt in front of the strings. This gives the album a very intimate and organic feel. How did you get the idea to do this, and what was your intention?
My piano is pretty loud, so I can’t play it at night unless I dampen the strings with a piece of felt, then the piano is really silent. So in order to get some signal recorded you need to put the mics close and turn up the gain on your mic preamp. All my gear is way older than me and adds beautiful colour and fantasy-like sounds to the source, It is also very non linear and it adds a lot of noise so I decided for myself I liked this a lot and made a little concept out of it. Also thinking of the epic sounds of The Bells made it tempting to try something really different on this album. There will be more virtuous works in the future I am sure, but I always find it easier to make quiet recordings sound pretty.

Apart for the piano, you also use a few other instruments on the album. Did you feel the need to introduce other sounds on this album?
The idea was to play whatever I can play without using the computer or other musicians. I didn’t feel the need to keep it a solo piano record, I just wanted to bring to tape whatever sounds, beautiful and pure, so I allowed myself to use some toys (similar to Wintermusik)

On the liner notes, you mention that you favour keeping your music open to accidents and that you use this as a mean to experiment with new ideas.  How do you go about doing this?
The good thing about accidents is that they confront you with unexpected situations, this keeps us awake. I want to be awake when these accidents happen in order to analyse if I like them or not. When you record and your cell phone rings you usually would start over, just out of habit, but is it really that bad? I don’t think so. Is it bad if my record hisses? Or if you hear all the breathing and squeaking? I don’t think so either. They are like somebody else, another force collaborating with me, which makes me like my record more.

The music on Felt appears overall lighter than on The Bells, and more cinematic. Was it your intention when you started working on the album?
Usually I listen to every instrument carefully when I start playing and each piano tells me something else. One piano might ask me to beat the sh.. out of it and the next piano wants to be pet very gently, my piano asked me to be quiet and sensitive. It told me that if I would touch it softly that it would sound amazing and powerful and it kept its promise.

Again, in the liner notes, you recommend to listen to the album on big headphones as it was how it was made. Do you think you would be able to perform any of it live and retain the essence of it?
I don’t think about that too much to be honest. I don’t really think of my live performances when I record music. I also never performed Wintermusik live, since I can’t play all three instruments in the same time. I believe that certain things work great on a record and other things work best in a live situation. The purpose and intention is different, so the music should sound different too. People listen to the record and see the live concerts and have two very different experiences, I think that is fine.

You founded Durton Studio four years ago in Berlin. How did you get the idea of setting it u, and has it changed the way you approached music in any way?
The studio is pretty much my living room. I am obsessed with old crazy gear and the room is filled with wonderful microphones and mastering equipment, there is nothing more satisfying to see people be truly amazed by how something sounds. I am constantly looking for ways to make music richer and more beautiful-sounding and I love to share my place with my friends, to help them all to gain sonic joy out of their compositions. It started small of course, now I have to turn down a lot of offers and I am happy that I am also respected as an odd recording engineer.

How do you see your work evolve in the future? Would you be interested in composing for films for instance, or work on orchestral works?
My life is a miracle right now, I would rather not dream too much about the future right now. Things right now couldn’t be better and I am happy where I am. I just want to be close to my music, it is something which is very important for my inner peace and my fans give me the opportunity to just work on music these days, lucky me.

If you had to name five pieces of music, books, films or work of art that have been particularly influential in your life, which ones would they be? 
1. My parents and friends
2. ECM
3. Stanley Kubrick
4. Werner Herzog
5. Brother Grimm

Email interview September 2011
Thank you to Nils, Robert and Sofia.

Nils Frahm | Nils Frahm (MySpace) | Erased Tapes

NILS FRAHM
Felt
ERATP033
Erased Tapes 2011
09 Tracks. 43mins14secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD

How close does one need to be to an instrument to appreciate it fully? With his latest album, Berlin-based pianist and composer Nils Frahm uncovers a world of miniature sounds and noises which remain usually unheard, and places them at the core of this compositions, working with, and purposely seeking imperfections and defects to give his music a deeply organic feel.

This album was recorded at Durton Studio, the facility he runs in Berlin, for the most part late into the night. Careful to preserve the peaceful nocturnal atmosphere, and more pragmatically, avoid disturbing his neighbours, he muted the sound of his piano by placing felt between the hammers and the strings, and resolved to be as light-fingered as the music allowed. This revealed an entirely new sonic space, filled not only with notes and melodies, but also with tiny alien noises and sounds, from hammers hitting the strings or fingers brushing against the keys to the strings resonating inside the body of the instrument or the wood reacting to the variations in the intensity of the music.

These peripheral noises are usually hidden by the music they help create, yet, captured in their bare state, they give a totally different dimension to the resulting recordings. It feels as if one is lying so close to the piano that even Frahm’s breathing can at times be heard clearly. Each sound becomes texture, blended with the music to underline its most delicate features or reveal the tiniest shifts in mood or tone. Usually, these imperfections would be treated as junk and erased from the recordings as not to alter the music itself, but this is exactly the effect Frahm is looking for, and it is a process which serves his compositions beautifully.

The overall mood of the record is somewhat subdued and introspective, but Frahm carves here some of his most memorable compositions, from the breezy effervescence of Keep and More or the beautifully impressionist Familiar or Snippet to the more introspective Unter or Kind to the autumnal Less or Old Thoughts. While the piano remains the main instrument here, Frahm regularly adds other textures and layers, from celesta or xylophone to field recordings and electronics, to expand the scope of his compositions.

In the last couple of years, Frahm has become a ubiquitous figure on the modern classical circuit. Not only has he released a number of records in quite a short time, including collaborative efforts with Anne Müller, F.S. Blumm, Machinefabriek, Peter Broderick and many more, but he has also contributed to a considerable number of records by the likes of Greg Haines, Simon Scott, Kreng or Deaf Center to name but a few. With this new album, he reaffirms his position as one of the brightest talents of his generation, his unusual approach and deep understanding of his instrument making this a truly magnificent collection.

4.8/5

Nils Frahm | Nils Frahm (MySpace) | Erased Tapes
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Nils Frahm’s new album, Felt, will be released on Erased Tapes on 10 October. This is the follow-up to his 2009 solo debut, The Bells.

To celebrate, the label has made available Snippet, taken from the album. You can pre-order Felt from Erased Tapes.

RIVAL CONSOLES
Kid Velo
ERATP031
Erased Tapes 2011
11 Tracks. 47mins18secs

Kid Velo is like Daft Punk getting deep down and dirty with Clark. If the first Rival Consoles album, IO, released two years ago, was like a rollercoaster ride through the last twenty years of techno, acid, electronica and house, it appears that it was nowhere near enough to satisfy mastermind Ryan Lee West’s seemingly insatiable appetite for fun. For with Kid Velo, he turns the dance floor into a vibrant battleground where his heavy artillery fire glitter balls for the entire duration.

Right from the onset of the title track, which opens the festivities, the tone for the rest of the album is set. West distills stomping beats, smears them with graining electronics and wraps them around very effective melodies. It happens so consistently all the way through that it almost becomes formulaic, but he negotiates this pitfall by keeping his pieces short and focused. The pace is relentless, leaving virtually no breathing time throughout. West lines up the goods, from the hard-edged Kid Velo or Into The Heart II, the bouncy S.P.K.R.S or Eve and hectic and playful Amiga, which sounds a tad like a cartoon R2D2 caught in a tornado, to the heavily textured Vos or the surprisingly funky Guitari, pushing this thing cheerfully on. But while there is a certain feeling of sonic unity through the whole record, it is very much an illusion. There are indeed recurring themes here (the main theme in S.P.K.R.S is recycled into the beat-less Rosenthal Road, Into The Heart I and II use very similar sound sources, a number of tracks relying on a common use of frantic melodies), but on closer listen, the scope of the record becomes more apparent. In between heavy synth lines and dense grooves, West injects little sequences which take the record in entirely different directions, if only for a few seconds. This is the case with the opening moments of S.P.K.R.S, where an orchestral sample is left to linger before being irremediably crushed, and while there are indeed very few breathing opportunities throughout, he allows a segment of Vos to lie beat-less, while later on, West does away with beats for the entirety of Rosenthal Road, drenching it instead in dense reverbs, and After Ed., as its swelling synthetic setting brings this album to a rather impressive close.

Kid Velo is unashamedly electronic; West uses a wide array of synthetic-sounding sources but his ultimate goal is to create emotionally packed little vignettes. This works particularly well on After Ed., where he clearly plays on the poignant character of the piece, but it is also very apparent elsewhere, whether it is through the uplifting melody which forms toward the end of I Left The Party, the deeply disturbing and twisted set up of Vos or chirpy overtones of Guitari.

With Kid Velo, West doesn’t reach quite as deep into its influences, but what it occasionally lacks in breadth, it makes up in depth. With this second opus, Ryan Lee focuses on some of the more striking angles of his debut and applies much sharper sounds, textures and grooves to them. Here he reinforces his position as one of the UK’s most interesting new electronic artists, and he does so with an infectious sense of fun.

Prior to its full CD release at the end of the month, the album is currently being unveiled one track at a time on a different website each week.

4.7/5

Rival Consoles | Rival Consoles (MySpace) | Erased Tapes

Rival Consoles – Vos by erasedtapes

Ryan West is gearing up for the release of the second Rival Consoles album, Kid Velo, on the ever-excellent Erased Tapes in early June, and to whet your appetite, there is one new track revealed exclusively on a site each week. And this week, we’ve got Vos, the sixth track from Kid Velo, and it is a bit of a monster electronic tune, dirty-sounding, and utterly excellent! The album is out on 27 June.

The album’s launch party will take place at The Nest, Dalston, on 23 June, with Frog Pocket and Deadfader (Get tickets here)

Rival Consoles – Vos by erasedtapes

Download Vos from Bleep: DLD

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NILS FRAHM & ANNE MÜLLER
7fingers
ERATP028
Erased Tapes 2011
09 Tracks. 42mins56secs

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In the last couple of years, Berlin-based musician and composer Nils Frahm has become quite a ubiquitous presence, appearing alongside a number of musicians or opening up his studio to them (Peter Broderick, Simon Scott, Greg Haines, F.S. Blumm and Deaf Center to name but a few), as well as releasing his own music on labels such as Sonic Pieces, Kning Disk, Hush Records or Erased Tapes with who he has recently signed.

Originally published on Hush Records and now benefiting of a full release through Erased Tapes, 7fingers is the first collaborative effort between Frahm and Anne Müller, a Berliner herself, and a cellist who has been experimenting with loops, electronics and textures in her performance for some time. The result is a rather stunning collection of contrasted cinematic and pastoral pieces which, although partly rooted in modern classical, incorporates electronic glitches and interferences, occasional beats and intense acoustic sound treatment. All too often in this type of projects, either half of the equation end up feeling slightly forced onto the other or, worse, appears totally out of place. This is not the case here though. Although there is often a clear demarkation between acoustic instruments and electronics, the pair are keen to blur the boundaries between the two, creating a sort of ephemeral no man’s land which they consequently fill with expressive melodies and exquisite soundscapes.

The album opens with the plaintive drone of a cello which is rapidly dubbed and layered onto itself, the delay becoming increasingly part of the fabric of the piece as it progresses. The title track, which follows, switches to a much more electronic setting, as micro beats and glitches are placed against airy string work and occasional dissonant metallic tones. This is developed further on Show Your Teeth, Journey For A Traveller and Duktus, each piece appearing to deconstruct the source themes a little bit more, and surround them with soft glitches and quick rhythmic patterns. There is something of the process that has served Murcof over the years here, but the electronics are much more stripped down, while the lead strings and piano motifs are for the most part left intact.

When the obvious processing drops, it is still possible to find traces of it in the circling loop on Let My Key Be C for instance, or with the discreet film sample heard toward the end of Because This Must Be/Augmentation or flittering found sounds of Reminds To Teeth. The latter also sees Frahm’s most prominent piano performance of this record, to particularly great effect as notes line up in echoing patterns while the sombre tones of the cello ripples over them. Perhaps the biggest oddity of this record is to be found in the last piece, Long Enough, which combines the delicate acoustic textures and electronic treatments into a more ambitious sequence, but as the beat kicks in, Frahm starts singing, and is soon joined by Müller, their voices harmonizing rather convincingly over a backdrop of strings, acoustic guitars and beats.

7fingers treads a very unusual, and somewhat risky, line here, but Nils Frahm and Anne Müller do so with great reserve, resulting in this album being at once elegant and effective, its sumptuous melodies served by clever sound settings to create an extremely evocative piece of work.

4.4/5

Nils Frahm | Nils Frahms (MySpe) | Erased Tape
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ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
… And They Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness
ERATP022
Erased Tapes 2010
09 Tracks. 43mins28secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD US: CD | LP | DLD Norman Records: CD | LP iTunes: DLD

Financial collapse and clouds of volcanic ash have replaced quirky experimental pop music as Iceland’s main exports in recent months, so it is good to see that, beside all this, life carries on as normal and this island, caught between the European and North American tectonic plates in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean, still delivers more than its fair share of progressive music.

One of the country’s most recent envoys is twenty-three year old composer and pianist Ólafur Arnalds who, in the space of one album and three mini-albums has started to make more than a splash on the international music scene. His last couple of projects have taken him in entirely different directions. On one hand, he set himself the challenge to compose, record and publish a track per day for a whole week, using Twitter as main vehicle to promote the work, and inviting listeners to post their own photos on a Flickr account as illustration to the music. Found Songs was later released on London’s ever excellent Erased Tapes. On the other, Arnalds was commissioned the score for British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1909, which was also released on Erased Tapes at the end of last year.

With his second album, … And They Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness, Arnalds returns to some of his favourite themes, casting beautifully evocative melodies and orchestrations against discreet electronics and occasional pop/rock dashes. For this record, Arnalds surrounded himself with a number of musicians and worked closely with musician, composer, film director, author and clothes designer Barði Jóhannsson, best known for his work as Bang Gang, on a number of tracks. The cross-over approach that tinted Arnalds’s Eulogy For Evolution and Variations Of Static especially is emphasised here once again as he ventures in rock/pop terrains on a number of occasions, but while this worked surprisingly well on his debut, it fails to have quite the same impact here. Tunglið for instance, opens with a superbly evocative solo piano sequence, which is progressively wrapped up in layers of strings.  But as the melody swells and the layers of orchestration become denser, the straight brushes of a conventional drum/bass rock formation somewhat deflate the mood in the second half of the piece. This is also true of Gleypa Okkur or Hægt, Kemur Ljósið later, although the drums feel more integrated into the fabric of these, most predominantly on the former, and appear less invasive as a result.

This is not the sole focal point of the record however, and elsewhere Arnalds demonstrates once again particularly impressive qualities as a composer and arranger. Opening pieces Þú Ert Sólin and Þú Ert Jörðin are perfectly nuanced, the string sections providing a delicate counterpoint to the piano, while later, the intimate ambience that is fashioned by the subtle relations between instruments, particularly on the minimal Kjurrt and Undan Hulu is totally absorbing. Arnalds’s deep understanding of chamber music, and his attentive approach to moods and undertones is extremely palpable here, and denote a more mature vision.

At only twenty-three, Ólafur Arnalds is an extremely confident composer whose wide vision sets his work truly apart. The classical/rock equation might not entirely work here, but it is intrinsically part of his approach to music and gives it a very effective contemporary touch. With this record, Arnalds continues to establish himself as one of the most exciting composers of his generation.

3.9/5

Ólafur Arnalds | Ólafur Arnalds (MySpace) | Erased Tapes
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ÓLAFUR ARNALDS
Dyad 1909
ERATP19
Erased Tapes 2009
07 Tracks. 24mins33secs

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Only a few months after Erased Tapes released Peter Broderick’s score for Adrienne Hart’s contemporary dance production Falling From Trees, it is the turn of Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds to present the work British choreographer Wayne McGregor commissioned for his piece Dyad 1909, which his company, Random Dance, premiered at Sadler’s Wells in London last October as part of In The Spirit Of Diaghilev, a series of performances dedicated to the creator of the famous Ballets Russes, which were set up a hundred years ago. McGergor’s Dyad 1909 is inspired by the great technological development between two expeditions to reach the South Pole, one, in 1909, on foot, and another, twenty years later, the year the Ballets Russes were dissolved, by plane.

Following Arnalds’ Found Songs, for which he composed and recorded one track a day for a whole week and made them available to download on the web via Twitter, Dyad 1909 features five entirely new pieces and two new versions of compositions previously heard on Variations Of Static (Lokaðu Augunum and Við Vorum Smá…). Arnalds is once again in charge of piano and electronics, and is accompanied by a string quartet. Spacious, melancholic and infinitely delicate, the music reflects Arnalds usual realm, but, even more so that was the case on Variations Of Static, the compositions are marbled with fragments of electronic textures. Electronic voices can be heard on Lokaðu Augunum and Við Vorum Smá…, while Brotsjór and Til Enda are ridden with heavy electronic discharges reminiscent of Mark Bell’s treatment on Björk’s Jóga. The contrast between the heavy electronic textures and the lighter organic essence of the string and piano works is, perhaps, an illustration of the resolutely modern approach adopted by Diaghilev in his day.

Arnalds retires to the more subtle and purely acoustic side of his work on 3326, a particularly inspiring moment led first by a solitary violin as it draws the most exquisite motifs, then later as two violins and the viola enter into a wonderful evocative and rich conversation, progressively circling around each other and gaining momentum. The opening and closing pieces are, in comparison, particularly atmospheric. A persistent cold wind blows over Frá Upphafi and …Og Lengra, and ice can occasionally be heard cracking under pressure. While the former is devoid of music, piano and strings create for a moment a warm blanket against the chilling gusts of the latter, drawing this short collection to a close.

Like with Peter Broderick’s Music For Falling From Trees, Dyad 1909 perhaps lacks the visual dimension it is meant to be associated with, yet, as a recorded piece, it works admirably, defined by its own universe, where modern technology and tradition are joined into an extremely coherent work.

4.4/5

Ólafur Arnalds (MySpace) | Erased Tapes | Random Dance
Amazon UK: CD | LP Amazon US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD