BEN FROST & DANíEL BJARNASON
Sólaris
HVALUR12
Bedroom Community 2011
11 Tracks. 46mins08secs

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

Bedroom Community’s long serving prince of noir Ben Frost and recent roster addition Daníel Bjarnason have joined forces for a project which takes them beyond their respective sound. Originally created for the 2010 edition of Unsound Festival, and based on Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris and its 1972 loose adaptation by Andrei Tarkovky, this work combines powerful orchestral sequences and discreet electronic textures into a haunting and intimate soundtrack.

Recorded with Sinfonietta Cracovia, the creative process went through a series of stages, from original live improvisations by Bjarnason and Frost to the final score, written from data collected as these improvisations were fed into a computer and irremediably altered. Continue Reading »

DANÍEL BJARNASON
Processions
HVALUR7CD
Bedroom Community 2010
07 Tracks. 49mins31secs

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

Iceland may be a fairly isolated strip of land planted in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, with a population of just under a third of a million, but it is certainly a fertile land when it comes to music, as it churns new talents with international appeal with insistent regularity. Pop was for a time the main beneficiary of this flow of artists, but increasingly, it is classical musicians and composers who are at the forefront of the country’s output.

The latest to emerge from the Icelandic cauldron is Daníel Bjarnason, a pianist, composer and conductor who studied in Reykjavik and Freiburg, Germany. Signed to Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Bedroom Community, where he joins New York-based Nico Muhly, Bjarnason, 30, is the co-founder and main conductor of the Isafold Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has recorded a couple of albums of modern classical works. He has also worked with a variety of orchestras around the world and, like Muhly, crossed over into the pop/rock realm to work with folk songstress Ólöf Arnalds, singer Pétur Ben or Sigur Rós amongst others.

Collecting three radically different pieces, Bow To Strings, Processions and Skelja, this album, Bjarnason’s debut as a composer, is a particularly vivid and rich example of modern composition at its exhilarating best. Continue Reading »