Iceland
News: Icelandic ambient dream gods Sigur Rós add Australia and New Zealand to world tour as they record first studio album since 2013’s ‘Kveilkur’
The legendary Sigur Rós have announced they will be extending their 2022 world tour to Australia and New Zealand, gracing antipodean shores for the first time after five long years. The Icelandic band are set to play shows in Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and will come armed with new music, along with material from …
News: Hugar announce a new album, ‘Rift’, for January; come explore the delicate, glacial pulsing of ‘volt’
HUGAR, the Icelandic modern compositional duo of childhood friends Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, who we last examined in these pages in regard to their arthouse film soundtrack The Vasulka Effect (read about that, here), are set to return in the first, budding days of 2022 with an album entitled Rift: an album written with …
See: The spectacular, cellular-level abstractions accompanying the slow beauty of amiina’s ‘Beacon’
WITH music this beautiful, it’s so very good to see them back: the Icelandic quartet amiina, who’ve been away for half a decade, have returned to the fray with the musically beautiful and visually spectacular new single, “Beacon”, which you can watch herein. The song is taken from the forthcoming Pharology EP, which the band …
Album Review: BSÍ’s doubled edged ‘Sometimes depressed…but always anti-fascist’ is a dream pop delight with some serrated edges.
There are two sides to this story: Icelandic duo BSÍ have released an album of two sides in ‘Sometimes depressed…but always antifascist’. Side one – sometimes depressed – is a collection of dream pop vignettes: restrained, delicate and eminently beautiful tracks that are reflective and melodic. Side two – always antifascist – presents some slightly …
Track: Icelandic duo BSÍ release double singles – the dreamy ‘25Lue’ and the punky ‘Dónakallalagið’. Two very different sides of the same spinning coin
From what must be a contender for the album title of the year – ‘Sometimes depressed … but always antifascist’ – Icelandic duo BSÍ have released two fantastic singles that are complete polar opposites in style, yet joined by a certain aesthetic that binds them completely. In fact the singles represent the different sides of …
See: Eydís Evensen – ‘Wandering II’: gliding pastoralism from Icelandic composer
SONY is venturing into the world of modern composition and has set up a new imprint, XXIM Records, to issue musics from that liminal space where classical abuts ambient and experimental; its first signing is the Icelandic composer and pianist Eydís Evensen. Eydís hails from the remote town of Blönduós in the north of Iceland. …
SEE: The beautiful visuals for Ólafur Arnalds’ ‘Woven Song’
ÓLAFUR ARNALDS is preparing for his new album, some kind of peace, to hit turntables across the world on November 6th; and he’s followed the beautiful noir of previous single-track teasers “Back To The Sky” and “We Contain Multitudes” with another stunning audiovisual drop in “Woven Song”; let yourself be dazzled down at the end. …
ALBUM REVIEW: Hugar – ‘Music For The Motion Picture The Vasulka Effect’: graceful ambience for art documentary
HUGAR is the exploratory Icelandic music project of Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, a pair of talented musicians hailing from Seltjarnarnes, which rejoices in the fact it’s the smallest town in the nation. Their collective name: it translates from the Icelandic, quite simply, as “Minds”. They’ve had a quietly stellar upward career curve, working at …
SEE: Ólafur Arnalds returns with the beautiful noir of ‘Back To The Sky’
IF YOU like your music to come with an architecture of gorgeously constructed post-classicism, an experimental and conceptual edge, yet still have enough presence in the world of contemporary pop that you can at least make the shapes of humming along to it, then Ólafur Arnalds is absolutely your man. The Icelandic composer, who found …
Track: Jónsi – Exhale
There is a heartbreakingly beautiful element to anything Iceland’s Jónsi (Jón Þór Birgisson) creates, whether it be through Sigur Rós or collaborations with partner Alex Somers. Jónsi has just released a stunning video for a new solo piece of work – ‘Exhale’ – and, again, there is such an ephemeral, breathtakingly impossible ache to the …