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 will be releasing on June 25th.
Expansive, gradually unfolding, thrilling with a plethora of sonic texture, mournful melodicism and a thoughtful, mellow post-rock-cum-electronica feel, “Beacon” sees amiina still concerned with those often spectacular, always lonely towers dedicated to the preservation of life at sea, lighthouses, as with their 2013 EP, The Lighthouse Project.
The excellent, ice-blue hued video, full of spectral bursts of colour, was created and filmed on an HD Blackmagic pocket cinema camera by artist Heimir Freyr Hlöðversson. Initially commissioned for just one track, Heimir was inspired to create a piece that runs the length of the whole EP. His hypnotic footage depicts chemical reactions occurring in a minute 5mm frame – once enlarged, the films evoke micro and macro imagery, from cellular structures to weather systems to galaxies. Plans are in hand to present the music and accompanying film on stage and screen over the coming year.
Pharology is a three-track, 20-minute piece commissioned in 2019 as a sound installation at the wind-whipped Nakkehoved lighthouse in Denmark. ‘The title is taken from the term for the study of lighthouses, something amiina have been engaged in since their 2009 tour of Icelandic lighthouses that culminated in that The Lighthouse Project EP.
The band – Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir, Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and Guðmundur Vignir Karlsson are drawn to lighthouses’ remoteness, history, and symbolism, as well their intriguing acoustic and spatial qualities.
“Being an artist is like being a lighthouse,” they say. “You send a signal without knowing who is receiving.”
amiina’s Pharology EP will be released digitally on June 25th and can be pre-ordered from Bandcamp, here.
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