New, Newer, Newest: Nice Sounds From Iceland

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As the temperature starts to dip in the Northern Hemisphere, spare a thought for the tiny population of Iceland, who are currently enjoying tops of 38°F at the moment.

As someone who also hails from a slightly kooky island nation but one which is currently sitting in the low 70s, I’m not really sure what people do in all this cold weather. I can only imagine, going by how much Iceland punches above its weight in musical exports, that they spend most of their time indoors creating wonderful things to listen to.

Í Annarri Vídd — G Y D A

If the Beatles’ tumultuous studio sessions for Let It Be were at one end of the album-making spectrum, then it seems that recording G Y D A’s new album, Evolution, was at the other end.

Gyða Valtýsdóttir is a trained classical cellist, founding member of Iceland’s múm (pron. “miooyyuujm”), and has worked with the likes of Ólöf Arnalds, Jónsi (Sigur Rós), the Kronos Quartet and the Dessner brothers (The National).

According to Gyða, the process of making Evolution was effortless, with attention given to physical and mental health, good food, green tea, and pre-session meditation. And the result is certainly heard in this ethereal, spiritual, otherworldly record, perhaps no more than on the Wurlitzer-filled track ‘Í Annarri Vídd’ (‘In Another Dimension’), which she calls the “mother potato” of the record.

Spirals — Nordic Affect

In a beautiful example of old meets new, the group Nordic Affect is made up four Icelandic women who play modern music on baroque instruments. Their new album He(a)r is an a play on language and words — specifically hear, here, hér (the Icelandic word for here) and her.

If you think of what the still cold of a true winter would sound like (a winter that, I am told, is coming), then María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir’s 'Spirals' might come close.

Much like her other works for Nordic Affect (see: 'Clockworking', 'Sleeping Pendulum') she focuses on the hypnotic movement of cyclical musical phrases that spiral and swirl underneath creaks, taps, and plucks.

It's a beautiful work that captures the infiniteness of time in a way that is reminiscent Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

 
Blow Bright — Daníel Bjarnason

The "American period" — Dvorak, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Benjamin Britten all had one. Icelandic conductor and composer Daníel Bjarnason produced three compositions for different US orchestra during his American period, all of which have been recently recorded by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and put out on a new album, Collider, by Bedroom Community.

'Blow Bright' was written for the LA Phil as a homage to the choppy energy of the Pacific Ocean, very different waters to the Atlantic Ocean that surrounds Bjarnason’s homeland.

It opens with shimmery strings, winds and percussion, alternating between calm and volatile seas. Bjarnason also took inspiration from the man-made world as he did the natural world and wrote in orchestral techniques that imitate electronic distortion, reverb, delay, and effects.