This sleekly produced project involved indie-classical composer Ólafur Arnalds travelling around his native Iceland recording seven songs in seven small-town locations with various local musicians. The vibe is picturesque hipster melancholia, with accompanying music videos by Baldvin Z showing long shots of rustic venues in bleak, gorgeous landscapes – not a dissimilar aesthetic to Sigur Rós’s travelogue Heima, and the music’s ambient-pop progressions and sugary, morose arrangements owe a similar debt.
The hit song is Particles: a slow-build grand anthem sung in English with breathy, soulful vocals from Of Monsters and Men’s Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir. The South Icelandic Chamber Choir add pristine wordless textures to Raddir; in Dalur, a brass trio play in a garden, next to a horse, outside a living room where folk in knitwear and check shirts eat cookies and watch Arnalds playing sweet, boring loops on the piano. The opening track features an Icelandic poem read with tremendous poise by an elderly Einar Georg Einarsson, which is the finest moment on the album.
