Island Songs Ólafur Arnalds

• 1 Árbakkinn 04:52
• 2 1995 04:00
• 3 Raddir 04:11
• 4 Öldurót 04:27
• 5 Dalur 03:59
• 6 Particles 03:55
• 7 Doria 03:19
• Total Runtime 28:43

Info for Island Songs

Icelanders make up one of the most musical nations on earth with one of the highest rates of ensembles per capita in the world. How do the beautiful yet harsh Icelandic conditions affect their music-making? In Island Songs, the innovative and brilliant composer Ólafur Arnalds (BAFTA Award winner for Broadchurch) teams up with director Baldvin Z (BBC’s Trapped, Life in a Fishbowl) to explore the vibrant artistic life of his fellow countrymen and women in a fascinating, real-time, audio-visual portrait of his home country of Iceland.

Beginning today, over the course of seven weeks in the summer, Arnalds will be traveling to seven very different locations in Iceland – one per week – to record a series of new compositions. In each location Arnalds will be collaborating with artists local to the town to create and perform a new song.

Each artist has their own unique story to tell and individual way of contributing to the project. They come from various musical backgrounds in their hometowns, ranging from a vocalist from a world famous rock band to a church organist in a village of 100 inhabitants, making this a diverse and evolving project.

Additionally, the journey will be chronicled by the film director Baldvin Z. The 7-week period will result in an hour-long music film, including conversations exploring music, history and identity with the collaborators, to create a powerful musical portrait of their native land.

Arnalds emphasizes that the project aims to focus on the astonishing creativity of Iceland’s inhabitants rather than on the sublime landscape of their homeland.

‘Yes, Iceland is beautiful, but plenty of films have shown that already,’ he says. ‘I think it’s much more interesting to consider the harshness of the conditions, and how they affect us as artists…I’d like to explore that musical energy.’

Arnalds has become celebrated for his spare and haunting musical style, which evocatively mixes elements of ambient, classical and electronic sounds. Island Songs has its roots in the enormous success of his two previous improvised projects, Found Songs (2009) and Living Room Music (2011), which both involved the daily release of new works over a seven-day period.

‘I always want to make everything sound perfect, but I also know that perfection doesn’t necessarily make for good music. So these projects grew out of an internal fight with myself, a need to create something spontaneous and improvised.’

Artistic partnerships aren’t new to Arnalds, with his two previous Mercury Classics projects, For Now I Am Winter (2013) and The Chopin Project (2015), both involving a large degree of collaboration: the former with singer Arnór Dan, the latter with concert pianist Alice Sara Ott. Furthermore, Arnalds’ close relationship with pianist and producer Nils Frahm has resulted in several works and more recently a sold-out all-night concert at the Louvre in Paris.

The names of each of the collaborators for Island Songs will only be released in the week of their individual participation, shared via social media and on a new website that will host a map of Iceland, tracing the journey and grouping all audio- video and social media content.

During the seven weeks of shooting and recording, Island Songs will turn into a real-time interactive project on social media, with the performances being released immediately. Arnalds’ dedicated fanbase will be able to follow him on his travels via live-streams, Snapchats, Instagram and Tweets.

‘I’d love to get as much feedback as possible from people via social media as the project progresses, and really keep a conversation going. During Living Room Songs people sent me in artwork, song titles, suggestions… it was as if I were having a conversation as I was making the music.’

A major added element to Island Songs is the participation of film-maker Baldvin Z who will be filming each performance and capturing each song in daringly long one-take shots. Choreographing each performance while the artists improvise will be a tough challenge in itself, and Baldvin Z will have only one night in post production before the material is delivered and uploaded to YouTube each week.

Ólafur Arnalds
Born in 1986, Ólafur hails from the suburban Icelandic town of Mosfellsbær, just a few kilometres outside of Reykjavík. He has immersed himself completely in a world of delicate symphonic compositions generating near weightless orchestral pieces. Arnalds explores the crossover from classical to pop by mixing chamber strings and piano with discreet electronics which makes him a perfect fit for cinematic music label Erased Tapes. His motivations are clear: 'The classical scene is kind of closed to people who haven't been studying music all their lives. I would like to bring my classical influence to the people who don't usually listen to this kind of music…open people's minds.'

Through relentless touring and determination this young artist has steadily gained recognition worldwide since his 2007 debut 'Eulogy for Evolution'. His 2008 follow-up EP ‘Variations of Static’ earned Ólafur acclaim from both the contemporary and classical field – transcending a traditional divide. He has sold out some of the world’s most renowned music venues including Barbican Hall in London and has been awarded ‘Best Live Session of 2008’ by BBC Radio 1 presenter Gilles Peterson.

Over the past eighteen months Arnalds has advanced from a former support-act for Sigur Rós to an internationally respected artists in his own right. In April 2009 Arnalds created the 7 song series 'Found Songs' – recording a song a day for 7 days and instantly making each track available via Twitter and the official Erased Tapes website with over 300.000 people downloading for free.

December 2009 saw the release of Ólafur’s contemporary dance score 'Dyad 1909', commissioned by the award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor. The dance piece, inspired by Shackleton’s South Pole premiered at the Sadler’s Wells theatre in October 2009 and became a much talked about 5-nights of live music, dance and visuals. BBC Four, the ITV1 South Bank Show and Arte TV Europe broadcasted 'Dyad 1909' on primetime television. In March 2010 he embarked on his first ever China Tour, which included sold-out shows in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing, and a live webcast watched by thousands of fans all round the world.

Ólafur Arnalds' second full-length album '...and they have escaped the weight of darkness', continues his mission to lure an indie-generation of pop and rock fans into an emotive world of beguiling electronic chamber music and delicate classical arrangements. The sense of an organic crossover recording is reinforced by the involvement of co-producer Barði Jóhannsson of eccentric pop/rock/electronica-formation Bang Gang. Those expecting a mere continuation of the minimal melancholia of his previous albums are in for a surprise, as the record may be the most uplifting and richly orchestrated work of his career.

'Precocious Nordic composer’s sumptuous second LP … Timeless and sublime' **** – UNCUT

'An artist of immense maturity' (9/10) – Drowned In Sound

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