Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.07.2010, Page 38

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WHAT REALLY
HAPPENED …
By Vilhelm Gunnarsson;
a well known news photographer
Minimalistic vocal-centric lo-fi is a tough
game to play. It’s not that it’s so hit or
miss; it’s that a lot of the time the listeners
finds themselves questioning if it sounds
shitty because of the shitty recording
job or it’s been intentionally run through
effects to sound shitty because the
recording was accidentally awesome.
This is pretty much the case with
Loji’s album. The Sudden Weather
Changer-by day’s album is good fare
for spending a solo acid-trip making
papier-mâché masks for your cat. The
songs really are dreamy and full of
quirky imagery in the lyrics. There’s Ariel
Pink-esque mouth-made beats and the
standard looping practices pulled off
gracefully.
But still. In terms of production it
sounds… tampered with? It frequently
borders on sounding fully awesome and
polished but has been man-handled to
sound rough around the edges, or maybe
it’s the other way around? I feel like this
album is trying to sound like something
it wasn’t to begin with and it should have
stayed organic.
—REBECCA LOUDER
26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2010 This Zühlke vs. Eldon thing is pretty fun in our opinion, as they are both articulate
and opinionated, and seem to see things very differently.
If you’ve ever witnessed
Ólafur Arnalds perform,
you know that his music
has an almost magical
aura. I recently saw a hall
with hundreds of metal-
festival attendees hushing each
other fervently while devotedly taking
in Ólafur and his string quartet. It was a
unique experience, and a good argument
for calling his music ‘ambient’ rather
than ‘neo-classical’. The atmosphere
conjured by his fragile piano and string
pieces make his concerts a remarkable
experience, but also make it one that is
nearly impossible to catch on record.
Ólafur’s second full-length suffers
from this problem, and it fails to offer
a solution. In the context of my living
room, the nine tracks on offer do not
offer enough variation in tempo and
arrangement to create highlights or
construct drama or emotion. Only small
spots in ‘Tunglið’ and ‘Hægt, kemur ljósið’
stand out with instrumental outbreaks
that manage to evoke some chills, finally.
Apart from those, a grave monotony
reigns over the record. It feels like you’re
hearing the intro and waiting for the
record to begin for 40 minutes.
Then it's over.
—FLORIAN züHLKE
It could be ambience, it
could be dinner music, it
could be a soundtrack, it
could be a composition,
it could be an exercise
in tones or the string
arrangements to an album without
the actual music; it could be played at
weddings, funerals, yoga classes, book
clubs, planetariums, tea parties, cocktail
parties (the boring ones), massage
therapy, group therapy, psychotherapy,
coffee shops, New Age shops, on
airplanes (in fact, I think it probably is
on the Icelandair playlist), bike rides,
meditations… in short, what it could
be is made by absolutely anyone, and
what it could do is disappear completely
without cause for much alarm.
—SINDRI ELDON
Dr. zühlke and Mr. Eldon
Two men. Four albums. ONE LOVE
Music | Album Reviews
Samey ambient/neo-classical
that lacks variation and drama. «
zühlke
Eldon » Whatever.
Ólafur Arnalds
...and they have escaped the
weight of darkness
olafurarnalds
– –
I have a personal connection to this
band. See, they were actually one of the
first bands I got to know when I came to
Iceland a few years ago. I was alone in
the county, and knew no one in Iceland
at the time. I started my visit by sitting at
Kaffi Hljómalind to try and find a hostel
room for the start. I was lonesome,
insecure and far from all the people I
love. Then, some music started playing:
gentle, caressing, understanding. The
waitress, German like me, told me that
this was a local band called For A Minor
Reflection.
To be honest, I think that the stuff she
played there must have been early demos
or something, because their album that
I bought later (‘Reistu þig við, sólin er
komin á loft’) was a big disappointment.
The songs I heard at Hljómalind were
severely beautiful post-rock, bearing
dreamy melodies and an immense
tension rising within; their first album was
simply boring. This is one reason why I
actually didn’t expect anything from their
new one. But what a surprise! Here it is
again: Joy, longing, sadness, happiness,
all in the space of a single song—some
good company for lonely times, and a
personal delight for myself. Good job!
—FLORIAN züHLKE
With all the rock being recorded in Iceland,
you’d think we’d have found one producer
who can make it sound the way it should.
The fact that FAMR apparently sought
foreign talent for their production needs
just makes it all the more ironic, like they
themselves know that there isn’t a one of
us who can do it. But it still didn’t quite
save them.
I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not
saying I could do it—it is an art form—but
for once, just for fucking once, I’d like
to hear a properly EQ-d, well-sounding,
dynamic Icelandic rock album that isn’t
recorded by Ken Thomas. We always
seem to end up with everything clustering
around the middle, all the cymbals and
the overdrive washing each other out in
a discordant, static-y wave of improperly
compressed noise.
HÍÁAÓ (an acronym roughly eight
times as enthusiastic as the album it
represents) suffers all the more for it. Its
predictable, dispassionately-performed
major-chord reveries in desperate need of
sonic innovation to support themselves,
and the admittedly entertaining reverb/
delay experimentation in the breakdowns
and build-ups falling woefully short of what
they promise upon reaching their climaxes.
—SINDRI ELDON
Very good instrumental post-rock
record, the one these guys should
have made years ago « zühlke
Eldon » There’s never a genius
around when you need one.
For A Minor Reflection
Höldum í átt að óreiðu
foraminorreflection
–
Just keep it real, man
Loji
Skyndiskyssur
lojihos
Bad and, the ultimate sin for a punk
band, boring
Svarthöfði
Svarthöfði
www.svarthofdi.com
Didn’t know much about Svarthöfði
(Icelandic for Darth Vader) but I took a
punt on these guys through Gogoyoko.
I wish I hadn’t bothered. They may call
themselves punk, but I thought that there
should be some form of energy for a good
punk record. This hasn’t got it. I found
most of the tracks boring and pedantic
with the vocals sounding listless and
bored, which didn’t really help. The nadir of
the EP was the track ‘Leitt’, which I found
so bland that it makes Ný Dönsk sound
like anarchist class warfare. If you think
that the Kaiser Chiefs represent the cutting
edge of music then it may be for you but
otherwise avoid, unless to poke and laugh
at it with a shitty stick.
—BOB CLUNESS
–