Olafur Arnalds: & They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness [ERASED TAPES]

Why you'll love it

This Erased Tapes pressing comes in a gatefold jacket with a poster and an MP3 download code. It's the Icelandic composer's second full-length, the record that took his strings-and-piano sound on tour across Asia and set up his later BAFTA-winning score for Broadchurch.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Poster included
• Download card included

About the album

Long before the strings and soft piano, Ólafur Arnalds was a drummer in hardcore and metal bands around Reykjavík. A demo of piano and string pieces he made for the German metal band Heaven Shall Burn led to a record deal, and by the time this album arrived in April 2010 the boy from Mosfellsbær was building one of the most distinctive sounds in modern composition.

Strings and piano carry the melodies while soft loops and beats move underneath. The opening pair "Þú Ert Sólin" and "Þú Ert Jörðin" (you are the sun, you are the earth) set the tone, "Tunglið" glows, and the closing "Þau Hafa Sloppið Undan Þunga Myrkursins" gives the album its title in Icelandic. His grandmother introduced him to Chopin as a boy, and that early love sits in the patient, singing piano lines. It all came out on London's Erased Tapes, the label that has been his home from the start.

The album sits at the root of everything that followed, from the Kiasmos techno project to his later scores and Grammy nominations. Pronouncing the track titles is entirely optional; the music doesn't mind in the slightest.

Also at Kops: more Ólafur Arnalds on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Erased Tapes (cat# ERATP022LP), a reissue of the 2010 album.