Ólafur Arnalds: Island Songs (coloured vinyl) [DECCA]

Why you'll love it

This limited coloured vinyl reissue comes with a printed inner sleeve and was pressed in Germany. Island Songs is the BAFTA-winning Broadchurch composer's portrait of Iceland, one town, one collaborator and one song per week.

This edition

• Coloured vinyl
• Limited edition
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany
• Lyrics included

About the album

Ólafur Arnalds said he didn't want to make a film about Icelandic nature. So instead of waterfalls, Island Songs is about people: for seven weeks he travelled around his home country with director Baldvin Z and a small crew, writing and recording a new piece with local musicians in each town, filming it in a single take on a Tuesday and mixing it overnight for a Wednesday deadline.

The settings are as much a part of the music as the notes. A poet reads in a bar, a church organ in Flateyri carries the memory of the town's 1995 avalanche, choirs and a brass band join in, and Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir of Of Monsters and Men sings "Particles" in a lighthouse in her hometown. Arnalds' piano and strings tie it together, from the gentle opener "Árbakkinn" through "Raddir," "Öldurót" and "Dalur" to the closing "Doria."

He called it a portrait of Icelandic music that isn't just what the tourist board promotes. It does a rather better job than the tourist board, to be fair, and it doesn't ask you to buy a woolly jumper.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Mercury KX / Decca (cat# 6532401), a reissue of the 2016 album.