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HVALUR 045LP
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Brand-new band featuring Bedroom Community's own Valgeir Sigurðsson at the helm, commissioned by Belgium's BClassic arts and music foundation -- this project has blossomed into a full band for its three core members. Who is Isabelle Lewis, anyway? What kind of music does she make? Is she an opera singer? Does she write pop songs? Does she compose ethereal ambient soundscapes? Does she play chamber music on the violin? Is she producing dark, electronic beats? Well? yes. But Isabelle Lewis is not so much a person as a project. Isabelle's debut album, Greetings, credits a trio of composer-performers at its heart: producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, vocalist Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, and violinist Elisabeth Klinck. The sound of the elusive Isabelle Lewis is heard most clearly in the push and pull between them, the three-way tension that gives the album its musical and emotional drive. Each of the three brings more to the collaboration than those epithets might imply. Elisabeth's solo performance practice incorporates composition, improvisation, live electronics, and a close command of bowing and fingering techniques that make her fiddle sing, whisper or whistle as required. Benjamin is a self-taught countertenor -- keening, crooning, and swelling to a voluptuous sensuality -- but also an interdisciplinary stage director and performer. Well known for his work as a producer and studio collaborator, and as a composer of scores for film and stage, Valgeir's solo discography interweaves meticulously crafted electronics, drones, noise, and other digital elements with acoustic instruments and vocals recorded with naked, unflinching clarity. But the extravagant theatricality Benjamin brings grapples against the thudding bass of the implacable digital backdrop. The album as a whole is elegantly shaped, swelling from an intimate, interpersonal statement into something deeper and more spacious. The first half of the album leans slightly towards self-contained pop songcraft and ticking beats, while side B jumps off into the almost symphonic grandeur of songs like "Moonshell" or the instrumental "Not the water, air, or the dirt." The ominous weight of the droning sub-bass and trombone (guest player Helgi Hrafn Jónsson) only makes the interplay between vocals and violins (guest player Daniel Pioro joining Elisabeth) seem more delicate and vulnerable. RIYL: Perfume Genius, Anhoni, Rufus Wainwright, James Blake, Bat For Lashes, John Grant.
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HVALUR 041CD
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Sam Slater is a two-time Grammy Award-winning composer, sound designer, and music producer, who since 2013 has been busy working on a range of projects behind the scenes for screen, stage, live and recorded mediums. His new album, I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal, is released via Bedroom Community. Receiving the awards for his roles as both score producer and musical sound designer on the box office smash Joker (2019) and the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning drama series, Chernobyl (2019), Slater is a frequent collaborator with acclaimed Icelandic musician/composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir. He has produced, mixed and engineered projects for artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Colin Stetson, Ben Frost, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Mica Levi, and more. When it came to the recording of I Do Not Wish To Be Known As A Vandal, Slater called on a number of creative forces. Recorded remotely, each musician would send a sound, some words, some creative parameters, and Slater would respond in turn. Hildur Guðnadóttir provided distinct Doro phone sounds, Yair Glotman played thunderous double-bass, and Hilary Jeffrey and Sam Dunscombe laid down woodwind and microtonal brass. In addition, Icelandic singer-songwriter JFDR delivered her intimate vocals and James Ginzburg (Emptyset) mixed it, with an ear for precise form. From his base in Berlin, Slater would flag the sounds he loved; some twitching strings, the stolen alto voice from an abandoned English chorale, some words from a climate scientist fleshed into a poem. It became an exercise in receptivity, in which openness itself became a creative voice, hushing Slater's tendency to micromanage every detail. The album showcases the breadth of Slater's range as composer and producer, transitioning through distinctly different spaces, from the glitchy, clipped intro, into Icelandic folktronica, into swathes of menacing string mutations and eerie, mournful woodwind.
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HVALUR 042CD
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Manchester Collective announce the release of their second full-length album, Shades. Following their debut The Centre Is Everywhere in 2021 (HVALUR 038LP), Shades is available on CD. Featuring Edmund Finnis's first and second string quartets -- the latter commissioned and premiered by Manchester Collective -- Shades marks the next chapter of the Collective's ongoing collaboration with the British composer. Composer Edmund Finnis: "'String Quartet No. 2' (2021) begins and ends with musical ideas that were in the back of my mind in some form or other since my teens. In the process of moving house during 2020, I rediscovered some old minidiscs containing rough demo recordings I'd made nearly two decades before. At that point I didn't yet know how to realize these ideas, but listening back much later I found the seeds of what has now developed into the two outer movements of the piece. Between them come the flowing interwoven patterns of the second movement and the slow third movement, which is a lament. The piece is dedicated to my friends Rakhi Singh and Adam Szabo from Manchester Collective. It has been a joy and an inspiration for me to be able to build such a close and fruitful musical relationship with the musicians of Manchester Collective over the last few years. Something of their spirit fed into the writing of this piece. I wrote the penultimate movement of 'String Quartet No. 1' (2018) first. It is a reflection on William Byrd's setting of the fifth century hymn 'Christe, qui lux es et dies'. That ancient melody is a prayer for Light within the darkness of night. The falling and rising contours within it became integral to my work on the remaining four movements of the quartet, as did the mental image of the setting and rising of the sun. I think of these two quartets as some of the most personal and intimate pieces I have written. They are outcomes of my enduring need to communicate something that I'm incapable of fully expressing with words. I would if I could. I know that it has something to do with love." Manchester Collective's relationship with Edmund Finnis has been developing over a number of years -- Finnis's piece The Centre Is Everywhere was at the heart of the Collective's debut album and their first appearance at the BBC Proms. The musical partnership continues later in 2022 in This Savage Parade (June 16-24) featuring the world premiere of a new song cycle by Finnis set to the words of British poet Alice Oswald.
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HVALUR 038LP
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The Centre Is Everywhere is the Manchester Collective's first album. They created it in rather extraordinary circumstances, at a time when we were all slowly sinking into the banal dystopia of a pandemic-stricken world. Their lives, it felt, had slowed to a crawl. Normally the group are fueled by their audiences, but touring was off the menu. So, they made this record. In such an uncertain time, the group wanted to play music that they loved. They ended up with a set of work written over a 120-year period -- weightless and transcendent new music alongside Schoenberg's anguished fin de siècle storytelling. Edmund Finnis's work in particular (the titular "The Centre Is Everywhere") is important to them. He's a friend and a colleague of the groups, and it's been a profound experience for them to live with this piece, to tour it, and to make the first ever recording. Somehow in the writing of it, Edmund seems to have prefigured the lack of certainty that has been one of the defining characteristics of this period. His music spins freely through time and space, wraithlike and beautiful. Whilst recording both "Company" by Philip Glass and "Transfigured Night" by Arnold Schoenberg, the group found themselves drawn to a pervading sense of wildness and nature. The hypnotic rise and fall of the rhythms and textures in Glass's quartet (presented here in an arrangement for string orchestra) feel quite separate to industrial, man-made structures and forms. Like Edmund's work, these short movements feel out of time and cyclical, like eternally repeating tides or moon-phases. Schoenberg's masterpiece for string sextet opens on a moonlit forest scene, two lovers venturing through a bare, cold grove. The group tried to create a recording that paints the violent contrasts of this piece as vividly as possible, from the claustrophobic confessions that open the work through to the gleaming sound world of the second half. As the piece closes, the group's wooden, earthbound instruments seem to have been transmuted by the glamor and glow of Schoenberg's music. Clear vinyl.
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HVALUR 039LP
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Double LP version. Ice blue vinyl; edition of 500. On Delta, a dozen artists across four continents freely interpret Fountain (HVALREKI 017LP, 2020) across a double-album, again featuring Donna Huanca's surreal artwork, and the unearthly graphic manipulations of Nufolklore Studios. Remaining faithful to Fountain's presentation, Lyra's curation reflects her commitment to stylistic diversity, with the old guard and the next wave alongside each other. Where some artists chose to rework existing works, others composed new material from fragments found across the record. The results showcase the very themes of wordless identity conflict and technological concerns that Lyra and her foremothers have projected.
Valgeir Sigurdsson marries elements of Lyra's entire catalog into work that combines the limitless highs of Sigur Ros and the steady pulse of The Knife. KMRU cloaks Lyra in a hazy film, soundtracking the depths of space embedded within the ghosts of jungle past. Gabber Modus Operandi expose the realities of artificial nature in a multi-colored rave dystopia. Eris Drew's double opus takes the tenets of her philosophies into both ambient and peak-time expressions of the trip, the things that lead to the decision before, and the portals that can open up after. Ben Frost dissolves "Cradle"'s deep and tremulous hymn in analog warble, distressed tape spooling out of control and breaking up over the heavens, while remaining oddly serene. Heaven In Stereo conjures up post-rock with trap drums out of "Gossip", buried in bass weight and dub space. Nailah Hunter and Tygapaw transform "New Moon" into an earthbound ode to nature and a pounding trance state induction, while Caterina Barbieri and Hudson Mohawke extract and amplify "Tendril"'s mind and soul. Vessel takes what feels like the entire album and builds it up to a frantic climax before subsuming into Enoesque pastoralia. Alongside Delta, Lyra has collaborated with Spitfire Audio to develop Siren Songs, a free plug-in for their LABS series made from playable samples from Fountain, able to work across DAWs in multiple formats. Fountain was that burst of water and swell of energy that propelled her to critical acclaim. Delta is a new take on a traditional remix album, centered on transgenerational dialogue and global storytelling, and will be released again via Iceland's Bedroom Community label. Projecting Fountain through prisms, wordless songs fractalize into lush creations that blossom with new life. Delta is a point where creative flows meet and triangulate, where global and personal folk histories are presented in novel ways, where transcultural collaboration is celebrated, where many worlds emerge from the depths below. Also features Colin Self, Kara-Lis Coverdale, and Tygapaw.
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HVALUR 037LP
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LA based composer/sound designer duo Heliochrysum present the release of their visceral, deep and exploratory debut album, We Become Mist. The album has been mixed by Ben Frost and mastered by Valgeir Sigurdsson. Heliochrysumis the world building meeting of Michael Deragon and Daniel Lea (L A N D, Important Records), in which a collaboration becomes a sculpted journey into new aural and imaginative cosmology. We Become Mist uses analog and digital processes to mine the depths of industrial and science fictional, psychedelic soundscapes, often cinematic in tone and texture. Taking their cue from a shared palette of sounds, textures and rhythms, Heliochrysumcreate a unifying score that is at once improvisatory and sonically certain.We Become Mist is nothing short of the progression from a souterrain awakening to the terraformed sound of a new world coming into existence. These tracks overlay analog sound sources, digital hard wrought processing and visual sound design, constantly morphing and turning on their own searching torque. Mixed by Ben Frost and mastered by Valgeir Sigurdsson, the accumulation of sheer vision and depth is transportive, if not outright mind wrenching. In between this melding of the analogue and digital was mixed another element: the album is tinged with psilocybin technology. As a listener you can hear as you move through a psychedelic passage, like out of a state of lockdown into one of alien otherworldliness. The piano, industrial crescendo of "We Remain Beneath" is evidence of this, sounds modified into careful, lush arrangements. "A Future Unfolds" sounds like a burnished unfurling, a resplendent distortion bringing to mind some epic revelation while tracks such as "Infinite Dark" or "Pre Dawn" bristle with chrome pulses that burn with alarm and dulcet drama. Just as they did with their palette of sounds, Heliochrysumtaps into a wide range of emotions from hope to devastation, growth and contagion. The name Heliochrysum evokes the Latin for sunflower but also a healing tincture: in the overlaid orchestration and distorted lightness, the roiling, life-giving pour of the sun can be heard. Simplicity washed with emotional intensity, the remembered dreams of far-off, science-fictive discoveries. For fans of: Alva Noto, Mika Vainio, Ben Frost, Caterina Barbieri. Gatefold sleeve; clear vinyl.
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HVALUR 039CD
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On Delta, a dozen artists across four continents freely interpret Fountain (HVALREKI 017LP, 2020) across a double-album, again featuring Donna Huanca's surreal artwork, and the unearthly graphic manipulations of Nufolklore Studios. Remaining faithful to Fountain's presentation, Lyra's curation reflects her commitment to stylistic diversity, with the old guard and the next wave alongside each other. Where some artists chose to rework existing works, others composed new material from fragments found across the record. The results showcase the very themes of wordless identity conflict and technological concerns that Lyra and her foremothers have projected.
Valgeir Sigurdsson marries elements of Lyra's entire catalog into work that combines the limitless highs of Sigur Ros and the steady pulse of The Knife. KMRU cloaks Lyra in a hazy film, soundtracking the depths of space embedded within the ghosts of jungle past. Gabber Modus Operandi expose the realities of artificial nature in a multi-colored rave dystopia. Eris Drew's double opus takes the tenets of her philosophies into both ambient and peak-time expressions of the trip, the things that lead to the decision before, and the portals that can open up after. Ben Frost dissolves "Cradle"'s deep and tremulous hymn in analog warble, distressed tape spooling out of control and breaking up over the heavens, while remaining oddly serene. Heaven In Stereo conjures up post-rock with trap drums out of "Gossip", buried in bass weight and dub space. Nailah Hunter and Tygapaw transform "New Moon" into an earthbound ode to nature and a pounding trance state induction, while Caterina Barbieri and Hudson Mohawke extract and amplify "Tendril"'s mind and soul. Vessel takes what feels like the entire album and builds it up to a frantic climax before subsuming into Enoesque pastoralia. Alongside Delta, Lyra has collaborated with Spitfire Audio to develop Siren Songs, a free plug-in for their LABS series made from playable samples from Fountain, able to work across DAWs in multiple formats. Fountain was that burst of water and swell of energy that propelled her to critical acclaim. Delta is a new take on a traditional remix album, centered on transgenerational dialogue and global storytelling, and will be released again via Iceland's Bedroom Community label. Projecting Fountain through prisms, wordless songs fractalize into lush creations that blossom with new life. Delta is a point where creative flows meet and triangulate, where global and personal folk histories are presented in novel ways, where transcultural collaboration is celebrated, where many worlds emerge from the depths below. Also features Colin Self, Kara-Lis Coverdale, and Tygapaw.
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HVALREKI 016LP
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Tilman Robinson's third album, CULTURECIDE, is an investigation of the anthropocene; a seven-part lamentation for our chaotic world. Tilman Robinson is an Australian composer and sound designer creating electro-acoustic music across a range of genres including classical minimalism, improvised, experimental, electronic, and ambient. Tilman's diverse output focuses on the psychological impact of dense sound employing acousmatic and psychoacoustic principles. CULTURECIDE: "...processes that have usually been purposely introduced that result in the decline or demise of a culture, without necessarily resulting in the physical destruction of its bearers." --D Stein CULTURECIDE is a rich sonic collage, harvesting sounds from a range sources including field recordings, medical machines that monitor the human body, traditional instruments, and synthesizers, often melted electronically. The result is an unsettling paradox with sounds constantly on the edge of recognition. Each piece references a specific socio-political issue ranging from colonialism to neo-liberalism to climate change and the impending singularity of humans and machines. Far from an answer to these questions, CULTURECIDE invites listeners to meditate on their place in life and approach personal understanding. Recorded and produced almost completely in Australia, a land at the forefront of the devastation of climate change, CULTURECIDE was an attempt at catharsis for its author frequently appalled at his country's incredible apathy and inaction. Mixed by Bedroom Community regular Daniel Rejmer and mastered by Lawrence English, works from the ambitious and unsettling record saw Tilman nominated for the 2019 Melbourne Prize for Music.
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HVALREKI 017LP
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Lyra Pramuk's debut Fountain explores a post-human, non-binary understanding of life. Lyra Pramuk fuses classical training, pop sensibilities, performance practices and contemporary club culture in what may best be described as futurist folk music. While the American operatically-trained vocalist and electronic musician is perhaps previously best known for her work with musical collaborators such as Holly Herndon and Colin Self, her debut album, Fountain, will be released via Iceland's Bedroom Community label. Created entirely from her own voice, although often shaped and structured by electronics, Fountain is an emotional, sensual, and devotional journey. The title is derived from her family name, Pramuk, which translates from Czech as "well spring" or "fountain". Often wordless, these songs evoke a new wholeness sustained by the ritual force of drowning, immersion, cleansing, and bathing -- also referred to in the album artwork by acclaimed visual artist Donna Huanca. Fountain plays with the perception of music, rhythms, speech, body, and the relation between technology and humanity, exploring a post-human, non-binary understanding of life and the fragile ecosystems it depends on. The work documents a healing that is still in process, and a full circle-moment that reunited Lyra with her sound engineer twin brother, Ben, for the final mix, which they completed in tandem. As a vocal activist and member of the queer community, Fountain's creation also coincided with a personal rejuvenation for its author. Its completion culminated in the live premiere of the album material at Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2019, where she performed through a multi-channel array designed by Ben Frost, opening for Sunn O))) and Roly Porter. A closer collaboration with Frost on a soundtrack for a new film project will be announced later in 2020. Her performance at Berghain in January for CTM Festival in her hometown of Berlin promises an even more confident and joyous realization of the album's song cycle. Lyra moved to Berlin in 2013 as a DAAD postgraduate study scholarship recipient, following her degree at the Eastman School of Music in New York. Since then, she has also been awarded residencies at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm, Open Port Club Residency in Tokyo and Sapporo, and Future Music Lab of the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine. Her interests also encompass writing, poetry, and fashion, where she is sometimes called upon as a model.
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HVALUR 029LP
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LP version. Nadia Sirota's presents her new album Tessellatum will be released on Bedroom Community. Tessellatum is an album and a film, with music composed by Donnacha Dennehy and animation by Steven Mertens, performed by violist Nadia Sirota and gamba player Liam Byrne. The film and the music both work with the idea of man vs. nature. Steven Mertens's electric animation toggles back-and-forth between man-made geometric perfection and the natural oddness of the deep ocean. Donnacha Dennehy's addictive timbres move between tuning systems created by humans and the ones found in natural resonance. As a result, the two works of art support and enhance each other, using the same form and structure to create an incredibly moving work of art. All fifteen string parts were performed by Nadia Sirota and Liam Byrne on viola and bass viol. The album was recorded in Iceland's famed Greenhouse Studios by Paul Evans and mixed by Valgeir Sigurðsson. Produced by Nadia Sirota.
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HVALUR 029CD
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Nadia Sirota's presents her new album Tessellatum will be released on Bedroom Community. Tessellatum is an album and a film, with music composed by Donnacha Dennehy and animation by Steven Mertens, performed by violist Nadia Sirota and gamba player Liam Byrne. The film and the music both work with the idea of man vs. nature. Steven Mertens's electric animation toggles back-and-forth between man-made geometric perfection and the natural oddness of the deep ocean. Donnacha Dennehy's addictive timbres move between tuning systems created by humans and the ones found in natural resonance. As a result, the two works of art support and enhance each other, using the same form and structure to create an incredibly moving work of art. All fifteen string parts were performed by Nadia Sirota and Liam Byrne on viola and bass viol. The album was recorded in Iceland's famed Greenhouse Studios by Paul Evans and mixed by Valgeir Sigurðsson. Produced by Nadia Sirota.
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HVALUR 025LP
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Limited 2022 restock. Following the CD release of Ben Frost's The Wasp Factory in December of 2016 (HVALUR 025CD), a limited edition transparent vinyl version is presented here. In advance of new music from Ben Frost in 2017, Bedroom Community present the definitive recorded version of his 2013 opera and directorial stage debut, The Wasp Factory, based on the novel by the late Iain Banks. Setting his unwitting characters against the backdrop of vast, implacable forces of nature -- storm, sea, fire, and even their own madness -- Frost reaches deep into his formidable arsenal to reveal an unexpected warmth, from the composer of electronic experiments like Aurora (2014) and Theory Of Machines (HVALUR 002CD/LP, 2006). The focus here is on the live sound of the Reykjavík Sinfonia, recorded in Abbey Road's Studio II and, for the first time, the human voice. He sets David Pountney's libretto to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines; an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness. Limited edition transparent vinyl comes in an edition of 1000.
"One of his boldest projects thus far, Frost's score and concept for the opera is both ambitious and grand in its design. The writing is often sparse and wide, yet simultaneously focused and intense. Frank, the protagonist, is infamously cast as an ensemble of three women who give voice to his dissociated internal monologues." --Drowned In Sound
"The Australia-born, Iceland-based Frost is popularly known for his electro-acoustic hybrids of classical music and heavy metal. He combines post-minimal finesse with modernist severity and Wagnerian daring, charging into the deepest abysses of quiet and storming up the fieriest peaks of noise. Though the focus is now live sound and the human voice, The Wasp Factory should still resonate with fans of his ambient music. It's By The Throat (HVALUR 006CD/LP, 2009) inverted, foregrounding classical and recessing electronics, with no entropy in Frost's signature blend of concussive brawn, delicate tissue, and intricate logic." --Pitchfork
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HVALUR 027CD
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Crash Ensemble are one of Ireland and Europe's most acclaimed contemporary classical music ensembles. They perform a wide breadth of contemporary music from the work of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, to up-and-coming, younger Irish composers. Crash are also known to perform with contemporary indie rock and pop artists such as Sam Amidon, Lisa Hannigan, Adrian Crowley, Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) and many more. Crash have worked extensively in the fields of contemporary opera and have started working with theater. Ghosts is a record of four pieces specifically written/arranged for the group by some of the leading and most exciting contemporary composers - Nico Muhly (USA), Donnacha Dennehy (Ireland) and Valgeir Sigurðsson (Iceland). It is a document of a lot of what Crash have performed in the past and is a taste of what is to come from the group. Crash Ensemble will appeal to fans of new, adventurous music played with energy and originality. Example of composers frequently performed: Steve Reich, Andrew Hamilton, Linda Buckley, Bryce Dessner, Donnacha Dennehy, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, David Lang, Deirdre Gribbin.
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HVALUR 028CD
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History freely dilates and collapses on Valgeir Sigurðsson's Dissonance, his first solo release since 2012. Its three large-scale works are haunted by the old Western tradition, infused with the ethereal workings of electronics and sound manipulation. Recorded and produced between September 2015 and November 2016 at Greenhouse Studios, Dissonance is disarmingly human, reflecting the most extreme four years of Sigurðsson's life, full of ecstatic joy and deep sorrow. Dissonance is a personal and collective musical treatise to explore and question a world that is collapsing under its internal dissonances. Post-minimalist, post-ambient, post-something else.
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HVALUR 028LP
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LP version. History freely dilates and collapses on Valgeir Sigurðsson's Dissonance, his first solo release since 2012. Its three large-scale works are haunted by the old Western tradition, infused with the ethereal workings of electronics and sound manipulation. Recorded and produced between September 2015 and November 2016 at Greenhouse Studios, Dissonance is disarmingly human, reflecting the most extreme four years of Sigurðsson's life, full of ecstatic joy and deep sorrow. Dissonance is a personal and collective musical treatise to explore and question a world that is collapsing under its internal dissonances. Post-minimalist, post-ambient, post-something else.
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HVALUR 025CD
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The Wasp Factory is the very first opera from Bedroom Community's Ben Frost and it is an adaptation of the Iain Banks novel (1984). It was first premiered at Austria's Bregenz Festival and finished up in London's Royal Opera House. This is the first time the audio has been released. Frank is no ordinary boy. The sardonic, misogynistic antihero of Ben Frost's first opera, The Wasp Factory - libretto by David Poutney - is a young psychopath, a sort of mad scientist manipulating human beings like insects in a depraved behavioral experiment. Born and raised off the grid on an isolated island and warped by brutal trauma, he recounts, in a series of monologues, the obsessive rituals, up to and including dispassionate human sacrifice, with which he attempts to find the balance and order hidden in the seeming chaos of an indifferent universe. The Wasp Factory is the title of a miniature maze into which Frank feeds actual wasps as a form of divination, the method of each insect's demise - fire, poison, drowning - standing as a portent of the future. It is also an emblem of his own maze-like mind: a living, buzzing machine and a labyrinthine deathtrap. The opera itself is a kind of ritual, unfolding with the same coldly indifferent and clockwork inevitability as Frank's machinations. However, the materials Frost works with here are perhaps warmer than one might expect from the composer of electronic experiments like Aurora (2014) and Theory Of Machines (HVALUR 002CD/LP, 2006). Now the focus is on the "live" sounds of a small string ensemble and, for the first time, the human voice and over the repeating, tessellating musical cells of that string accompaniment he sets Poutney's text to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines, an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness.
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HVALUR 026CD
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Keep In Touch is a viola concerto from Nadia Sirota & Nico Muhly. When Nico had the opportunity to write a bona-fide viola concerto, there was no question that the piece would be premiered by Nadia, whose input has influenced Nico's writing throughout their history of intimate collaboration. Nadia points out that Nico's compositions, in particular Keep In Touch, have influenced her playing: Valgeir Sigurðsson's unforgiving recording of those sessions, were actually designed to highlight the flaws in her sound, encouraging her to play more boldly and transparently - "to show my work," she says, in what has become one of the defining features of her style. Recorded with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Alarm Will Sound, the piece demands a virtuosity of expression, forcing the viola to navigate extremes of register and the huge leaps between them, or to freight a naked, sustained note with rapidly changing musical and psychological dynamics. While the piece may have a tragic ending, as Nadia believes it does, this concerto's very existence suggests a far less lonesome narrative for its real-life creators. Nadia Sirota is a violist best known for her singular sound and expressive execution, coaxing works and collaborations from the likes of Daníel Bjarnason, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Judd Greenstein, Marcos Balter, and Missy Mazzoli. She's been called "A one-woman contemporary-classical commissioning machine" by Pitchfork. Nico Muhly is a composer of chamber music, orchestral music, sacred music, opera, ballet, and music for collaborators across a variety of fields. In addition to arranging music by Antony & The Johnsons, Björk, Grizzly Bear, and The National, he is a co-founder of the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community, alongside Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurðsson.
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HVALUR 024CD
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Even if, in addition to writing, playing, and singing his own material, Jodie Landau had not brought on board an established producer (Valgeir Sigurðsson), three other L.A.-based composers, six chamber musicians, and an entire Icelandic women's chorus (Graduale Nobili), You of All Things would still be a most unusual debut. For one thing, Landau's voice is a most unusual instrument. At once raw and exposed, pure and unerringly precise, his vocals are able to veer between choirboy cantillation, torch-singer croon, and full-throated bellow without losing a character that is unmistakably his own. And his compositional aesthetic -- which manages to encompass both the unpretentious bounce of popular song and moments of ominous stasis, setting his own, emotionally intimate lyrics or penning purely instrumental interludes -- demands that elasticity. His other instruments are a little out of the ordinary, as well: in addition to singing, Landau beats and bows on a small battery of percussion instruments. But as a vocalist, a composer, and a percussionist, Landau insinuates himself effortlessly into every layer of music-making on the album. Rehearsed, performed, and recorded in a week and a half, the scores demand a certain spontaneity from the performers, and that spontaneity is reflected in a recording that captures the whirlwind energy of these sessions, without sacrificing clarity, quality, or color of sound. The resulting album offers a glimpse of a wild, chimerical beast, caught in action for the first time, but never quite tamed.
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HVALUR 023CD
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Award-winning British composer Emily Hall presents Folie à Deux, a work that uses finely crafted songs to tell a modern folk-tale. Folie à Deux is a lyrical and intense investigation into love and loneliness within a relationship. Insanity, electricity, and love collide in a sonic voyage into the psychiatric syndrome known as "folie à deux" or "shared psychosis," in which a delusion is transmitted from one person to another. The piece is composed for two singers, an acoustic harp, and an electro-magnetic harp. This electro-magnetic harp, commissioned and built for this piece, uses vibrating magnets to evoke an underlying electronic presence representing the pylon -- the third character that presides over this story. Against a backdrop of responsive light and sound, the result is a hauntingly beautiful soundscape. Much of Hall's music is formed from close creative relationships with singers and writers. Here she has teamed up with hailed Icelandic lyricist, writer, and longtime Björk collaborator Sjón. Folie à Deux features beats from Mira Calix and was co-produced and mixed by composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson (Björk, Feist, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy...). Emily Hall studied composition at York University and the Royal College of Music, London. She has written for many different ensembles and orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Brodsky Quartet, Opera North, and the Hungarian Radio Chorus. Her music has been performed in diverse venues ranging from Latitude Festival to the Cité de la Musique, and broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 3, 4, and 6. Her first opera, "Sante," produced by Aldeburgh Music, was described by The Times as "a dynamic new opera worth everyone's time and hopes." Hall received the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize in 2005, the Genesis Opera Prize in 2006, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2013.
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HVALUR 008LP
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Valgeir Sigurðsson's 2010 release Draumalandið is now finally being released on 12" vinyl. Iceland's Sigurðsson has made his name as an exponent of musical subtlety. As an engineer and producer, he's often focused on the intimate, the miniature. On his solo debut Ekvílibríum (HVALUR 003CD/LP), his songwriting and composition tended towards the muted or the oblique. His best-known work is punctuated with question marks and ellipses, and the rare exclamation point. But this is only one side of his musical capabilities. Draumalandið (trans. "Dreamland"), a documentary about the exploitation of Iceland's natural resources, tells a story about huge things -- the fortunes of a whole nation; the destruction of vast landscapes; and the global economic forces, greater still than any nation, that fuel it all -- and for his soundtrack to the film, Valgeir has brought out a heavier set of tools. His entire roster of Bedroom Community label-mates contributes in some way to the creation of the score: classical composers Nico Muhly and Daníel Bjarnason, industrial wizard Ben Frost, and American folksinger Sam Amidon, along with a host of others, and the small orchestra assembled for the record swells from moments of expansive beauty into massive, surging symphonic force. Valgeir's score makes fierce and direct statements of sorrow and indignation, but it also expresses, with a kind of hushed awe, the beauty of landscapes on the brink of devastation, and the seductive shimmer of the illusions that imperil them. Heard as an accompaniment to the film, the Draumalandið score can disappear into the images and the narrative. Listened to on its own, it rewards close attention: for the subtle interconnections between the movements, for their cumulative emotional force, and simply as a series of meticulously-scored and recorded musical moments, urgent meditations on the natural sublime.
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HVALUR 021CD
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Puzzle Muteson is the alter-ego of an enigmatic songwriter from the Isle of Wight, rendering his music in a tremulous tenor over a finely-spun web of finger-picked guitar. Born in London, the southern English island provided unexpected shelter for the shuddering transformation into one-man band, Puzzle Muteson. His grade-school music teacher was first to recognize his unrivalled vibrato, and a little while later, a parade of chance and coincidence led him to inhabit Puzzle Muteson, and start shaping a body of songs. Theatrics picks up where Puzzle Muteson's debut, En Garde (HVALUR 011CD/LP), left off; the 11 tracks telling an intriguing story with every minute that passes; his talent for heart-wrenching melodies and melancholic lyrics shining through like never before. Where En Garde introduced dream-like strings, Theatrics intertwines melody with mechanism; the album is as much a folk song fairytale as it is an exploration of electronic wonders. Some songs have just been born, some have slowly but surely reached their peak through years of delicate edits. And then there is the unique take on New Order's classic 1987 song "True Faith," where Puzzle Muteson breathes new life into this 1987 gem, undeniably making it his own with his trembling voice. Theatrics features many musicians at the height of their craft, including label-mates Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurðsson, the latter of which co-produced the album with Bo Weaver.
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HVALUR 018CD
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This is the award-winning Icelandic composer's second solo album and third release on Bedroom Community -- hot on the heels of his Sólaris collaboration with label-mate Ben Frost. Daníel Bjarnason's critically-acclaimed debut album Processions (HVALUR 007CD) was hailed by Time Out New York as "coming eerily close to defining classical music's undefinable brave new world." On "Over Light Earth," the intensity of Bjarnason's orchestral voice is captured through meticulous close-micing and multi-tracking, a recording process that sets this recording radically apart from that of conventional orchestral recordings. This album is very much the fruit of Bjarnason's ongoing and intimate symbiosis with Bedroom Community's Valgeir Sigurðsson. Here, with engineer Paul Evans and the newly-formed Reykjavík Sinfonia, they have produced a suitably unconventional symphonic recording. As much at home in the recording studio as he is on the conductor's podium, it's no wonder Bjarnason is equally effective in collaboration with other sonic architects, whether it's the band Sigur Rós or his Bedroom Community label-mates. Over Light Earth comprises three major works. The title-piece was commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is Bjarnason's sonic nod towards the work of painters Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. The second -- the aptly-titled "Emergence" -- suggests a vast, pre-existing form just coming into view with steady harmonies manifesting in a range of unstable attacks, hesitations and anticipations. The final piece -- "Solitudes" -- is an early work that is in fact Bjarnason's first piano concerto, here reworked with electronics by Sigurðsson and Frost, demonstrating Bjarnason's mastery of more complex harmonies and melodies. It's between the simple elements and more abstract materials -- between harmonic motion and pure gesture -- that we can hear Daníel Bjarnason's compositional voice itself beginning to emerge.
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HVALUR 018LP
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HVALUR 019CD
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Cycles introduces a new artist to the intimate roster that makes up the avant-garde label Bedroom Community: James McVinnie. The music on Cycles comprises 13 organ pieces by label-mate and composer Nico Muhly. Performing the pieces in addition to McVinnie are Nadia Sirota, Chris Thompson, and Simon Wall. What makes McVinnie such an ideal interpreter of Muhly's music is that he and Muhly share not just an understanding of the capabilities of the pipe organ as a musical instrument, but also an equally deep understanding of, and even affection for, its limitations. McVinnie speaks eloquently on behalf of his instrument's potential. "The organ is like a grand symphony orchestra controlled by one person manning a series of keyboards and pedals, stops and buttons. On the one hand, an organ can imitate orchestral instruments -- the ardent string section of an orchestra, a lyrical clarinet, a French horn, timpani -- and on the other, it has its own indigenous magisterial voice. Organs are built to speak into specific acoustic spaces. When you play, it's as if you're playing the whole building you're in, which often can be electrifying." And the organ as an instrument is tied to centuries of liturgical practice, capable of supporting or imitating a church choir with a solemnity few others could hope to summon. McVinnie is quick to point out, however, that the organ is also "the ultimate and original synthesizer" -- and it is nothing if not a mechanical, wind-powered synthesizer, with all of the uncanny falseness that that word implies. The symphonic, the acoustic, the sacred, the synthetic: there's a little of each in every one of the pieces on Cycles, and sometimes more than a little.
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HVALUR 014DVD
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Pierre-Alain Giraud's documentary film Everything Everywhere All the Time follows Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, Nico Muhly, and Valgeir Sigurðsson on their collective tour, showcasing the music they've collaborated on and released individually under the Bedroom Community umbrella. We witness Giraud's fly-on-the-wall perspective through rare footage of recordings at Greenhouse Studios in Iceland, backstage and tour-bus activity, volcanic disruption and interviews with the artists. In 60 minutes Everything Everywhere All the Time explores the dynamic between these four highly individual artists. It provides a fantastic insight into the inner workings of a small artist-run label and a collective that has been hailed as "the best record label in the whole of Iceland and maybe even the entire world" (Drowned in Sound). The Whale Watching Tour is a 115-minute concert film focused around the grand finale of their 2010 tour, as they are joined on stage by violist Nadia Sirota, violinist Una Sveinbjarnardóttir, bassist Borgar Magnason, and trombonist/singer Helgi Hrafn Jónsson. The concert was filmed at the National Theatre of Iceland and features performances from many Bedroom Community classics. A concert by Daníel Bjarnason and his ensemble is the exclusive bonus feature on this double DVD disc. DVD1: 61 minutes. DVD2: 115 minutes. Language: English. Double-sided NTSC/PAL format DVDs for worldwide use, region free.
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