With climate change ever on on the horizon, a beautiful, moving, melancholy, ethereal and dynamic LP by the elemental Icelandic experimental band, their first for a decade, with Kjartan Sveinsson rejoining since he left 2012, to complete the trio with frontman Jónsi and bassist Georg Holm. Unlike 2013’s harsher, more industrial and harsher sounding Kveikur album, this is more like 2005’s breakthrough LP Takk, evoking dramatic landscapes and a range of moods, and that musical breadth is very much added to by the32-piece London Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames. From the gradually building, quirky reversing sounds of opener Glóð to the tender, slow, desert-evoking Blóðberg, the brighter Klettur to the darker more chanting mood of Mór, to the more dramatic and uplifting Gold all the way to closing track 8, this is an ambient, complex, all-embracing listen, a heavenly journey that rekindles the band’s place as one of the most unique, uplifting and evocative. At full volume, although the subject matter is menacing, the music feels like a profound spiritual experience. Out on Von Dur / BMG.
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