Browse by Label: BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)

Artist:	MUHLY, NICO
Title:	Speaks Volumes
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 001CD

The first release on the Bedroom Community label features seven exquisite works of chamber music for small ensembles with electronics. This debut album by composer Nico Muhly was created with producer Valgeir Sigurdsson (Björk, Bonnie "Prince" Billy) in Reykjavik, Iceland and in New York, Muhly's hometown. Since having graduated from the Juilliard School for composition in 2004, 25 year-old Muhly has been causing significant ripples in modern music circles with a variety of projects. He has collaborated closely with artists as diverse as Antony (from Antony and the Johnsons who guests on Speaks Volumes) and Philip Glass, with whom he's had a long-standing relationship working on numerous stage works & film scores. Muhly played on Björk's album Medúlla where he met Sigurdsson and the idea of working together on an album was soon discussed. He then worked with Björk on the score for conceptual artist Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 film. In 2004, his small ensemble work "By All Means" was played at the Royal Academy of Music, London and his evensong canticles were sung at Clare and Girton colleges, Cambridge which were broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 in 2005. Speaks Volumes doesn't sound like most classical records. It is not an idealized version of live musical performance or a substitute for the authentic live experience. It is not intended to conform to the nineteenth-century experience of classical music. Speaks Volumes was approached from a different direction. Sigurdsson's recording and production doesn't sit back and let the music sweep the listener away emotionally; it leans forward in exacting scrutiny and urges the listener to pay attention. Several of the track titles on the album such as "It Goes Without Saying," "Keep in Touch," "Honest Music" and "Clear Music" describe an attempt to communicate. For instance, "Clear Music" could describe the transparency of the piece's musical texture, but it could also refer to the insistency with which its musical ideas are put forward. It attempts to "make itself clear." The flattest surface, the merest gesture, even the deepest silence Speaks Volumes.

Artist:	FROST, BEN
Title:	Theory of Machines
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 002CD

This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational -- the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in, they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove. On Theory of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather -- and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, color and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated. At 26, he has already released such critically-lauded works as 2003's guitar exploration LP, Steel Wound on the Room40 Label, which Pitchfork Media marked as "...an exemplary ambient experience," and the harrowing, self-titled 2005 opus School of Emotional Engineering, which Db Magazine called "...an atmospheric masterpiece."

Artist:	FROST, BEN
Title:	Theory of Machines
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 002LP

Limited edition vinyl version, first-time pressing. This is Reykjavik-based composer/producer Ben Frost's first release for the Icelandic Bedroom Community label. From the ominous darkness and intensity of its opening moments, one might expect a death metal album to break out in an instant, but Theory of Machines is an album whose design is as symphonic as it is confrontational -- the tempo doesn't pick up, no hooks or vocals arrive, and when the drums finally kick in, they're as fragmented and corroded as they could possibly be and still resemble a groove. On Theory of Machines, Ben Frost exploits every extreme of pitch, volume and timbre, the changes in this music sometimes seem as gradual as changes in the weather -- and sometimes as violent. As the music changes it changes only in texture, color and intensity so that the sense is not of something being created, altered or even developed, but of something already present being slowly illuminated.

Artist:	SIGURDSSON, VALGEIR
Title:	Ekvílibríum
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 003CD

Valgeir Sigurðsson is a renowned Icelandic producer and engineer as well as the head of the Bedroom Community label, and this is his first solo record. Sigurðsson's sound, his distinctive artistic voice, has been filtering through the cracks of "mainstream" music for years: he has had a significant hand in Björk's seminal Vespertine and Medulla albums, the hushed confessions of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go and the cacophonous nursery rhymes of Cocorosie's Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. The sense of craft, intensity of focus and attention to details in Sigurðsson's work behind the controls is evident on this debut and in the works of those artists Sigurðsson represents on his label. Ekvílibríum includes vocal performances from Bonnie "Prince" Billy, who helps craft one of the highlights of the album, "Kin," where rivers of strings flow around playful music boxes and prepared piano, as well as contributions from Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy and J. Walker aka Machine Translations. It's an album that blends genres so effortlessly and gracefully that the word "genre" itself becomes obsolete, mixing all the vital elements like a bricklayer mixes concrete. Despite the solidity of Sigurðsson's ideas, there is also a fluidity between the tracks, and even within them. The theme of water trickles through the album, with direct references in titles such as "Evolution of Waters" to the general aesthetic feel of the album; from the dripping percussion of "Equilibrium Is Restored" to the tidal waves of strings engulfing the listener on the effervescent "Before Nine." With Ekvílibríum, Valgeir Sigurðsson has shown that he is equally as talented as a crafter of songs and instigator of a cascade of emotions. Fans of everything from Björk to Brian Eno to Telefon Tel Aviv will find themselves falling in love with the album's lucidity, its beauty and its emotional impact. Having worked on many era-defining releases of the past, Sigurðsson has now created one of his own.

Artist:	SIGURDSSON, VALGEIR
Title:	Ekvílibríum
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 003LP

LP version. Valgeir Sigurðsson is a renowned Icelandic producer and engineer as well as the head of the Bedroom Community label, and this is his first solo record. Sigurðsson's sound, his distinctive artistic voice, has been filtering through the cracks of "mainstream" music for years: he has had a significant hand in Björk's seminal Vespertine and Medulla albums, the hushed confessions of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go and the cacophonous nursery rhymes of Cocorosie's Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. Ekvílibríum includes vocal performances from Bonnie "Prince" Billy, who helps craft one of the highlights of the album, "Kin," where rivers of strings flow around playful music boxes and prepared piano, as well as contributions from Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy and J. Walker aka Machine Translations. It's an album that blends genres so effortlessly and gracefully that the word "genre" itself becomes obsolete, mixing all the vital elements like a bricklayer mixes concrete. Despite the solidity of Sigurðsson's ideas, there is also a fluidity between the tracks, and even within them. The theme of water trickles through the album, with direct references in titles such as "Evolution of Waters" to the general aesthetic feel of the album; from the dripping percussion of "Equilibrium Is Restored" to the tidal waves of strings engulfing the listener on the effervescent "Before Nine." With Ekvílibríum, Valgeir Sigurðsson has shown that he is equally as talented as a crafter of songs and instigator of a cascade of emotions. Fans of everything from Björk to Brian Eno to Telefon Tel Aviv will find themselves falling in love with the album's lucidity, its beauty and its emotional impact. Having worked on many era-defining releases of the past, Sigurðsson has now created one of his own.

Artist:	SAMAMIDON
Title:	All Is Well
Label:	BEDROOM COMMUNITY (ICELAND)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HVALUR 004CD

Valgeir Sigurðsson's Bedroom Community label welcomes the second release from U.S. newcomer, Sam Amidon. At Sigurðsson's state-of-the-art Greenhouse Studios, Sam was left to concentrate on his intuitive interpretations of age-old folk-songs, a skill on which he proves himself to be a unique talent, drawing simultaneously on his experiences growing up a child of folk musicians in Vermont, and his more recent work in New York with the experimental indie-rock bands Doveman and Stars Like Fleas. From the opening notes of the first track, "Sugar Baby," it's as clear that All Is Well is a different album from his previous offerings, and by the album centerpiece, the wistfully poignant "Saro," it's obvious that this album is very special, indeed. With horns erupting and dissipating around the listener, Amidon's trademark delivery is perfectly offset by the tenderly plucked notes of his six-string. Nico Muhly's orchestration is not the only addition to Amidon's barrel of sounds. A dizzying amalgam of trombone, Eyvind Kang's ghostly viola, and processed percussion convert a children's singing game from the Georgia Sea Islands into the ominous ambiguity of "Little Johnny Brown." The distinctive bass of Ben Frost is evident on the pensive "Fall on My Knees," while subtle layers of electronics add an intrinsically modern aspect to the proceedings. Couple this with Sigurðsson's production wizardry and you'll realize that despite links to the Appalachian folk music of the past, All Is Well is an album that could only exist in the present. One of the unquestionable triumphs of All Is Well is its diversity. From introspective ballads of jealousy such as "Wild Bill Jones" to upbeat barn-dancing ditties such as "Little Satchel," the structure of the album is paramount in making everything work so naturally. Sam leaves the listener with a feeling of resolution parallel to that of a keen reader thumbing the last page of a favorite novel. He sings of death's spindly fingers finding him, a prospect he handles with no trepidation -- for he has Muhly's flourishing string arrangements to give him courage and form a stable bed for his tender lyricisms. In the length of an album, Amidon has struggled through gunfights, paternal tensions, religious guilt and the lonely life of a nomad, but he leaves us with the message that "all is well"; a defining statement that is bound to warm the hearts of even the coldest gun-slinger.

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