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CD
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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 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 013CD
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The parameters of musical possibility are vast on Valgeir Sigurðsson's third LP; Architecture of Loss. The music flows from no "notes" at all to lyrical, folk-like melody, from spare, acoustic sound to dense digital intervention. Originally composed for the ballet of the same name by Stephen Petronio, Architecture of Loss is a powerful work in its own right in which Valgeir works from a broad palette of absences. The performers were handpicked from trusted Bedroom Community regulars: in addition to Valgeir himself and composer/keyboardist Nico Muhly, the album features classical violist Nadia Sirota -- her sound is as deeply individual and immediately recognizable as the sound of her speaking voice and takes full possession of the notes on the page -- and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily -- a secret weapon of a sideman who excels at exactly the things you can't put down on paper, from solid grooves to scribbles of noise. The resulting piece maintains a structural unity surpassing either of Valgeir's previous, more formally-open LPs. While his solo debut Ekvílibríum (HVALUR 003CD/LP) boasted singers like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Dawn McCarthy, the voice of that record was unmistakably Valgeir's own. On his second solo disc -- the soundtrack to the film Draumalandið (HVALUR 008CD) -- the suite of movements released on disc enjoyed an aesthetic life of its own independent of the finished film. Draumalandið and Ekvílibríum were allowed to develop freely as recording projects whereas Architecure of Loss had to be realized with physical performance in mind, by its players and dancers. This album represents the piece as conceived and reconceived for the stage, and then reconceived again as pure music (the movement "Gone, Not Forgotten," for instance, is exclusive to this recording). Created, pored over and developed: the result is a meticulously-designed structure, a sound architecture of musical and physical gestures and stillnesses.
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HVALUR 013LP
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LP version. The parameters of musical possibility are vast on Valgeir Sigurðsson's third LP; Architecture of Loss. The music flows from no "notes" at all to lyrical, folk-like melody, from spare, acoustic sound to dense digital intervention. Originally composed for the ballet of the same name by Stephen Petronio, Architecture of Loss is a powerful work in its own right in which Valgeir works from a broad palette of absences. The performers were handpicked from trusted Bedroom Community regulars: in addition to Valgeir himself and composer/keyboardist Nico Muhly, the album features classical violist Nadia Sirota -- her sound is as deeply individual and immediately recognizable as the sound of her speaking voice and takes full possession of the notes on the page -- and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily -- a secret weapon of a sideman who excels at exactly the things you can't put down on paper, from solid grooves to scribbles of noise. The resulting piece maintains a structural unity surpassing either of Valgeir's previous, more formally-open LPs. While his solo debut Ekvílibríum (HVALUR 003CD/LP) boasted singers like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Dawn McCarthy, the voice of that record was unmistakably Valgeir's own. On his second solo disc -- the soundtrack to the film Draumalandið (HVALUR 008CD) -- the suite of movements released on disc enjoyed an aesthetic life of its own independent of the finished film. Draumalandið and Ekvílibríum were allowed to develop freely as recording projects whereas Architecure of Loss had to be realized with physical performance in mind, by its players and dancers. This album represents the piece as conceived and reconceived for the stage, and then reconceived again as pure music (the movement "Gone, Not Forgotten," for instance, is exclusive to this recording). Created, pored over and developed: the result is a meticulously-designed structure, a sound architecture of musical and physical gestures and stillnesses.
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HVALUR 008CD
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Iceland's Valgeir 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. 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. Its harmonies are anxious, pulsing, driven. Not that this is an album lacking in subtlety. Draumalandið the film takes on the delicate task of unmasking the apparent win/win proposition of Iceland's aluminum smelting boom -- clean energy! New jobs! Economic growth! -- as a false blessing with very real consequences. Likewise, Draumalandið the soundtrack takes global, at times seemingly abstract questions, and offers deeply personal responses. 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. Tender, fragmented melodies rise out of uncanny musical textures; in the album's opening track, Sam sings "Grýlukvæði," an Icelandic folktune about a greedy hag come to devour naughty children, just as he would an Appalachian ballad, and in turn, Valgeir reframes it as a sad, sympathetic reprimand to a people (Icelanders, yes, but by extension all of humanity) who would sell their birthright to a rapacious multinational. This is all painted in brushstrokes broad and minute, from a palette of hugely varied shades -- Sam's banjo-playing, Daníel's John Cage-style piano treatments, Ben's halos of distortion -- but somehow, it all fits together as a coherent musical argument. 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 003LP
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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.
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HVALUR 003CD
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2007 release; new midline pricing. 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.
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