Wise Music Creative Spotlights Ólafur Arnalds

While Ólafur’s previous album, 2018’s ‘re:member’, was a technological triumph featuring his ground-breaking, patented, self-playing and semi-generative Stratus Pianos, the beautiful ‘some kind of peace’ strips back the layers to reveal the human side and the intimate.

“‘re:member’ was very much all about making these kind of grandiose concepts out of these ideas. But I started to see these concepts as something you can hide behind. It's a very comfortable place to be,” he laughs. “I wanted to make something a little bit more vulnerable. And I realised that's actually more difficult.”

Ólafur reflected on the music that most inspires him and found that one of the key characteristics is vulnerability. “In the music I listen to, that's the element I look for, so why am I hiding behind concepts?”

He describes the epistemological shock that led him to the realisation that the world was completely different to what he’d thought. This trigger prompted him to write about his experiences of the past year and the new life changes and perspectives they brought. By the time the pandemic struck, he had already written half the album, and the rest flowed freely.

What resulted is ‘some kind of peace’ being Ólafur’s most personal record to date, one that’s open and honest.

“It's so personal that I'm still trying to find the words to talk about it,” he says with a smile. “I felt it was important that the album would tell my story in a very honest way. This album is much closer to my heart than any of the others.”

What those new perspectives did for Ólafur is to open him up for the possibilities of love and settling down. “This album is almost an awakening for me to a completely new life that I don't think I would have been ready for otherwise. I'm in a very happy relationship now that I don't think I would be if I hadn't had the shock to my system, because I just wouldn't have been open to it. So this album is very much about love. It's about daring to be in love and not being afraid of it.”

Listen to the album and you’ll hear the hints of those personal experiences, sometimes even the recordings of the significant events themselves. You will hear life-changing rituals in 'Woven Song', an intimate shared moment that starts off the tenderly wrought piano composition 'We Contain Multitudes'. The ethereal wall of voices in the dreamily cinematic 'Zero' is a spontaneous sample from a long night in the studio.

Born in 1986 in Mosfellsbær, a few kilometres outside Reykjavík, Ólafur weaves real-world pieces of his life story throughout the album, masterfully using sampling techniques to give the listener a window into his experiences. As ever, he showcases his inimitable ability to meld genres, electronically processing classical elements such as the strings on the album.

In keeping with the personal theme, all the collaborators on the album were key to Ólafur’s life during the making of the album. British musician Bonobo, on the album’s luminous pulsing opener 'Loom', had visited him in Iceland last year, to hike, travel, and play a secret DJ show before hanging out in the studio. 

'Back To the Sky' features the Icelandic singer and multi-instrumentalist JFDR who Ólafur has admired for years. Meanwhile, his friend Josin, a German singer-songwriter, appears on the emotional apex, “The Bottom Line”. The dreamy song conjures the sense of a blissful re-awakening as arpeggiating piano and soaring strings swell into life-affirming ecstasy, and Josin sings from Ólafur’s perspective.

“All those people were with me at this point in my life, or the experiences that were influencing the album,” he explains. “It would be weird to make a personal album and not include my friends.”

Ólafur’s typically exquisite melancholy is stamped all over the contemplative album. One of the first seedlings for the album, the minimalist “Spiral” is graceful in its pensiveness, with its circling violin, and a nostalgia-inducing ending when Ólafur plays the melody through a 100-year-old phonograph.

The album was recorded at his studio at the harbour in downtown Reykjavik. Luckily for Ólafur, the newly designed studio was completed just before lockdown began; he won’t write a fully formed song anywhere else, and you can understand why from his alluring description of its quiet location by the ocean and the view over the fjord that Reykjavik sits on. “I can see the mountains through my window,” he says. “I really believe in how the nature of a space enhances creativity and I hold it quite sacred. I try not to write much outside the studio.”

It’s the final song that Ólafur considers the most inspirational and sums up the entire album; 'Undone' features a spoken-word passage from the late American singer Lhasa de Sela against sweeping strings and delicate piano. She muses on the idea that the sensation of being born is the same as dying, and feeling like your world is ending. 

Ólafur says, “Occasionally in life, you feel some ripples and don't know what they are, and most of the time we choose to ignore them, and then we die and we think we're dying, but who knows, maybe we are just being born. I thought it was such a wonderful sentiment. For me the quote in that song defines the whole album.” ‘some kind of peace' is about what it means to be alive, daring to be vulnerable and the importance of rituals. It is a personal journey told through Ólafur's most introspective music to date, against the backdrop of a chaotic world. 

“We forget how important these rituals are in our lives. What I'm concerned about is people's mental health. I honestly believe that a big portion of our population is experiencing serious trauma right now. And I think we need to realise the effect of small things like not being able to go to a café every morning, something that’s a ritual in our life.”

Ólafur urges you to embrace all that life throws at you, and above all to react, and contemplate, to find your kind of peace. His stunning new album would definitely be the place to start.

Listen here. 

Kiasmos

Always a keen experimenter and innovator, Ólafur has constantly pushed the boundaries of music, and in addition to his solo and scoring work has a number of collaborative projects. Along with Janus Rasmussen of Bloodgroup he formed the minimal, experimental techno duo Kiasmos in 2009 who’s eponymously titled album was released in 2014.

The pairing of Ólafur and Janus Rasmussen blend modern classical soundscapes with beatific electronics, resulting in a singular catalogue of music. Developing Kiasmos into a stunning live proposition, the duo have latterly opted to focus on solo and collaborative endeavours.

Kiasmos recently surprised fans with a new three-song EP and details of a special London show.

‘Flown’ EP is out now and it's a wonderfully immersive experience. “We’re excited to share this new release, which differs slightly from what we’ve done before but feels right for us now,” Rasmussen explains. “They were written in different locations around the world, contributing to each track’s general vibe. Flown is a relatively new song and is one of the tracks that seemed to want to be born as quickly as possible. Those types of songs tend to be some of our favourites, as we don’t have to overthink them.”

Ólafur Arnalds picks up on this…

“’Flown’ is our collaboration’s return to a journey of curiosity and discovery… Written in Iceland it was inspired by UK electronic music as well as modern classical – we tried to find a middle ground where those worlds could all meet. The titular track is followed by Told and Dazed, both initially written on our travels around the world and we have added influences of sounds from the local environment, such as the sounds of rainforest and the Balinese Gamelan instrument.”

Kiasmos have also recently announced details of their long-awaited second album, 'II' - the follow-up to their universally acclaimed self-titled debut in 2014. They’d made most of that album in just two weeks; this time it’s been ten years. The making of II was a test of their friendship, but also testament to how great musical chemistry can always go the distance and be just the same as it ever was. “In the beginning, we hadn’t established any sound, so it was easy to write,” says Janus.

They worked on a lot of ‘II’ during the lost year of 2020-2021, including a trip to Ólafur’s studio in Bali. “We spent a month there and wrote a few songs that ended up on the record,” says Janus. The pair sampled traditional Balinese percussion like the gamelan and incorporated Janus’s field recordings of their natural surroundings – the sound of birds, crickets and echoing the sunrise over the landscape.

You can catch Kiasmos live in London’s here at Outernet on May 29th and at Troxy on September 18th!

Listen to Kiasmos here.