Another excellent piece by Gudmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, the Icelandic composer who is quietly forging his own distinctive musical identity with each new release.
Landvætiirnar Fjórar (CARRIER RECORDS) is another all-acoustic record, like the previous Sinfónía, and once again the players are drawn from a very small and select circle of Icelandic musicians, including friends, housemates, and former students; some are classically trained or otherwise highly proficient, some play in local bands or in internationally successful ones, some of them may be just musical amateurs, but they are brought together by Gunnarsson and find their collective voice under his enabling arms. I wasn’t sent any details of the instrumentation, but I think I can hear stringed instruments, an acoustic guitar, odd percussion, recorders, and sound effects (particularly bird-song whistles), but what comes over on initial spins is a very “porous” impression, where the constraints of the score evidently allow for a good deal of personal interventions from the players, and everything hangs together in an endearingly “ramshackle” manner.
This isn’t intended to suggest a random free-for-all musical tea-party, but my guess is that Gunnarsson has his own ideas about group composition and chosen a unique and very personal pathway, involving quite radical methods. All he will tell us about Landvætiirnar Fjórar’s structure is that he “became obsessed with dividing sounds into categories”, and his notes indicate a long process of refinement and compression until he eventually managed to get everything down into four categories. This may have resulted in one of the basic instructions passed to the group. As to the theme of Landvætiirnar Fjórar, it’s to do with Icelandic folklore, where there are four guardian spirits watching over the country, appearing at the four points of the compass. Interestingly, you can see them today on the coat of arms for this country, and some say the figures (bull, dragon, eagle, giant) aren’t too far away from the traditional image of the four Evangelists in Christian imagery. Gunnarsson indicates that he had a “strange vision” of these four guardians, and while he doesn’t go into much detail about it, this is what governs the arrangements (12 tracks, arranged in four sets of three) and musical tenor of the record. Ultimately it seems his aim is to create a “dwelling place” that he wished to live in, and hopefully invite the listener to join him in this imaginary world, or “musical fairy tale”.
At this point I feel that I may be triggering associations in the mind of a suggestible reader, leading to thoughts of Tales from Topographic Oceans or Bo Hansson’s Lord of the Rings, but what we’re dealing with here is much more opaque and much less literal than such “concept album” tropes. The abiding impression for me is a real “less is more” moment – the music is delicate, simple, almost sketchy in places, yet it succeeds in realising a very persistent vision from its miasmal beginnings. There’s no doubt that a project like requires the presence of Gunnarsson to guide it on its way; some of these divine secrets only exist inside his head. There’s also the very non-literal cover art, provided once again by artist Sam T. Rees with his rubber stamps, home-made computer fonts and hands-on method, which opens up even more dimensions of interpretation. Quite unique. From 5th September 2022.