Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: Director Max Kestner's documentary film portrait Copenhagen Dreams is a tribute to the Danish capital. That also happened to be the place acclaimed composer Johann Johannsson was living at the time he was asked to score the movie. As always he does so with real aplomb and devastating emotionality. This now classic soundtrack features celestial keyboard sounds, emotive string quartets, clarinet, subtle electronic and plenty of melodic magic that both swells and breaks the heart. Academy Award winner Hildur Gudnadottir plays on the soundtrack with various other of Johann's favourite Icelandic talents.

Review: Before he passed in 2018, the late, great Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson made a series of field recordings at Iceland's Ellidaar power plant which were inspired by the writings of Henry Adams. Those pieces inspired this new suite of music from Daniel Bjarnason and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra which also includes some of Johannsson's scores to Sicario and The Theory of Everything. It is a sublime work that joins the dots between all of Johannsson's work with soft drones, brass tones and chiming harpsichord all coming and going to make for emotional and dramatic tension. A fine reminder of one of the greats who sadly left us too soon.

Review: The late Johann Johannsson, whose tragic death in 2018 shocked the music and film worlds at large, hears a new posthumous album released under Deutsche Grammophon here. Performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on this recording, the suite first sprang inspirationally from field recordings the artist made at Iceland's Ellidaar power plant - from here, it brings together myriad inspirations, from the oncoming tide of environmental crisis in Iceland, to the autobiographic writing of historian Henry Adams (a famous critic of the Second Industrial Revolution, who distilled the encroaching tide of global industry into a singular neologism, "dynamo"). Though the new work is paired with older scores for the films Sicario and The Theory Of Everything, the whole album is a fresh take on Johannsson's best work, breathing new sonic vigour into the sociopolitical critique that bloomed towards the end of his life.