Amiina (Sigur Ros)

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Soundclips

5...according to our Brian on Tue 19 Apr, 2011.

These girls are responsible for some fascinating record sleeves. The last one where they're sat there like a bunch of old ladies knitting a scarf for a giant Tom Baker has had me mesmerised for years. I just stand there in the stockroom for hours gawping at it. No wonder nowt gets done here. Mmmm this Lemon & Coriander humous is nice...where was I? Ah! A new album, a two-strong "masculine infusion" later & another spell-bindingly curious sleeve from this former Sigur Ros string section. I have just realised i've never actually HEARD Amiina before. I am ashamed. This is divine. Very pretty music from yet another magical Icelandic export. That country is swimming with unique talent man. When this album properly kicks off it variably hits me in the same way prime Mum, later Mercury Rev, Mark Tramner's Gnac & indeed Sigur Ros do. Phil shouts Ellis Iceland Sound (sic) at me, at one juncture, from a distant jetty, as i'm floating out to sea. The lead female vocal isn't as icky & childlike as t' lass from Moom though. But she still has that exotic quality to her voice. The strings are well lush & the whole thing twinkles & soothes, slinking it's way into my empty, broken heart. These lot can knit me a scarf anyday. Been waiting for one off my ex for bloody years and I'm getting cold now....brrrrr!

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Originally a string quartet formed by four girls at the Reykjavík College of Music in the 1990s,
amiina went on to cut its teeth as Sigur Rós' string section for the next decade. Now a sextet
after a recent masculine infusion, amiina will release its second full-length album, Puzzle.

amiina's debut album, Kurr (2007), was performed on a disparate jumble of instruments –
musical saws, kalimbas, music boxes and seemingly anything that could be plucked, bowed
or beaten on – resulting in a work that ebbed and flowed “in a strange, powerful place
between sophistication and innocence,” (The Guardian) with "the music a yielding, brooding
seduction, a mix of pointillist minimalism and folk hymnal” (MOJO).

While the above is equally true of the forthcoming Puzzle, this time around the group's
sonic palette is broadened by the contributions of drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and
electronic artist Kippi Kaninus, permanent members of the group since 2009. Accordingly,
the songs on Puzzle are more rhythmically rugged than amiina's previous work and feature
heavier use of electronics. amiina's long-standing fondness for zero-g melodies and open-
minded instrumentation, however, continues.