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Our album of the week (9th December 2011)
...according to our Phil on Thu 08 Dec, 2011.
Last October Olafur created a song every day for a week and released them as videos on the tinterweb. He plonked his Macbook in front of him and just recorded the tracks plain and simply. It sounds awesome, too. I think I might start crying. Olafur makes some of the most beautiful moving music ever. The opener is a piano and strings based tune which will destroy you by wrenching your heart right out and leave you a huge quivering mess. This is my kind of neoclassical music and it could have fallen off Max Richter's classic 'The Blue Notebooks'. The tracks continue in that emotive piano and strings vein. There are some tracks with some electronics in and indeed on Near Light it turns into something that could have come out on the Morr label years ago with some indietronica style beats. There's a massive Icelandic vibe going through the music...must be something in the water over there. The songs are rich and complex and 100% engrossing. The whole project reminds me very much of the Found Songs thing he did a few years ago and that blew me away as well. This is cocking marvellous!
Icelandic contemporary composer Ólafur Arnalds created and released a new song, one per day for one for one whole week during the month of October 2011. The songs were recorded and filmed live in the living room of his Reykjavik apartment and released instantly for free as streamed videos and mp3 downloads. Thousands of fans followed this exciting project online at: livingroomsongs.olafurarnalds.com Living Room Songs will now also be released on CD, Vinyl and as High Quality Downloads via Erased Tapes on December 5th, 2011. Following in the spirit of Ólafur Arnalds' critically acclaimed Found Songs (2009) where he wrote, recorded and released a free song every day for a week - now comes Living Room Songs. This time Ólafur takes the idea further and invites the audience into the comfort of his living room, where the songs were recorded live and the whole process filmed. The songs were instantly released in form of a free mp3 download and video stream- straight from Ólafur's Reykjavik apartment. In his own words: 'One night I was just playing my piano here in this apartment and I was writing a new song and I didn't have my phone on me which I usually use to record ideas. So I actually took out my MacBook and I didn't want to open like a proper recording program, so I just opened Photo Booth and recorded a video of myself playing the song so that I would remember the song. And I really liked the atmosphere of that video and that's when I thought I should do a series of songs in my living room...' - Ólafur Arnalds
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Norman Records,
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Email: phil@normanrecords.com
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