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Johann Johannsson - Virthulegu Forsetar
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Year :: 2004
Label :: Touch
Cat No :: Touch TO:64
Genre :: Other / Experimental
Tracks :: 01
Size :: 77,5 MB
Source :: CDDA
Bitrate :: VBRKBps
Rel. Date :: 25/10/2004
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Released: 10.04
4 Track CD/4 Track DVD-A Doublepack
Disc 1 - normal stereo CD
Disc 2 - hybrid DVD-Audio with a high resolution 96 khz,
24bit 5.1 surround mix and a 96khz 24bit stereo mix
01 Part 1
02 Part 2
03 Part 3
04 Part 4
This is Johann's second album for Touch, after the
highly acclaimed 'Englab÷rn'. 'Virthulegu forsetar'
contains one hour-long piece for 11 brass players,
percussion, electronics, organs and piano. It's
presented as an ordinary stereo CD and as a DVD-Audio
with a high resolution 5.1 surround mix. The piece had
its live debut in Hallgrimskirkja, a large church in
Reykjavik and the city's towering edifice, and was named
"the most memorable musical event of 2003" in Iceland's
leading newspaper. The piece has 'Englab÷rn's' quiet,
elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the first
album's exquisite miniatures in favor of an extended
form that reveals a long, slow process. A simple theme
played by the brass section is repeated throughout the
entire piece using different voicings and
instrumentation.
As the piece goes on, the tempo slows down, until it is
extremely slow. Around the middle of the piece, the
tempo starts to speed up again, until it reaches the
original tempo.
Space and the sense of place were very important in the
performance and recording of the piece. Players were
positioned both in front and at the back of the church
and two organs were used, again, one in front and one at
the back. This created a sense of immersion and a sound
that is powerful without ever being "loud". As the piece
is written for a specific location, it made sense to
record it live in this same space and attempt to
're-create' it for the listener with 5.1 surround
technology. This was like creating an audio 'mold' or
'cast' of the inner sonic architecture of the building.
In this way, the music engages in a dialogue with the
space it's performed in and the recording process
becomes as much a documentation of a place as a
documentation of music.
J≤hann writes: "During the first live performance of the
piece, the church ceiling was filled with blue helium
balloons which were timed to fall extremely slowly to
the ground during the performance and scatter among the
audience. To our pleasant surprise, the balloons reacted
with the sound, falling with greater frequency as the
volume increased. During the performance the light
slowly changed through the church windows as the sun
went down. The concert was fairly late, ending at around
midnight and it being a bright, cloudless spring
evening, the combination of all these physical and
natural processes made for quite a memorable moment". "I
had a number of things going through my mind during the
writing of the piece, some of them being an obsession
with entropy, Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", postal
horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy,
"singularities", Nietzsche's Eternal recurrence, Moebius
strips. I'm absolutely not interested in imposing any
one 'meaning' on the piece, but all these things were
flying around somewhere in my head. A casual listener
might categorize the piece as ambient or meditative, but
I think this is really wrong - for me it's much more
about chaos and tension rather than harmony. I go
through many different emotions listening to the piece,
veering from intense joy to acute sadness. The central
point is perhaps how a very simple thing can change by
going through a very simple process - something about
change and transformation and the inevitability of
chaos."
'Virthulegu forsetar' is performed by the Caput
Ensemble, conducted by Gudni Franzson, with Skuli
Sverrison on bass and electronics, Matthias M.D.
Hemstock on bells, glockenspiel and electronics, Hordur
Bragason and Gudmundur Sigurdsson on organs and Johann
Johannsson on piano and electronics.
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[01] Johann Johannsson - Part1 [14:51]
[02] Johann Johannsson - Part2 [14:13]
[03] Johann Johannsson - Part3 [14:45]
[04] Johann Johannsson - Part4 [21:45]
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