Úlfur Hansson will be familiar to some as the bass player in Jónsi’s touring band. The Icelandic musician has been recording under a few different monikers for close to a decade, making sprawling electronic soundscapes as Klive and playing with double-bass-pedal-happy hardcore outfit Swords of Chaos.
But it is under his own name that Hansson has made perhaps his most interesting work. The handful of tracks on his Soundcloud suggest the musique concrète experiments of Pierre Henry, played through a distinctly Icelandic filter. ‘So Very Strange’ is the glistening sound of an ice-blasted Nordic landscape, brittle and beautiful. Disembodied vocal samples are woven around discordant string recordings to produce something nebulous and uncanny; melodic enough to instantly catch the ear, but somehow inconclusive, such that you find yourself continuously hitting repeat.
This weekend Úlfur plays the Reykjavik Music Mess, a festival of new music set across two venues in the Icelandic capital. Look out for a full preview on Best Fit soon.
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