Album: JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON – Fordlandia (4AD CAD2812CD 2008)

It was the jazz age. The wild syncopated rhythms of the new music reflected the spirit of “can do” that gripped America. The horrors of the Great War were replaced by a world of infinite possibilities. Henry Ford’s invention of mass production meant that consumer items from cars downwards were affordable by almost everyone. The hope of the twenties collapsed around everyone’s ears after the crash of ’29, ushering in a decade of poverty, depression and, in Europe, fascism. Despite FDR’s best efforts with the Keynesian, quasi-socialism of the New Deal, it took another world war to rescue the American economy. And after six decades of unprecedented economic growth, the whole capitalist she-bang again looks in grave peril.

Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Fordlandia is the second of a projected trilogy inspired by the icons of twentieth century American capitalism. After the elegy to the early computer age that was IBM 1401, a User´s Manual, this suite seems inspired by the twenties era of hope, and its unravelling in the following decade. The inner sleeve juxtaposes an image of retro-futurist rocketry with a group of plantation workers standing next to their battered Ford, stuck in real and metaphorical mud. Fordlandia itself was a vast tract of land in Brazil bought by the Ford motor company in the twenties for the establishment of rubber plantations – the aim being to extend the principles of the production line right down to the sourcing of raw materials. It was an expensive folly. Workers rebelled against the appalling conditions they were expected to endure, and blight and disease were widespread. With the invention of synthetic alternatives to rubber, the bottom fell out of the market, and the land was sold at an enormous loss to the corporation.

The album’s epic title track is a sweeping, stately piece of nostalgic melancholia. Strings build at a funereal pace and the whole thing is pervaded by a sense of lost dreams. It’s a theme throughout the album. Doleful piano and glassy strings are underpinned, and sometimes undermined, by dark rumbling beats or drones bringing with them a feeling of foreboding. Even the quasi-religious pipe organ of “Chimaerica” is offset against a background of shattered strings. “The Great God Pan Is Dead” is a beautiful choral piece that sounds like a war requiem.

“Melodia” is preceded by four short prologue parts that crop up throughout the album. The track itself has a cyclical string part and an insistent throbbing bassline and beat. It builds gradually until it reaches a rattling, pulsing climax. “How We Left Fordlandia” is a magnificent piece of downbeat neo-romanticism that ebbs and flows before bowing out with the fading tones of a lonesome organist.

It’s always difficult to judge music’s long-term durability on a few listens. Fordlandia has a similar emotional depth and beauty to Górecki’s third symphony (although without the apocalyptic undertows). Full of spirits melancholy and eternity’s despair.

Tracks
1 Fordlandia 13:43
2 melodia (i) 1:56
3 The Rocket Builder (Lo Pan!) 6:25
4 melodia (ii) 1:49
5 Fordlandia – Aerial View 4:33
6 melodia (iii) 3:12
7 Chimaerica 3:23
8 melodia (iv) 2:45
9 The Great God Pan Is Dead 4:56
10 Melodia (Guidelines For A Propulsion Device Based On Heim’s Quantum Theory) 9:04
11 How We Left Fordlandia 15:25

Website
www.johannjohannsson.com

Song of the day: JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON – IBM 1401 Processing Unit (2006)

Not much new to write about. So here’s Magnus Helgason’s video for the lead track off 2006’s IBM 1401, A User’s Manual which was the first album I reviewed on here back in February 2007. Who knew that a clunky old mainframe computer could be the fount of such sadness. 

Album: JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON – Englabörn (4AD CAD2733 2007)

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask? I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

Roman poet Catullus’ conflicted poem known as Catullus 85 or Odi et Amo was written for his mistress Lesbia. An orchestrated version opens Englabörn with the original Latin text intoned by a robot soprano. It’s both moving and oddly chilling, transferring the original’s human turmoil to the stirrings of consciousness in artificial life. So far, so very Philip K Dick.

Englabörn originally came out on the Touch label five years ago this month. It was Jóhann Jóhannsson’s debut release, and was a written to accompany dramatist Hávar Sigurjónsson’s play of the same name. The pieces are short, and the instrumentation limited to a chamber sextet of Jóhannsson on piano and electronics with Matthias Hemstock (percussion) and the Eþos String Quartet. I don’t know anything about the play, but I’m willing to bet it isn’t a zany comedy. The Catullus poem sets the tone for some serious introspection. There are many moments of desperate sadness, such as the mournful piano scales of “Krókódíll” and the suspended violin figures of “Ef Ég Hefði Aldrei…”. At times the album reminds me of Jóhannsson’s compatriot Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson’s score for the Friðrik Þór Friðriksson film Englar Alheimsins. Although it doesn’t lean as heavily on a central motif, it has the same graceful melancholy about it. Proceedings end with a reprise of “Odi Et Amo” slowed to a crawl, not unlike HAL 3000’s final incantation of “Bicycle Built For Two” in 2001. It sounds like a missive from another world where hope is an emotion forgotten through the passage of time immemorial.

Many will listen to this 4AD reissue on the strength of Jóhannsson’s brilliant IBM 1401, A User’s Manual from last year. Englabörn doesn’t have the same breadth and scale of that record, but shares with it an exquisite sadness and scarce beauty. Hopefully Virðulegu Forsetar and Dis will be made available again soon.

Tracks:
1 Odi Et Amo (3:10)
2 Englabörn (1:34)
3 Jói & Karen (3:24)
4 Þetta Gerist Á Bestu Bæjum (1:02)
5 Sálfræðingur (3:49)
6 “Ég Sleppi Þér Aldrei” (2:57)
7 Sálfræðingur Deyr (3:40)
8 Bað (3:07)
9 “Ég Heyrði Allt Án Þess Að Hlusta” (2:05)
10 Karen Býr Til Engil (3:45)
11 Englabörn – Tilbrigði (1:24)
12 “Ég Átti Erfiða Æsku” (3:41)
13 Krókódíll (2:45)
14 “Ef Ég Hefði Aldrei…” (3:42)
15 …eins og venjulegt fólk (3:51)
16 Odi Et Amo – Bis (4:00)

Website:
http://www.johannjohannsson.com/

Album: JÓHANN JÓHANSSON – IBM 1401, A User’s Manual (4AD CAD2609CD 2006)

In 1964, Iceland obtained its first mainframe computer – an IBM 1401. Chief maintenance engineer on the machine was one Jóhann Gunnarsson, a keen musician. During idle hours he found a way of extracting tunes from the machine by manipulating the electromagnetic waves it emitted and recording them through a radio receiver. The machine was scrapped in 1971, but Gunnarsson taped some of the recordings he made and kept them.

Some 35 years later, his son, the experimental musician Jóhann Jóhannsson used those tapes as the basis for his third album, his first for 4AD. The bulk of the CD consists of four tracks, each based on sounds recorded from a different part of the unit and accompanied by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mario Klemens. The result is an album of astonishing warmth and melancholy.

The most obvious melody actually emitted from the machine is used as the motif for the first and strongest track “IBM 1401 Processing Unit”. Its four note, minor key loop gradually fades in accompanied by an orchestral swell redolent of Gavin Bryars’ classic “Jesus Blood”. For a central theme that sounds like a depressed stylophone, the piece is strangely moving. Odder still is the next track “IBM 1403 Printer”. This utilizes a found tape instruction manual. A disembodied London-accented voice impassively reels off maintenance instructions, full of alien concepts to modern computer engineers such as bakelite and valves. The voice has almost a drone-like rhythm of its own, and, wisely, Jóhannsonn never overwhelms it with his musical accompaniment. The tracks “IBM 1402 Card Read Punch” and “IBM 729 Magnetic Tape Unit” are less striking due to the fact that the generated sounds used on those tracks are less interesting. They are still fine examples of quasi-minimalist composition.

The final track, “The Sun’s Gone Dim And The Sky’s Turned Black” (also issued as a single – 4AD BAD2617CD) feels a little tacked on. It’s not part of the main concept, but seems to be included in order to make the CD an acceptable 45 minute album length. Having said that, it is a fine piece of pastoral electronica with a vocoder vocal redolent of early Air.

2006 was an interesting year for 4AD after many years of trading on the company’s past reputation. With Jóhannsson and Scott Walker, the label now has two of the finest and most enquiring composer/musicians working today.