Jóhann Jóhannsson - Fordlandia
A friend of mine, Alex Hall from Grails - Neurot put out their first couple of records - shares interesting music with me once in a while. He laid Jóhann Jóhannsson on me, and I was instantly hooked. I mean I always loved very minimal classical music or soundtracks that have that kind of vibe, but I hadn't heard it quite done in that way before. I think the Icelandic have a very special way of presenting melancholy, and that with his combination of minimalism, his choices of instrument, as well as involving electronics and processing, is really compelling. He's become one of my favourite composers of all time. But Fordlandia I really like in a harmonic way, similar to with Cluster And Eno, where you've got harmonics that resonate plus overtones, that might not even be specifically generated, they may be a result of all the other instruments combining, and they hop to the forefront. I feel like Fordlandia has a lot of that happening, these other sounds come to the forefront which are almost incidental, like just a harmonic complexity of the thing as a whole as opposed to the sound of any specific instrument.