Description

Samaris – Samaris

12 track album on CD and vinyl.

Icelandic teenage wunderkind Samaris’s first UK release comes in the shape of an eponymously titled album compiling their two Icelandic-released EPs – Hljóma Þú (2011) and Stofnar falla (recorded at Sigur Rós’ Sundlaugin studio with Gunnar Tynes of múm, 2012) and includes 4 additional remixes.

Combining disparate elements of electronics (Þórður Kári Steinþórsson), clarinet (Áslaug Rún Magnúsdóttir) and Jófríður Ákadóttir’s haunting voice, Samaris mix glacial electronica and bold, percussive beats with haunting chant-like vocals – the lyrics culled from nineteenth-century Icelandic poems. ‘Viltu Vitrast’, for example, retells an Icelandic folk tale about villagers who ask for help from a supernal being, but worry it will choose not to manifest its power on Earth. The effect is simultaneously ancient and modern – an ethereal sound filled with dark spaces and alien atmosphere.