Icelandic has become the unlikely home of a whole genre of music over the last decade or so. The success of artists like Sigur Ros, Múm and Ólafur Arnalds has put Iceland on the musical map. The frozen and beautiful ambient sounds providing an embodiment of the landscape of the country itself. The music of Úlfur Hansson generally conforms to this trend, indeed he even plays bass in Sigur Ros frontman Jónsi Birgisson’s solo shows. What sets Úlfur apart from his compatriots is his desire to experiment, taking sample based electronic music and merging it with this Icelandic ethos. The results are very interesting and are certainly pretty. His debut album was, from what I can find, released in Japan back in February (on After Hours) and has recently been released in Europe on Kimi Records. The only problem is that the album doesn’t appear to be available on the online shop yet, hopefully it will be soon. Until then, check out the track below from his Soundcloud page and also the nice video for a track called Black Shore.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/29312772″]
P.S. Also check out Úlfur’s previous project Klive.