Day: February 10, 2016

When we talk about ambient music, it becomes almost automatic to think of a placid development of liquid notes, sometimes caressing, with the characteristic of appearing in a manner almost respectful of the listener’s hearing, along the lines of those who gave this trend in the 70s a strong impulse, or Brian Eno. Then you come across Can’t You Wait, the debut of GlerAkur, a creature of Icelandic musician Elvar Geir Sævarsson, and you immediately understand that this mental mechanism is destined to end up in the air. Here the ambient acquires an intensity mostly unknown, becoming in fact a soundtrack with obscure appearances, as well explained by the six minutes of the title track that, after a canonical start, winds up in an amazing crescendo, supported by a rhythm that recalls the Gabriel’s Intruder. In Polycide is instead the acoustic guitar that is responsible for depicting scenarios initially more reassuring, before the synthesizer transports everything on a more spatial and disturbing. In Willocide this mechanism of construction of the songs finds its climax, where the crescendo becomes obsessive making the final detachment almost painful. The reference to Peter Gabriel made earlier doesn’t seem too far-fetched, since in more than one passage my memory brought me back to works like Birdy or Passion, mostly considered marginal in the context of the career of the great English musician, but emblematic instead of his musical sensibility; Sævarsson, in addition to his instrumental and compositional ability, adds that dark drama that goes well with the unique landscapes of his homeland, as well as an approach from which seems to transpire an extreme background that, however, is not evident from the biographical notes. The peculiarity of this first work under the name GlerAkur is, essentially, to represent in each track the progressive deformation of a state of mind, which goes from a sort of initial suspension to evoke a sense of threat, perhaps not well defined in its form and identity and for this reason even more insidious. Can’t You Wait is a magnificent test, further enriched by a remarkable cover, and is yet another exciting cadeau of a label like Prophecy, which never ceases to amaze for the variety and quality of its releases.

2016 – Prophecy Productions