Get the latest gossip
Kiasmos: II review – will have you crying tears of joy on the dancefloor
The Icelandic-Faroese duo follow their 2014 cult debut with a second album of meticulous, majestic, simply beautiful electronic music
The electronic duo – comprising Bafta-winning and Grammy-nominated Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Faroese musician Janus Rasmussen – make what they describe as “emotional rave”: euphorically melancholic music designed to have you crying on the dancefloor. Kiasmos: II artworkOpener Grown summons the sublimity of the natural world (warm beams of synth sunlight, forest floor-style rustling), supplementing such simple majesty with earthy strings that telegraph a kind of premature nostalgia for the present moment. Unpicking the meticulously layered building blocks of these songs is its own source of pleasure, from the strange scourer-like beats and gloopy synths of Spun to the watery sloshing on Dazed, and Bound’s smoothly whomping bass.
Or read this on The Guardian