At the
outset everything merges. Echoes from the sound sources shroud
perception. Steadily the reflections subside as we draw closer to a
vital ever-changing core.
Icelandic saxophonist and composer Tumi A´rnason presents high-concept
sombre opus Hly´nun (Warming), a piece that addresses our
current existential threat, the climate crisis, through free jazz and
experimental improvisation.
Hlýnun invites the listener into a dynamic ecosystem. Four instruments
orbit each other, trade ideas and create vital soundscapes. A living
multiplicity that grows and flourishes, gains balance but is
threatened by an ever advancing hegemony. Songs of extinct birds are
unveiled through melodies and a requiem for life itself bursts out
of the organ. Man’s diagrams and machinery invade the composition,
rousing intensities and endangering its unity. Members are lost
in the commotion, the ecosystem regresses and becomes an apocalyptic ambiance, hiss
and silence.
At the end we dissolve into dust and phantoms amid machinery and void.
Tumi Árnason, saxophone
Magnús Jóhann, piano
Skúli Sverrisson, bass
Magnús Trygvason Eliassen, drums