Mikael Lind ~ Norðaustur

Iceland is home to some of the most unique pairings of sound and visual art, and Norðaustur (Northwest) is a fine addition to the canon.  The album began as an installation in a big fish oil tank in Raufarhöfn, where Sigga Björg‘s moving images were projected on the walls, “accompanied by synthesizers and effects that responded to their movements.” Mikael Lind later brought this music into the studio, where the album was born, an expansion on the original material.

The images are playful, a delight to the eye of the inner or actual child.  Resembling chalk art filmed with stop animation, they begin in an abstract fashion before revealing small delights:  a wolf becomes a bale of hay, a pupil switches homes from eyeball to eyeball, a human face escapes its own boundaries.  The music shifts gently from ambience to drone, the colors from black and white to orange.

All of these sounds and more are translated to the album, which makes a further turn to modern composition with a touch of electronics.  As a result, it is also much brighter, beginning with the gorgeous chimes that will become its hallmark.  Hearing “Fallaskipti,” one thinks of everything from sun on the water to children’s toys; and then the large, sweet chords enter as waves.  The images inside the oil tank have now escaped their boundaries.  One can imagine bales of hay turning back into wolves and running toward the horizon.

When the waves return on “Heiðríkja,” it becomes clear why the cover art of the album depicts a lake or fjord.  The interplay of water and light in Iceland is central to its physical allure.  Iceland’s northwest teems with vast, untapped beauty: sense of nature unbound, of ecosystems developing as they should.  Here and there a fishing village lies, houses painted in a rainbow of colors; a lone farmer tends a healthy flock of sheep; a small church, no road in sight, appears in the middle of a field.  The happiest tracks, such as “Tangi,” exude a spiritual uplift, peaking with the rapid chimes of “Órækt” (“Uncultivated”), a reflection of the area in which they roam.

The remote location of the fish oil tank, the nature of the physical presentation and the timbre of the music share one common theme: the discovery of wonder in unexpected places.  The titles of the late tracks “Flatlendi” (“Flatland”), “Steinsnar” (“Stone”) and “Bersvæði” (“Bare Ground”) don’t promise much, but they deliver tenderness and intricacy, a reminder that what seems barren may be teeming with life.  This is a perfect reminder for the small population of Raufarhöfn, where the weather continues to dance around the freezing mark, with a daily possibility of snow.  The long night will soon be replaced by seemingly everlasting days.  One thing becomes another: wolf to bale, installation to album, winter to spring.  (Richard Allen)