LP – Standard Edition Black Vinyl.

Acclaimed Icelandic theremin musician Hekla returns with Turnar, her third album of devastatingly heavy, spectral soundscape-songwriting, entering a sublime paranormal plane of haunting dread.

Now augmenting her virtuosic solo theremin work with cello, voice, and the sacred church organ of Icelandic master Kristjn Hrannar, the evolution of Heklas unique magic summons new worlds with Turnar. The album was recorded partly in (and named after) a medieval castle tower in rural France, its ruinous black broken in spare beams of angelic stained-glass light. But, writes Hekla, the sound of theremin kind of opens up a portal into a new realm that both looks into a dark old world and to the future. The record is an alternately beautiful and crushing space voyage into a glacial underworld cascading with phosphorescence and cave drip, conjuring ancient choral ritual just as readily as redolent sci-fi gloam.

Opener Inni begins with swooning and shimmering lines of theremin that shiver with electrified energy before subfrequency bass elevates them into a glowing plasma, hovering above a crystallised surf. Key moment Grminn wails with ghostly harmonics while distorted drones crash together in a stormy and blackened netherworld sea. It traces a neat progression from Heklas last album – the acclaimed Xiuxiuejar – while also welcoming an expanded timbral palette and flourishing compositional confidence. At the end of side A, Var delicately places sonic artefacts about a desolate negative space, creating a dense inverse gravity. As with the rest of the record, a claustrophobic gauze hangs over music that could otherwise be called subverted songwriting, aligning Heklas sonics with avant-garde, musique concrte and sound-art.

Eerie, wailing sounds over distorted feedback drones Vibrato-heavy harmonies chirrup and throb in agonisingly slow motion. |
The Guardian, Album of the Month

Cinematic…carefully orchestrated…delicately explores unfamiliar territory with uncanny finesse.
The Wire

Tracklist:

A1. Inni
A2. Kyrr
A3. kyrr
A4. Var

B1. sku og Eldi
B2. lga
B3. Grminn
B4. Flkjur