The music of Icelandic artist Bjorn Kristinsson is pampered like a pasha. Lavish, unconventional percussive instruments dance like motes exposed by the light emitted from sunny synthesizers and colorful marching-band trumpet lines, while rich production values make languid guitars and boyish vocals sound surprisingly clean and buoyant.
Indeed, the arrangement of certain pieces are as deceptively simple and yet immeasurably complex as a shaft of sunlight breaking through the leaves. So far as mystery and allure are concerned, however, neither reaches any further than this point. One finds no further tension between accommodation and subversion, no framing of revelations or inspirations of any sort, and Kristinsson simply sets off headlong like a dislodged stone, running clear into banality and insipidity at every point. From clumsy prog rock crescendos, to messy smears of special effects, and finally slow twangs winding into saccharine atmospherics, it all comes across as rather showy and impotent.
In the linear notes, Kirstinsson states, “I’m inspired by good people. I’m inspired by bad people. I’m inspired by the music I listen to from time to time. I’m inspired by happiness. I’m inspired by sadness. I’m inspired by the sun and the snow.” Well, that’s nice, but the music fails to provide any sort of reason or natural feel through which it might stake claim or otherwise ensnare one’s attention. In fact, such hackneyed sayings, portraying as they do a certain affinity for a soggy eclecticism, speaks well to the music’s content, or noticeable lack thereof.
Max Schaefer
