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Jóhannsson is again recording in Prague, mostly with a 60-piece orchestra. The strings are hardly audible at the beginning of the disc's 14 minute title opener, making their slow and stately progress towards an eventually fully-risen volume that might startle the listener. It makes a choral swell, but with strings rather than voices. Then, it recedes into the distance. There's a character that's reminiscent of Arvo Pärt's gently sawing developments, or more precisely, the steady processes of The Sinking Of The Titanic, when composer Gavin Bryars was in his most contemplative state.
It's sometimes hard to discern individual instruments, as Jóhannsson is concerned with the common compositional purpose. The sound of what might be either guitar, organ or electronic tweaking tends to merge into a single voice, gradually gaining in grandeur. Further comparisons could be made with Popol Vuh, or with the landscaping experiments of Fripp & Eno.
The four short Melodia pieces allow for a smaller chamber sound, with bass clarinet, harp or chimes establishing a quicker pulse, but still set against a brooding string backwash. Piano and churchy organ enter at certain points, subtly tipping the sonic emphasis, and The Great Pan Is Dead actually features a vocal chorus. The strongest release arrives at the climax of Melodia (the main nine minute piece with this title), with its low bass figure, faint percussion and billowing strings. The closing 15 minute How We Left Fordlândia has a theme that's suitably conclusive, entering Michael Nyman territory for the first time. This album might be a Fordlândia-style failure in terms of realising its concept, but its musical stasis provides a most extraordinarily tranquil sense of pleasure, supremely calming without being in any way bland. --Martin Longley
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Customer Reviews
With 'Fordlandia' we could believe concinnity to be
his raison d'etre given its glowing prominence
in this truly beautiful work.
It's high concept stuff (ie Henry Ford's unrealised
dream of creating a little piece of hometown USA in
the Amazonian jungle to produce rubber in the 1920s!)
but never anything less than accessible and memorable.
The project follows a programmatic (but non-literal)
course subdivided by a series of interludes described as
'melodia' by the composer. Their relationship to the
main narrative is ambiguous but thematically coherent.
Traditional orchestral instrumentation and electronic
elements are subtely and unobtrusively integrated into
the dense fabric of the compositional tapestry.
Opening track 'Fordlandia' gives up its magic slowly in
gently rising waves of rich string orchestration.
The relatively simple thematic material holds our
attention in an almost hypnotic way. It is as though
we are lifted up above the subject and borne through
the clouds to a point where we can attain the clearest
view of the whole. Music of true vision.
The string quartet on 'Fordlandia - Ariel View',
with its haunting, ethereal melody, gives us a more
intimate experience of what flying might be like if
only we had wings.
The pipe organ deployed on the brief but elegaic 'Chimaerica'
is gradually undermined by jarring electrical interference.
A sense of an ancient world coming under attack from the present.
The use of the choir in 'The Great God Pan Is Dead' is
a beautifully realised textural idea.
'Melodia (Guidelines For A Space Propulsion Device Based
On Heim's Quantum Theory)' makes use of half-heard internal
rhythms which shift in and out of the blissfully sustained
orchestral ostinato. The piece builds gradually until it
reaches a marvelously uplifting coda.
The concluding segment 'How We Left Fordlandia' is full of
melancholy and longing. An achingly sad depiction of the loss
of one man's dream vividly reimagined by another.
With 'Fordlandia' Mr Johannsson has created
a work of sublime and epic invention.
Essential.
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