Sounding unreasonably mature for a 21-year old composer, Olafur Arnalds has already got one well-received album behind him (Eulogy For Evolution), and this follow-up EP can only add to his growing reputation. It'd be all too easy to compare Arnalds with fellow Icelanders Nico Muhly and Johann Johannssonn, so that's precisely what I'll do: in general there's a sense of very tangible, heartstring-tugging romance common to the work of all three (and for that matter Max Richter) but to be more specific, the weary, bereft-sounding intonation of a computer voice runs throughout the course of the record, something directly reminiscent of the singing CPU on Johannsson's Englaborn - no bad thing to be associated with. Beyond that, Arnalds supplies ample evidence of great things to come, and given how emotive and grandly melancholic these compositions are, you might earmark him as a future superstar of film scoring - indeed, Zbigniew Preisner is bound to be another name that springs to mind listening to these skilfully fashioned miniatures. In addition to the strings and pianos that form the foundations of his sound, Arnalds isn't afraid to embrace more contemporary instrumentation: a careful, sparing use of micro-beats further assists the young composer in the establishment of a distinct voice within the community of current neo-romantic composers, within which he should surely be regarded as a rising talent. Utterly lovely - highly recommended.
