2012 - Iceland
Art Pop, Ambient Pop, Post-Rock
This is the kind of discoveries that motivates my deep explorations. Hjaltalín are an Icelandic and as far as knew before, there was a leading female singer and a very nice sound, but not much else.
But when I started listening to Enter 4 with the opening song and its beautiful title Lucifer/He Felt Like a Woman, it’s a male voice that caught me off guard. Enter 4 is an extraordinary album for a band that creates Art Po like no one else. If you can feel the Icelandic broad landscapes within the dense and stretched compositions, there’s a tension in all these songs that makes you feel like you’re witnessing the Earth open in front of your eyes.
With On the Peninsula and Forever Someone Else, the band goes into more stripped down compositions, with a focus on the lead singer’s voice and her tortuous melodic singing lines. And when you reach this end of it, it feels like you just experienced a very very rare moment of beauty. Until today, Hjaltalín remains a discreet shrine not much people have heard of. It’s a foreign land not much people have visited, and the memories you’ll get from this experience are one to cherish because of their virtu.
Don’t hesitate, travel inside Enter 4 without any expectations, and the music you’ll find will somewhat feel familiar but, if you pay attention close enough, the beauty of it will suddenly appear to your ears.
But when I started listening to Enter 4 with the opening song and its beautiful title Lucifer/He Felt Like a Woman, it’s a male voice that caught me off guard. Enter 4 is an extraordinary album for a band that creates Art Po like no one else. If you can feel the Icelandic broad landscapes within the dense and stretched compositions, there’s a tension in all these songs that makes you feel like you’re witnessing the Earth open in front of your eyes.
With On the Peninsula and Forever Someone Else, the band goes into more stripped down compositions, with a focus on the lead singer’s voice and her tortuous melodic singing lines. And when you reach this end of it, it feels like you just experienced a very very rare moment of beauty. Until today, Hjaltalín remains a discreet shrine not much people have heard of. It’s a foreign land not much people have visited, and the memories you’ll get from this experience are one to cherish because of their virtu.
Don’t hesitate, travel inside Enter 4 without any expectations, and the music you’ll find will somewhat feel familiar but, if you pay attention close enough, the beauty of it will suddenly appear to your ears.