Album Review: Olafur Arnalds - For Now I Am Winter

Ólafur Arnalds emerges this month with his major label debut that builds upon the last six years of producing slow burning ambient music that quite uniquely brings together subtle electronics and evocative orchestrations. A virtual winter wonderland, Arnalds' latest longplayer continues to work up hauntingly beautiful and dreamy atmospheres but this time around they exist in numbing subzero temperatures. It is an approach that gives For Now I Am Winter a frosty touch and unlike many of his other compositions Arnalds' meditations on this album have a much more sombre and funereal feel.

Guest vocalist Arnór Dan features on four songs and on Old Skin he rather heartbreakingly finds an old man enviously contemplating youth. It feeds into We (Too) Shall Rest, a bitterly cold dirge that practically halts time as it leads the listener to deep meditative introspection. Arnalds' relatively simple and minimal piano compositions are augmented by a palette of electronic sounds that bring to mind Uusitalo and the icy house explorations of Karhunainen. The stately minimal orchestrations of Nico Muhly directs the strings of Icelandic Symphony Orchestra to sweep across this album but never overpower its always intimate tone. These elements come together beautifully on the album's title track where Dan's tremulous vocals softly coo sweet nothings. The cool trickle of piano notes on A Stutter unfold into a bittersweet daydream constructed of icy crystalline tones and a gently melting string quartet as Dan sweetly whispers intimate secrets, his vocals adding heartbreaking warmth to the mix. Existing between neo classical, ambient and indie pop, Arnalds delivers much more than just evocative music for imaginary films.