Jóhann Jóhannsson - Fordlandia download free

Norway is a bleak, desolate country with vast stretches of ice fields. It is nearly all daylight during the summer and nighttime during the winter. Even though Jóhann Jóhannsson is Icelandic, he does record in parts of Norway and such a sense of melancholy can be heard in Fordlandia. He builds layers of ambience through arpeggiating strings (violins and cellos) with piano notes, to make music that sounds like a movie score. If anything, the music resembles that of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Geir Jenssen’s Biosphere, or maybe Angelo Badalamenti soundtracks. It might even follow Steve Reich formulas without being as experimental or Ulrich Schnauss in a less pop-oriented direction. This “concerto” progression resembles classical music structure, where sections are like movements, but he also uses the Pink Floyd method of naming them (part 1, part 2, etc.). Fordlandia is part 3 of a trilogy, but I have not had a chance to listen to the others. Jóhannsson uses The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra And Chorus on the 1st and last 3 tracks. Although listening through from beginning to end gives the maximum effect, the tracks that garnered my aural attention were 10, Melodia (Guidelines For A Space Propulsion Device Based On Heim’s Quantum Theory), and 1, Fordlandia, in that order. Just to note, Burkhard Heim was a German physicist who wrote a paper about a method of faster-than-light space travel. Fordlândia, also by the way, is an imaginary town that Henry Ford hoped to build around a rubber plantation in the Amazon for his company’s car tires.