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We cannot deny the ambition or the steady hand Óskar Arngrímsson brings to his music. Recording under the name Ótal his EP Heyr (33:21) feels more measured than most modular synth realizations. At the heart of its brief beauty are four smoothly engaging tracks - each blurring the borders between collage, sculpture, abstraction and tonal representation. Once our psyches have sufficiently slowed we will be able to appreciate its enchanting low-wattage character. Original, restlessly changing and charging sounds float free of context or lineage, with meaning pointing in multiple possible directions. While rising electronic forms enthrall in a slowly revealing timbral bloom oscillators take their turn advancing, stacking and receding. Even so, this artist's hidden advantage may relate more to the transformation of environmental field recordings than any meticulously calibrated module and its convoluted patch cable routing. As enigmatic as the realm it is trying to depict Heyr does not merely hang in the air, inert. It sparkles, shines and gleams - moving as easily out through the cosmos as it does inward to the recesses of the human spirit. From anxious mosaic, to weeping in the ruins, but then on to a whisper of ease from the bitter awareness of time's passage, this stirring work helps how we listen to the world. Our minds, trained from birth to calculate may rest while Heyr in running. We might encounter something different and unknown, or dwell quietly in a place to think, rather than just rearrange thoughts - to come away with a better connection to our own life, and the questions, light and longings that are circulating there.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 3 April 2025 |
