wildbirds & peacedrums: iris EP

Swedish husband and wife team Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin present the second vinyl-exclusive EP in their set of Icelandic recordings that combine to make up their third album, Rivers. A companion piece to the more musically dense Retina, which made use of the dozen-strong Schola Cantorum Reykjavík Chamber Choir, Iris provides an austere counterpoint, concentrating on the resonant sound of the steel pan drum. These Trinidadian instruments forced up against the Nordic vocals and crisp percussion conjure an intriguing, otherworldly atmosphere. The steel pans – at times sounding like undulating waves, at others like percussive water droplets – combine with the watery song titles (‘The Wave’, ‘The Drop’, ‘The Course’, ‘The Lake’, ‘The Well’) to form an abstract as well as literal theme.

The starkness of Iris compared with the grand, choral lushness of its companion piece is marked, and yet somehow it contrives to sound warmer, the steel pans inevitably providing a subconscious tropical island setting to melt some of the northern ice. But it’s Wallentin’s glistening vocals and finely tuned lyrics that lie at the heart of the record. She sounds confident yet fragile, her voice impacting with a surprisingly soulful edge and a focused control that is used to greatest effect on Iris centrepiece, ‘The Course’. Here, the mould created by the rest of the record is broken with a momentum that would no doubt enthrall in one of the duo’s notoriously dramatic live shows.

Final track, ‘The Well’, with its vortex of percussion, sounds oddly intimate and at the same time fiercely individual, underlining the fact that the music of Wildbirds & Peacedrums remains unclassifiable. It veers at times towards the jazz or folk idioms, Wallentin and Werliin always keep one foot on experimental ground. They predictably provoke comparisons with Björk – the benchmark for adventurous, emotionally raw music – but have found their own signature sound with these EPs.

[The Leaf Label; June 21, 2010]

Written by: Lucy Brouwer

Tags: iris EP, rivers, wildbirds and peacedrums

This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 5:45 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.