★★★★★
It makes sense that Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm are both on Erased Tapes: their styles are in many ways cut from the same cloth. On his own, Arnalds is a thoughtful and skilled composer who confidently shifts between acoustic and electronic worlds, while Frahms is a modern classical virtuoso as comfortable sitting at a lone piano as he is coaxing music from an assortment of interconnected keyboards and FX pedals...
- www.residentadvisor.net
2015-12-21
★★★★★
It makes sense that Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm are both on Erased Tapes: their styles are in many ways cut from the same cloth. On his own, Arnalds is a thoughtful and skilled composer who confidently shifts between acoustic and electronic worlds, while Frahms is a modern classical virtuoso as comfortable sitting at a lone piano as he is coaxing music from an assortment of interconnected keyboards and FX pedals...
- www.residentadvisor.net
2015-12-21
★★★★★
Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm are the two poster boys of the consistently brilliant Erased Tapes label, and their latest Collaborative Works release is a compilation of their work together over the years. Collaborative Works combines three previously vinyl-only releases--Stare, Loon, and Life Story Love and Glory--along with several new tracks from Trance Frendz, an audio recording of a new studio film of the duo at work together...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2015-11-19
★★★★★
Prior to the invention of the gramophone and recorded music at large, the world of classical music, as well as musical interpretation at large, was a vastly different place. Instead of worrying about or fussing over producing the most accurate exegesis of a famed composer's musings, it was an instrumentalist's job to handle the composition in any way that they saw fit, to invoke their own character and emotion into the proceedings and make them that much more infallible to behold...
- www.popmatters.com
2015-04-02
★★★★★
There's something uniquely affecting about film scores. They're one form of media interpreting another, so they reside in a distinct sort of dualistic existence. It's a category of music that captures the many moments the film reel contributes, and yet, that very film reel can paint a new purpose onto its score, an exact context that makes it so much more appreciable...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-02-02
★★★★★
For Now I Am Winter is like a musical score without its accompanying film or piece of cold modernist art. For talented Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds, who has frequented as tour partner for Sigur Rós, this is both his album's greatest asset and its central flaw. Winter is emotionally heavy - and powerfully so at times - yet can feel a little too thin and diaphanous as it reiterates the same cold, sombre tones...
- www.theaureview.com
2013-06-17
★★★★★
It isn't rare for classically trained musicians to cross into indie, but moving the other way is trickier. Icelandic pianist Ólafur Arnalds, a young composer of shadowy, wistful, slow-paced chamber music, is making it work. He began as a teenaged hardcore drummer with an illicit love of classical and film music. His efforts in that vein earned him a solo deal with Erased Tapes, home to likeminded artists such as Peter Broderick...
- pitchfork.com
2013-04-11
★★★★★
Goto commentsLeave a commentShare Icelandic composer and multi-instrumentalist Olafur Arnalds has returned with his fourth album in six years, a subtle and modest effort entitled For Now I Am Winter. Historically, words like subtle and modest sometimes run the risk of coming off negative, or at the very least bear the sting of a backhanded compliment. However in Arnalds' case, those words can be applied in a more favorable and genuine sense...
- www.mxdwn.com
2013-04-08
★★★★★
7
Critical Mass
Release Date: April 2, 2013Label: Mercury Classics
Ólafur Arnalds / Photo by Marino Thoriacius / Mercury Classics The major label debut from Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds begins and ends on a familiar note, with bookend tracks flaunting his signature blend of stately electronic ambience and classical flourishes; the closer, "Carry Me Anew," also dissolves into about 20 seconds of...
- www.spin.com
2013-04-23
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