Jóhann Jóhannsson

Never heard of Johann Johannsson? Well, here's a 30-second bio of the artist. He's Iceland's premier multi-instrumentalist and composer. He also fraternizes with members of the hipper-than-thou band Sigur Ros via the Kitchen Motors collective, so you know that this guy has cred by the bucketful. He also has the knack to make even the finest hairs that dot your spine to stand on end with his masterful, spectral compositions.

The lushly orchestral Fordlandia is more like the score to a psychological thriller than it is an album you casually pop into your CD player. It's a collection of songs that tickles and stimulates all of the senses. There's a current of icy calmness that runs through all of Fordlandia's veins. Periods of relative quiet are punctuated by fuller arrangements and louder, resonating strings so much so that the six-minute-plus songs move like their own individual symphonies. "The Rocket Builder (Lo Pan!)" escalates into an unearthly and enigmatic song that can chill the blood, thanks to its ominous tones. The song transforms from soft and inviting to looming and loud, all due to the shift in the instruments. "Fordlandia Aerial View" weeps via its instruments through Johannsson's use of the violin. Fordlandia is spooky in the best possible way, manipulating instruments into emotional weapons. The release is almost 100 percent instrumental—there's what sounds like a choral part in "The Great God Pan is Dead"—yet despite a lack of lyrics, the songs still speak volumes and generate a a variety of moods upon a single, solitary listen.

— Amy Sciarretto
11.13.08

The second installment in Jóhann Jóhannsson's trilogy of albums about technology and iconic American brand names, Fordlandia expands on IBM 1401, A User's Manual by chronicling, among other things, the failure of Henry Ford's Brazilian rubber plant with the power of a 50-piece string orchestra. IBM, which included recordings of its titular computer, could have been gimmicky or overly conceptual, but the results were remarkably moving and personal. While Fordlandia is slightly more straightforward musically, its concepts and emotional impact are much more involved and ambitious. Fittingly, ambition is one of the album's major themes, along with failure, mortality, immortality, and technology's potential for creation and destruction. Jóhannsson depicts these dualities with portraits of great heights and, mostly, deep losses. Ford's doomed project -- which he envisioned as a utopia but ended in disaster, with rioting workers and the development of synthetic rubber, ultimately costing him millions of dollars -- provides the thematic backbone for the album's major pieces. "Fordlandia"'s strings and subtle electric guitars are never less than majestic, but move gradually and naturally from hope to bittersweet doubt over the course of 13 minutes, keeping the intimacy that Jóhannsson's work has shown since Englaborn. That bittersweetness wells into sorrow on "Fordlandia -- Aerial View"; recorded in a Reykjavik church with no edits, its aching strings and low-rumbling percussion sound equally devastated and beautiful.

Fordlandia also tells equally fascinating stories of creation and destruction that are less well known than Ford's: "The Rocket Builder (Lo Pan!)" takes its inspiration from self-taught chemist, rocket propulsion researcher, and occultist Jack Parsons, building from strings to precise electronics that overtake the track with a tense, slightly sinister beauty that deepens into dread thanks to doomy guitar chords. Its foil is "Melodia (Guidelines for a Space Propulsion Device Based on Heim's Quantum Theory)," inspired by German physicist Burkhard Heim, who, despite being blind, deaf, and having lost his hands in a World War II accident, devised a theory for space travel faster than the speed of light. Named after a research paper based on his work, the piece soars skyward on a looping pipe organ melody and streaming synths and strings, offering some hope among the rest of Fordlandia's gloom. "The Great God Pan is Dead" -- which alludes to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems about the demigod who embodied creation and destruction for her -- crystallizes these dualities, as well as the album's profound sense of loss, with choral vocals and rain.

Fordlandia's shorter pieces are nearly as heady and substantial as its major tracks: "Chimaerica"'s title blends the monster of Greek mythology with America, and its mournful pipe organ melody underscores the feeling that this album is a funeral service for the American dream. Variations on the "Melodia" theme tie the larger pieces together, appearing first as a clarinet-driven piece that evokes Ford's '20s heyday, then augmented with deep guitars inspired by Sunn 0)))'s work, and finally as a ghostly wash of strings and clarinets. Another 13-minute elegy, "How We Left Fordlandia," closes the album by uniting its concepts and musical themes in a somber but satisfying farewell. While knowing the inspiration behind the album reveals its depth, its music is more than powerful enough to be appreciated without the historical context that informs it. Beautiful, thoughtful, and sad on a grand scale, Fordlandia is nearly as ambitious as the stories it tells, but unlike its source material, it's another success for Jóhannsson. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide