amiina: fantômas

Amiina's latest adventure, Fantômas, was originally composed as a live score to a silent masterpiece from 1913. Amiina's members decided right from the start that the music would also be able to stand on its own, independent of the visual narrative. Fantômas is melancholic and ethereal, yet full of suspense, pounding rhythms, and haunting melodies; A sound world full of contrasts, from darkness and utter terror, to heavenly melodies. The music thoughtfully composed, reoccurring themes and lied-motives build up a delicate structure where the listener can experience the piece as one entity - and then again different tracks or songs can be enjoyed independently. Violin, cello, drums, percussion, metallophone, table harp, ukulele, and electronics are the source material for the sound world of Amiina here, but it is expanded upon with their intelligent and imaginative usage of the different instruments and their varied and endless textures. The score Fantômas premiered in Paris in 2013 at the prestigious, Théâtre du Châtelet, where Amiina, together with musicians James Blackshaw, Tim Hecker, Loney Dear, and Yann Tiersen, took part in a special Halloween event, celebrating the centenary of the Fantômas series, directed by the French film director Louis Feuillade in 1913-1914. The Fantômas series - in five parts - ran for six hours with every musician/band providing their new live score for the series, the music commissioned by Yann Tiersen who curated the event. A huge success right from the beginning, Fantômas is an early example of the interplay between avant-garde intellectual and emerging mass culture, highly regarded by the French avant-garde of the 1920s, especially the surrealists, e.g. René Magritte and Guillame Apollinaire, the latter stating that "from the imaginative standpoint, Fantômas is one of the richest works that exist." When the magical, somewhat fragile sound world of Amiina meets the lord of terror something, unexpected and truly magical happens. Mengi is an operation created and managed by artists in Reykjavik, Iceland. gatefold jacket w/ printed inner sleeves. includes download.