Skurken’s Nótt marks a striking evolution in Jóhann Ómarsson’s sound—retaining the emotive depth of earlier works while exploring a broader, more varied electronic palette. Released on the ever-reliable Touched Music, it’s a cohesive and heartfelt journey through texture, rhythm, and reflection that both honors the past and points clearly toward the future.
Skurken expands, evolves with Nótt
For a long time, I’ve very much been looking forward to Skurken’s next offering, and I’m happy to see it back on one of my favorite labels — Touched Music. Now not to say that previous installments of Jóhann Ómarsson’s music were dark, but they were certainly darker in tone and this one is a bit of a departure all round to what I was expecting.
Whereas both “Zetorr” and “Dagur” provided perfect backdrops to long city-walks, with a firm grounding in modern electronica, Nótt features a ton of well-placed instrumentation and is basically a journey through several electronic styles—all the while remaining cohesive and thematic. Each piece is immersive, whether it be the introductory “After Sunset”—strong triplet-based cuts and menacing off-phrases, or the powerful and emotive “Moatún 7,” my interest is never lost and I wait patiently on the next occurrences. I don’t have to wait long for them. Gaps between pieces are minimal and to the point, with transitions making complete sense as you’re taken from one track to the next.
Cases in point are the beginnings of “Remember,” whose liquidity and counterpoint bring me back to countless listenings of Gareth Clarke—or the juxtaposition between “The Howitzer Hill Massacre” and “The Aftermath” which although two very different pieces of music are clearly two halves of the same coin. Nótt has it all—and it doesn’t actually matter your favorite type of electronic music as I am willing to bet you’re going to find some of it here—from darker and more serious techno rhythms all the way to two-step and ambience.
Beats shine through complex soundscapes ::
Going through it again and again the whole thing has a testimonial and celebratory feel about it. Song titles such as “Moatún 7” and “The Interment” can’t be ignored, and one can only wonder if this is a tribute to both great losses (and subsequent happiness through reminiscence) the electronic community has experienced in recent years. The mixing is incredible to be honest. Beats stay where they should be and even in the most complex of pieces, they shine through, finding their place as part of wider sounds that in other circumstances could easily swallow everything else.
This is clearly a work of love, frequently revisited by the author to ensure each piece laid down is as perfect as it could be. I can’t fault a single auditory decision and everything very much seems to be in the right place. The ordering of the pieces, both within and between tracks, may appear to be a see-saw of mild chaos and calm. However as I similarly revisit it’s clear that the elements that drive this variance are laid down very early on and were very much there all along. It’s easy to miss the woods for the trees sometimes.
One need not look too far into the past to see the path laid out before them, and I for one think this release shows the path ahead is very bright indeed.
Nótt is available on Touched Music. [Bandcamp]
