Gisli Thor Gudmundsson disappears behind the name of Traject and delivers a record that maps the geology of Iceland to a series of intricate and icily constructed electronic pieces. Strengir Hrynja is a short record — barely more than forty minutes spread across six tracks — but it is dense enough that there is a good deal to chew on. “Water For Muddy People” unfolds like a seismic tremor hammering through the cold tundra, thrashing the granite and basalt against an icy sea. The salt water is nearly frozen and it moves like slush, bubbling and gurgling slowly under its own weight. The layers of percussion are caught in this cold water and pop sluggishly like air bubbles slowly being squeezed into nothingness by the compressing ice. “She Said” begins with a bit of guitar noodling and some static-laced beats before becoming swept away by a pounding wave of heavy beats. The guitar fights the currents, tries to parcel out something other than bits of melody and, in the end, only succeeds because the tide runs out.
“CHKAL” rotates on a thick platform of dope beats while ghosts of MCs caper about the microphone. It’s a spectral version of a day at Dr. Dre’s studio, laced with ice on the curtains and frost on the wires. “Keysplitter” creaks like old rigging and chimes like a half-frozen bell tree. A single flute whispers a lost melody over a phantom haze of random voices. It’s as if Autechre were mashing up a field recording from a frozen schooner and a hazy afternoon at a Japanese temple (with just the right amount of percussion thrown in to keep the work moving along, of course).
And there’s a landmark for you, if you will. Start out in the dub and glitch basements of Berlin and sight yourself along a line through Autechre’s clatter and soot of industrial London and out to sea, shooting for the frozen wilderness of Iceland where the ice chips away at your brain and the volcanic heat throbs beneath your feet. Gudmundsson’s work is slow dancing to geological time shifts where epochs are compressed down into sonic history lessons and the pop and click of shifting rock evolves alongside the hiss and hum of changing weather and lunar wave patterns.
A very solid and listenable record.
Strengir Hrynja is OUT NOW on Spezial Material and is distributed by Baked Goods.
