 List Price: $14.98
Lowest Price: $11.03 
Album Description: Most music lovers first heard of Amiina due to their association with another Icelandic band called Sigur Ros. The girls started working with Sigur Ros in the mid 90's, resulting in their first shows with the band in 1999. The rest, of course, is history, as Amiina became the string players for all of Sigur Ros' subsequent tours and records. Like the sound of cooing, aspects of Amiina's music flicker quietly and float softly, content and beautiful. Kurr is full of dazzling moments of that caliber, a wholly original work that is delicate, intricate and dream-like. Their music is genuinely so special, ineffably charming and infused with a sense of cosmic magic. It's certainly wielded that power on us. Amazon.com: Amiina not only sound like Arvo Pärt in a music box, they actually play a music box. It's among the thrift-store instruments the Icelandic quartet employs, which include wine glasses, bowed saws, antique synthesizers, and--yes, even the violins, viola, and cello that they originally started with. We've been hearing Amiina for a few years now, adding strings and additional quirkiness to the last few albums by fellow Icelanders Sigur Rós. While Sigur Rós work in epic electric dimensions, Amiina work in the delicate spaces of fragile sounds and folk refrains. On Kurr, their first full-length album, they manage to be quaint and exotic, like a modern vision set in a dusty portrait from the past. Amiina's mixture of classicism and humor owes a debt to the Penguin Café Orchestra. But while the late Simon Jeffe's outfit had the air of erudite wit and debonair grace, Amiina are cuter, musically and visually. Like kids in the attic, they exude a more innocent, yet exploratory charm. Whether plucking pastoral electric guitar lines and singing a schoolyard chant on "Rugla," bowing saws and tapping glockenspiels on "Seoul," or actually playing their classical strings, Amiina enchant like a peek inside an elven gathering under the roots of Yggdrasil. --John Diliberto Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-04-18
Amusing grace
This graceful piece has all the bells, strings, xylophone and chime influences which will catch you ears in a kind way. Its intense but soft musicality with seducing tones can induce you to remember Amelie's soundtrack: it has that instant classicality to it with high pitched almost naive and playful piano keys and steady violins. It is also haunting but not in a dark way, more in that grounded but light folk touch. It's at that edge where it avoids marshmallowy syrup, but it remains purely "musical" -not pop, nor rock, no vocals.
Amiina manage to guide you with grace through different types of instruments and their blending makes for one unique genre, agreeable in all, with an innocent vanilla like taste although it could be perceived to some as rather identical, one from the other song. I think the interest here it's the originality and calmness that breathes through as well as the playfulness of the whole: it does have the Iceland touch without the pretentiousness maybe of higher valued "stars" and other "rock" influences.
"Kurr" will fit into someone's collection who seeks to diversify and keep abreast of the current trends without falling into the pop-group-flavor-of-the-week syndrome.
Rating:
Date: 2008-01-12
Wintertime music
To be honest, Amiina didn't really grab me the first time I listened. It flowed in one ear, out the other, and left me thinking, "What was I listening to again?"
But I started liking them after a few more listens. Their ethereal little ambient pop tunes sound like Sigur Ros with chimes and violins (minus the vocals), and their debut album "Kurr" is full of that kind of stuff. A few songs are too ambient for their own good, but the majority hit the target.
It opens on a hesitant note with "Sogg," a delicate little wintry melody that sounds like it was tapped out on a toy piano during a snowstorm. It's basically a pretty little cycling melody doesn't really go anywhere, but it serves as a pretty good introduction.
That is left to the gentle "Rugla," a folky melody that is slowly overtaken by a web of violins and assorted strings, and some muted little whoops in the background. "Glámur" is a pretty, stately little tune on metallophone, smothered in strings, which wouldn't sound out of place in a music box.
That sets the theme for the rest of the album -- haunting, chilly pop tunes, folky melodies doused in violins, mournful little string ballads, ghostly interludes of wailing synth. And toward the end, the songs get really full-bodied -- a melancholy horn tune, and the swirling, interwoven "Lóri."
It does have a few dud songs, though. The finale "Boga is a good song, but almost ten minutes in length. "Lúpína" sounds like bamboo wind chimes -- not bad, but rather superfluous -- and "Sexfaldur" simply doesn't come to life until the very end.
It somehow doesn't come as a surprise that Amiina sounds like Sigur Ros trapped in a music box -- apparently they have collaborated together, and had a part in the "Screaming Masterpiece" documentary along with Mum, Bjork and other bands. So their pretty, ethereal sound isn't a surprise, although it takes some time to get into it and enjoy its layers.
Their ethereal sound mainly comes from the chiming metallophone, glockenspiel, the airy windy synth, and the tinkly electric piano. But they also weave in some stately classical string arrangements -- violin, viola and cello -- as well as some gentle harmonium. And in some of the catchier and/or folkier songs, they ground the melodies with acoustic guitar.
It's a very smooth, ethereal, wintry kind of music, and Amiina don't really break it up with vocals. No vocals, no lyrics. There are a few songs where they murmur non-words like "la la," but these seem more like another instrument than actual singing. I will say this -- they have very pretty, fairyline voices, which doesn't hurt the music's impact.
"Kurr" is a solid debut for a talented Icelandic quartet. They need to strengthen a few weak spots, but overall it's very pretty. Rating: 
Date: 2007-12-13
Amiina
Similarly to Sigur Ros... Amiina is grand... and it arrived at the same time/in the same package as their boy-icelandic-counterpart. There is a scratch on the CD, which I am not sure how happened, but it still plays fine. Again, thanks for having it available for purchase. Rating: 
Date: 2007-12-05
Three Stars for Total Neutrality
It's hardly right for me to review this album at all. I came upon it only by noticing a review that called for "bombing Iceland" as the home of the devil inhabiting such music. Truly incomprehenisble! It's dreamy stuff, or rather the background music for daydreams, which are not such bad things after all.
On the other hand, to compare this to Arvo Part, as the editorial reviewer does, is equally bizarre. Part's music is powerful, disturbing, profound... anything but dreamy... and it occurs on a much more complex acoustical/musical level. If you do like Kurr, you might be ready to graduate to Arvo Part or Erkki Sven-Tuur, an Estonian composer whose compositions DO what Kurr only hints at. Or you might go back toward stronger folk roots with the Swedish group Vasen, especially their CDs without percussion.
I'll just declare neutrality about Kurr. I neither like nor dislike their sound, but I certainly don't plan to bomb anyone. Rating:
Date: 2007-11-25
meditative and healing
I happened upon Amiina's Kurr while looking for music to listen to after a recent surgery and am so happy I did. The music is playful, light, and lyrical while creating a tone of ethereal peacefulness. As an artist, I will surely use this music in my studio to support my creative practice as well. |
