Kiasmos want your tears. The electronic duo – comprising Bafta-winning and Grammy-nominated Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Faroese musician Janus Rasmussen – make what they describe as “emotional rave”: euphorically melancholic music designed to have you crying on the dancefloor. Let the contents of their second album (released a decade on from their self-titled cult debut) wash over you, and you may well find yourself in a pleasingly maudlin mood.
Opener Grown summons the sublimity of the natural world (warm beams of synth sunlight, forest floor-style rustling), supplementing such simple majesty with earthy strings that telegraph a kind of premature nostalgia for the present moment. Sometimes it’s the layers of swooping, melodic beauty that prove most evocative (as on Sworn) or the duo’s ability to bottle joyful energy (Told). On Burst, the duo interrupt both buildups and drops with elegiac strings to headily bittersweet effect.
Temporarily tune out of these broad-strokes emotions, however, and you’ll find the finer details just as compelling. Unpicking the meticulously layered building blocks of these songs is its own source of pleasure, from the strange scourer-like beats and gloopy synths of Spun to the watery sloshing on Dazed, and Bound’s smoothly whomping bass. There isn’t a remotely harsh sound on this entire record. Tracks are largely built on breakbeats – which occasionally supply a turn-of-the-millennium chillout vibe – and it’s their inherent precarity that propels the tracks forward, preventing them from stagnating in their restrained beauty and ensuring that this album is soothing but never dull, wholesome yet gently electrifying too.