And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound Of Bees

Unlike Fordlândia (the 2008 album for 4AD that scored an imaginary narrative for Henry Ford's failed Brazilian venture), Jóhannsson's newest truly is a soundtrack, composed for the animated film Varmints by Marc Craste. Like Fordlândia, it marks a slight turn towards more overtly traditional composition, at least in comparison to his previous works on Touch and IBM 1401, A User's Manual, though the latter was still prone to passages of widescreen oversell. And in the Endless Pause is at its most compelling (at least without the visual element) when a balance is struck between the melancholy of the theme and a counterpoint of electronics and/or source sounds. "The Flat" pits isolated piano notes against a frayed sample of strings that waft in and out of silence. "Rainwater" turns a string cue into an electronic step intro to a rousing elegy that's one of the few upwards moves on the album.