A new release of a hard to find Sigur Ros album is now due for December and the news came out today along with the chance to stream one of the tracks. Read more about the album here on the LouderSound piece with an interview with remaining band members.
Odin’s Raven Magic is a collaboration between the band and Icelandic music legend Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (who is also ordained ‘chief goði’ of the pagan Norse religion Ásatrúarfélagið), as well as Steindór Andersen, a fisherman and one of Iceland’s most respected chanters of traditional epic narrative. The orchestral and choral arrangements were largely handled by former member and arranger Kjartan Sveinsson, and Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir from the band amiina, and the piece prominently features the unique sound of a five-octave marimba built from roughly-hewn pieces of stone by sculptor and artist Páll Guðmundsson.
The work grew out of Hilmarsson’s long-standing fascination with one particular chapter of Iceland’s Medieval literary canon known as the Edda, entitled Hrafnagaldur Óðins, or Odin’s Raven Magic, named after the Norse god’s two ravens, that flew over the Earth to survey and bring information back to him. The poem recounts a banquet held by the gods, in which ominous signs foretell the end of the world of both gods and men. In 1867 the poem was judged to be a fake, but then in 2002, scholars re-ratified it as an official 14th century addition to the Edda.
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