This is Johann's second album for Touch, after the highly acclaimed 'Englabörn'. 'Virðulegu Forsetar' contains one hour-long piece for 11 brass players, percussion, electronics, organs and piano. It's presented as an ordinary stereo CD and as a DVD-Audio with a high resolution 5.1 surround mix. The piece had its live debut in Hallgrimskirkja, a large church in Reykjavik and the city's towering edifice, and was named "the most memorable musical event of 2003" in Iceland's leading newspaper. The piece has 'Englabörn's' quiet, elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the first album's exquisite miniatures in favor of an extended form that reveals a long, slow process. A simple theme played by the brass section is repeated throughout the entire piece using different voicings and instrumentation.
As the piece goes on, the tempo slows down, until it is extremely slow. Around the middle of the piece, the tempo starts to speed up again, until it reaches the original tempo.
Space and the sense of place were very important in the performance and recording of the piece. Players were positioned both in front and at the back of the church and two organs were used, again, one in front and one at the back. This created a sense of immersion and a sound that is powerful without ever being "loud". As the piece is written for a specific location, it made sense to record it live in this same space and attempt to 're-create' it for the listener with 5.1 surround technology. This was like creating an audio 'mold' or 'cast' of the inner sonic architecture of the building. In this way, the music engages in a dialogue with the space it's performed in and the recording process becomes as much a documentation of a place as a documentation of music.
Jóhann writes: "During the first live performance of the piece, the church ceiling was filled with blue helium balloons which were timed to fall extremely slowly to the ground during the performance and scatter among the audience. To our pleasant surprise, the balloons reacted with the sound, falling with greater frequency as the volume increased. During the performance the light slowly changed through the church windows as the sun went down. The concert was fairly late, ending at around midnight and it being a bright, cloudless spring evening, the combination of all these physical and natural processes made for quite a memorable moment". "I had a number of things going through my mind during the writing of the piece, some of them being an obsession with entropy, Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", postal horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy, "singularities", Nietzsche's Eternal recurrence, Moebius strips. I'm absolutely not interested in imposing any one 'meaning' on the piece, but all these things were flying around somewhere in my head. A casual listener might categorize the piece as ambient or meditative, but I think this is really wrong - for me it's much more about chaos and tension rather than harmony. I go through many different emotions listening to the piece, veering from intense joy to acute sadness. The central point is perhaps how a very simple thing can change by going through a very simple process - something about change and transformation and the inevitability of chaos."
'Virðulegu Forsetar' is performed by the Caput Ensemble, conducted by Gudni Franzson, with Skuli Sverrison on bass and electronics, Matthias M.D. Hemstock on bells, glockenspiel and electronics, Hordur Bragason and Gudmundur Sigurdsson on organs and Johann Johannsson on piano and electronics.

「影乐志」首度以CD的形式，面向全球荣誉呈现作曲家Jóhann Jóhannsson、Jonas Colstrup与导演娄烨合作的《风中有朵雨做的云》电影原声音乐。影片将一段在中国广州发生的真实事件作为背景，引入了一段历经中国改革开放，横跨三十年的大时代悲剧。本片也是继《浮城谜事》、《推拿》之后娄烨与Jóhann Jóhannsson的第三次合作。全片的音乐是在《推拿》一段未曾完全使用的音乐《黑暗中行走》的基础上重新解构并全新发展而来，并最终形成了一次模糊了音乐与声音界限的工业化式篇章。
整张专辑的音乐素材在作曲家Jonas Colstrup的协助与监督下，以中国大陆公映时发行的黑胶唱片为基础被重新编辑、排序。Colstrup长期合作的录音师Thomas Eberger在瑞典为本张唱片进行了全新的混缩和母带制作。唱片的封面设计则是邀请Jóhann Jóhannsson长期合作的伙伴，来自丹麦的音乐家兼设计师Anders Ladegaard完成。
本CD发行限量600套，每套唱片均拥有唯一的烫金收藏编号。

「影乐志」以CD的形式，面向全球首度荣誉呈现作曲家Jóhann Jóhannsson、Jonas Colstrup与导演娄烨合作的《推拿》电影原声音乐。电影《推拿》改编自中国著名作家毕飞宇的同名小说，通过提炼盲人小马的故事，串联起一家按摩中心中的盲人群体，关注他们之间流动的情欲、伤痛和仿徨。影片通过失焦的主观镜头和声音为先的视听构想，完美地还原了小说中在黑暗世界里发生的聚散离合。Jóhann Jóhannsson与Jonas Colstrup的音乐则通过对音景和钢琴旋律的构建，巧妙地还原了盲人视觉下的感官体验与心理感受。影片不仅获得了51届台湾电影金马奖最佳音乐奖的提名，也横扫了包括最佳剧情片奖在内的六座金马奖奖项。
《推拿》是Jóhann Jóhannsson少数未公开发行过的电影音乐作品之一。整张专辑的音乐编辑工作在作曲家Jonas Colstrup的协助与监督下完成，音乐混缩和母带制作由与他长期合作的录音师Thomas Eberger在瑞典进行。唱片的封面设计则是邀请Jóhann Jóhannsson长期合作的伙伴，来自丹麦的音乐家兼设计师Anders Ladegaard完成。
本CD发行限量500套，每套唱片均拥有唯一的烫金收藏编号。

A year has passed since the untimely death of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. In tribute to an exceptional artist and musical storyteller, Deutsche Grammophon is set to release a two-volume selection of his most important works. RETROSPECTIVE I will be issued on 26 April as a deluxe hardcover book edition, with seven albums featuring Jóhannsson’s earlier works, including his previously unreleased soundtrack to the documentary White Black Boy. All seven albums will now be made available on the Yellow Label.
The phenomenal Jóhann Jóhannsson was, in his own words, “obsessed with the texture of sound”. Together with a serious dose of creative inspiration, that obsession enabled him to distil music into primal forms. He had a gift for bringing together highly complex themes and starkly contrasting musical ideas with both apparent ease and striking emotional directness. The composer died a year ago at the age of just 48. Deutsche Grammophon is now celebrating his legacy with a two-part retrospective project which will encompass all his major works, along with a previously unissued soundtrack album. The first part of this special edition will appear on 26 April and will comprise seven albums and a hardcover book.
Born in Reykjavík on 19 September 1969 Jóhann Jóhannsson was involved with music from an early age. As a young man he played in various rock and pop bands and was part of Iceland’s indie scene, before eventually deciding to focus on writing music rather than performing. His debut album, Englabörn, which came out in 2002, reveals that even at that early stage, he was already a master storyteller, a composer who could translate feelings and emotions into powerfully atmospheric soundscapes and compelling musical portraits. Jóhannsson gained international renown for his 2013 score for the film Prisoners – just two years later he won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for the score for The Theory of Everything. A second Oscar nomination followed in 2016 for the thriller Sicario (2015). He went on to write the scores for the science fiction film Arrival and for The Mercy – the latter album was released shortly before his death; further Hollywood projects were in the pipeline.
A pioneering figure in the contemporary music scene, Jóhannsson ignored the barriers between classical and electronic music. By fusing together Minimalist elements, traditional forms, symphonic expansiveness and both acoustic and electronic sounds, he created not only hynotically lyrical images, but also an entirely new musical idiom.
The selection of early works that have been chosen for Deutsche Grammophon’s RETROSPECTIVE I show Jóhannsson to have been a composer of imagination and versatility in equal measure. The earliest recording is Virðulegu Forsetar (2004), an hour-long elegiac work for eleven-piece brass ensemble, percussion, electronics, organ and piano, recorded in Reykjavík’s Hallgrímskirkja. The soundtrack album Dís features an exceptional array of artists, including members of the bands The Funerals and Singapore Sling, and singer Ragnheiður Gröndal, who all give intensive voice to Jóhannsson’s melancholy narrative. And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees – which weaves together orchestral writing with electronic synth sounds in unique style – was written to accompany the animated short Varmints, while The Miners’ Hymns is the audiovisual masterpiece that resulted from a hugely productive collaboration between Jóhannsson and American filmmaker Bill Morrison. The documentary soundtrack Copenhagen Dreams is Jóhannsson’s tribute to the city in which he was living at the time – a moving sound collage for string quartet, clarinet, celesta, keyboard and electronics. As for Free the Mind, it was written to underpin a documentary about the power of meditation, and is evocatively scored for orchestra, piano, percussion and electronics.
A special inclusion in this first retrospective volume is Jóhannsson’s score for White Black Boy. Previously unreleased, this is the soundtrack for the Danish documentary of the same name which sensitively tells the story of Shida, a Tanzanian boy with albinism who is taken away from his parents and sent to boarding school, in order to be kept safe from witch doctors who would otherwise target his body parts and blood.
This vibrant and revealing musical portrait of Jóhann Jóhannsson is accompanied by a hardcover book containing essays by Wyndham Wallace and John Schaefer and a generous selection of photos of this most modest of artists, providing further insight into his life and work.
Christian Badzura, Director New Repertoire at Deutsche Grammophon, says:
“As Jóhannsson´s releasing label we are honoured to continue celebrating his hugely rich and diverse catalogue, and look forward to issuing previously unreleased recordings and compositions in the years to come.”
RETROSPECTIVE II will follow in 2020, and will include, among other works, his more recent soundtracks for the films Arrival and The Mercy and the 2016 studio album Orphée. The albums of the RETROSPECTIVE edition will also be available digitally through platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer, Google Play Music, YouTube Music.

影片故事发生在1983年，凯奇饰演的雷德·米勒是一位樵夫，与老婆曼蒂（安德丽亚·瑞斯波罗格 饰演）居住在深山林里的一栋木屋。老婆曼蒂被一个价值观扭曲的宗教组织“新黎明之子”（The Children of the New Dawn）看上。该组织的领头杰瑞马雅（莱纳斯·罗彻 饰演）欲收纳曼蒂入会未果，就在雷德面前活活把曼蒂烧死。雷德一度精神错乱，最终踏上复仇之路。

White Black Boy (Original Soundtrack)

Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson was an Icelandic composer who wrote music for a wide array of media including theatre, dance, television, and films. His work is stylised by its blending of traditional orchestration with contemporary electronic elements. Jóhann released solo albums from 2002 onward.

Previously unreleased soundtrack to the 2009 movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher.