Album: Amiina, Puzzle, Amiinamusik

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The ugly face of TV: How Jeremy Clarkson brought facial prejudice to a head

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Zed’s Dead: Hip hop was the starting point

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Reverb Festival and the quiet evolution of live classical music

London’s classical music scene is changing before our eyes.

Expanded to a sextet by the addition of a drummer and an "electronic artist", the Icelandic string quartet Amiina broaden their approach on this follow-up to 2007's enchanting debut Kurr.

They still stitch music together from tiny fragments of sound - harmonium, harpsichord, tuned percussion and harp alongside the strings – but there's a more purposive manner. "Asinn" accretes from apparently aimless noise – a cloud of brooding organ and fluttering harp, with an undertow of looming thunder – into a repeated four-note melody. "Over and Again" finds toy-town charm in the alliance of glockenspiel, pizzicato and bowed saw; and "Pusl" threads celesta and harpsichord around a scudding, glitchy groove, before a shiver of strings runs through it. Beautiful, delicate stuff.



DOWNLOAD THIS Asinn; Over and Again; Pusl; In The Sun

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