Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer-producer Olafur Arnalds and dreampop singer Talos, aka Eoin French, who tragically died in August last year, aged 36. Arnalds completed the album after his death.
Talos' high, otherworldly voice is the dominant signature, from the opening title track with its heavy swell of strings at the high points, through to the spare piano and voice passages of “Bedrock”, a slow, melancholy piano ballad bathed in shimmering reverb and a chorus of voices. Talos’ delicate lone voice over Arnalds’ spare piano lines draws you in deeply, immediately and strikingly beautiful in its effects, but sometimes the reverb on the voice, the limpid instrumental settings, the piano polished to a sheen, feel almost oppressively perfect, too.
Still, A Dawning has much to admire, in the ambient layering of the music by Arnalds, whose Ultimate Calm show on Radio 3 would be the perfect platform for A Dawning’s music. It lives in the space where ambient meets dream pop, a lyrical, gossamer space of heartfelt lyricism evoking natural cycles and sources of feeling that swell and overflow the way Talos’s high sweet voice does against the piano, synth, glitchy beats and layered ambience of “Signs”. “Shared Time” is a brief spoken word evoking shamanistic tendencies behind a wash of electronics, while “We Didn’t Know We Were Ready” is a highlight, with its emotive melody lines, questing, questioning lyrics and backing vocals from a choir that includes Niamh Regan and Ye Vagabonds. The instrumental “For Steph” is another striking piece, so intimately recorded you can hear the pedals of Arnalds’ solo piano doing its work in the underlays; even the sound of pressing down the keys. Then a thin ribbon of violin, cello, a quartet gathering into a sweet sonic swell.
The album's flawless surface sometimes feel at odds with the messines of human inhabitation and interaction, but it's an otherworldly music that beguiles and calms, too, a refined, high-grade musical balm for a bruising world, and fans of the much-missed Talos’s otherworldly vocals will be very well rewarded.
