Stafrćnn Hákon ...Eignast Jeppa
Title: Stafrćnn Hákon - ...Eignast Jeppa
Label: Secret Eye
Cataloge No: AB-OC-03
Type: Album
Reviewer: Nicole
Date: 22, August, 2005
Stafrćnn Hákon is not Stafrćnn Hákon. Well, okay, he is. But for wacky foreigners like me who can't tell their rass from their olnbogi, or a stage name from a real one, he's actually Olafur Josephsson. And he's beaming sounds from his bedroom in Iceland to yours, wherever it may be.
The bulk of this album was recorded in Josephsson's home in 2001, then self-released on CD-Rs only in Iceland. Thankfully, Rhode Island-based Secret Eye picked it up. And then dropped it. No, they didn't. They released it—replete with additional recordings cajoled out of Hákon—to an instrumental-music-hungry public in 2002. That's what they did!
Now, let's face one bull horns first. There's a lot of twittering these days about Iceland. You know what I'm talking about. And in a lot of ways, it's been extended to this sort of pan-Icelandic generalization, with blurb-writers comparing the country's various sonic pioneers to one another, and that's pretty inappropriate if you ask me. Even the indier-than-indie record store in San Francisco where I procured ...Eignast Jeppa said "for fans of" this other band. Um. Let's call them Cereal. Or Serious. Or maybe TV Series Host. Ahem. In this case, the name-dropping could hardly be more inappropriate.
It seems that Stafrćnn Hákon is classed in the post-rock category (apologies to all who hate that term… hi Rich!), but you won't find any buildups, climaxes, or epic anything. In fact, the three musical comparisons that popped into my head while listening were The Album Leaf, Her Space Holiday, and Brian Eno. No, not this Brian Eno. The "Deep Blue Day" Brian Eno. I'm getting slightly off track here. Sorry.
...Eignast Jeppa's first track, "Vomiz," opens with a shimmering drone and shiny guitar scrapings, always a promise of good things to come. A slightly scary echo-soaked voice tells us... well... something in Icelandic, and then the beat kicks in with a groovy little guitar riff. The majority of the album follows this drone + guitar work formula with the occasional melodica thrown in, but that's not to say it isn't interesting. It's beautiful. The guitar work in particular is lovely all-through, and who can argue with lots of shiny, droney, washing synths?
Some tracks such as "Sítrónudurgur" are a little more background-y than one might hope for, and by "Silfurgeitungur" it starts feeling like we're in very familiar territory if you've been listening really closely... but I wouldn't call it repetitive. As a lovely, spacey, casual listen, all the tracks on this record work together quite nicely. And possibly the album's biggest weakness is the fact that all the beats are a bit shallow and boxy, but as far as weaknesses go it isn't too distracting, and Hákon's done a good job of masking the drum machine sound for the most part. I mean, hell! The man did this in his bedroom! Give him a break.
Highlights, besides the excellent "Vomiz," are the dronier, Eno-ier tracks "Verkfćri" and album-closer "Hroki." Both of them make me feel all floaty and peaceful, the way I did while listening to Mazzy Star in my high school days. And "Hroki" has the tastiest fade-out I've heard in a long time. It's just yum, kids. Yum. So if you're feeling the need to expand your collection of Icelandic discs, make some room between your Mom and your Cereal for a little Stafrćnn. It'll get you ready for reviews of the other albums... um... as long as I can hunt them down.
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