Jóhann Jóhannssonpiano, electronics, pipe organ, electric organs

Hildur Guðnadóttir cello

American Contemporary Music Ensemble

Yuki Numata Resnick violinCaleb Burhans violin Ben Russell violaClarice Jensen cello

AIR Lyndhurst string orchestra conducted by Anthony Weeden

Theatre of Voices conducted by Paul Hillier

Else Torp soprano

Signe Asmussen, Ellen Marie Brink Christensen, Elenor Wiman, Kristin Mulders mezzo-soprano

Chris Watson, Paul Bentley-Angell tenor

Jakob Bloch Jespersen, Jakob Soelberg bass-baritone

1 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 6:31

2 A SONG FOR EUROPA 2:34

3 THE DROWNED WORLD 2:21

4 A DEAL WITH CHAOS 2:06

5 A PILE OF DUST 4:51

6 A SPARROW ALIGHTED UPON OUR SHOULDER 2:27

7 FRAGMENT I 1:25

8 BY THE ROES, AND BY THE HINDS OF THE FIELD 2:39

9 THE RADIANT CITY 3:31

10 FRAGMENT II 2:12

11 THE BURNING MOUNTAIN 2:46

12 DE LUCE ET UMBRA 2:29

13 GOOD MORNING, MIDNIGHT 3:18

14 GOOD NIGHT, DAY 3:58

15 ORPHIC HYMN 3:27

Finally, in a new city full of

ghosts, I found the courage to look

back and finish my little minia-

tures and to give them some kind

of form, thereby, of course,

destroying the original, intangible

and much more beautiful ideas

(which now exist only in the under-

world) and creating what you hold

in your hands.

In Jean Cocteau’s film Orphée

Jean Marais, playing the title

role, keeps listening obsessively

on his car radio to what sounds

like strange, repetitive avant-

garde poetry, punctuated by short-

wave noise-bursts. Cocteau was

inspired by the “BBC broadcasts of

the occupation” – the mysterious

coded transmissions he had heard on

shortwave radio during World War

II. In homage to Cocteau and to my

new city, I began to incorporate

into my music the strange record-

ings of the “Numbers Stations”, the

haunting and enigmatic shortwave

broadcasts reading out lists of

numbers, letters and coded messag-

es. The owners of these stations

are unknown, but are believed to be

various intelligence agencies. Most

of the broadcasts went silent after

the fall of the Berlin Wall, but

some can still be heard beaming

their mysterious signals into the

ether.

Jóhann Jóhannsson

I started writing this album in

2009, using a number of simple con-

trapuntal themes with an ascending

harmonic thrust, as though forever

flowing upwards. I began to reshape

and transfigure these ideas, writ-

ing many different variations.

These renderings slowly mutated

over time in a process of decon-

struction and reassembly, to the

extent that the original versions

began to fade into the darker cor-

ners of my hard drive. Unlike many

of my previous albums, this one

didn’t start out with a conceptual

or narrative theme binding the

music together. Rather, the music

seemed to be waiting for its form,

for its momentum. So I didn’t rush

things and spent the next years

tending regularly to these off-

shoots, knowing they needed a bit

more time to grow.

One of the ideas seemed to ask

for vocals and I was drawn to the

text of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in

particular his version of the

Orpheus myth. The poem’s themes of

death and rebirth, memory, mutabil-

ity, love and art seemed relevant

to the time when I was working on

this music – a period that saw old

relationships die and new ones

begin, old lives left behind and a

new life begun in a new city.

In Maurice Blanchot’s reading

of the myth, the gaze of Orpheus

upon Eurydice is a metaphor for

artistic inspiration, “the essence

of the night”. Art is created

through transgression, by “limit-

experiences”, by the poet defying

the gods’ command not to look

back as he leaves Hades. It is

also a myth about a song, a story

about a story; it’s about the

fleeting, elusive quality of an

idea and the ephemeral nature of

memory; and about the hold the

dead have over us.

“I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities” – Ovid, M etamorphoses

Written and Produced by Jóhann JóhannssonString orchestra recorded at AIR Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, LondonPipe organ recorded at Sct. Lukas Kirke, CopenhagenChoir recorded at Danmarks Radio, CopenhagenString quartet, cello, organ and piano recorded in various studios in Copenhagen, Berlin and Reykjavík between 2009 and 2016Recording Engineers: Geoff Foster, Preben Iwan, Ívar Ragnarsson, Mette Due, Francesco Donadello and Jóhann Jóhannsson

Mixed by Francesco Donadello at Vox-Ton Recording Studio, BerlinAlbum mastered by Calyx Mastering, Berlin

Arrangements and orchestrations by Jóhann JóhannssonAdditional orchestrations: Anthony Weeden, Owen RobertsPublisher: Mute Song Limited (ASCAP)

Management: Tim Husom (Spectrevision)

For Deutsche GrammophonExecutive Producer: Christian BadzuraProject Managers: Leonie Petersen, Burkhard Bartsch

� 2016 Jóhann Jóhannsson, under exclusive license to Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin� 2016 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin

Booklet Editor: Jens Schünemeyer Artwork by Anders LadegaardPhotos � Jónatan Grétarsson

Thank you toTim Husom, Dustin O’Halloran, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Sigurður Magnús Finnsson, Norah Tahiri, Adam Wiltzie, Rick Will, Rutger Hoedemaekers, Brian Crosby, Louise H. Johansen, Richard Thomas, Eysteinn Björnsson and Irdial-Discs for the Numbers Stations recordings.

www.johannjohannsson.comwww.facebook.com/JohannJohannssonMusic

www.deutschegrammophon.com