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Reviews
"So, why are we here? Our “fearless” editor-in-chief
loves this record and demanded a review, for one. The other reason
is craft. The Einarsson’s have it in spades. When you listen
to a Morr Music release, say, there’s always going to be
an obvious dud—the one track whose chord progression or beat
programming reveals their just-past-the-presets naïve ineptitude.
Pornopop took five years between their previous album and this—and
the maturity shows. These songs, while loose and airy, are tight,
(sad) pop constructions.
The Morr Music metaphor is also apt in
sonic terms: Pornopop sounds like what might happen if the German
and English artists that made up that label’s roster lived in Iceland. (The songs would
get frostier, the tempo would slow to a crawl, the choruses would
transform from dispassion to desperation.) In fact, while listening
to “Sleep,” you might be forgiven if you had mistaken
it for something on the label’s Blue Skied An' Clear compilation.
The cavernous production is a ringer for late-era Slowdive, as
is the track’s lengthy digression into packt, brittle beats
and dreamy cooing.
...Pornopop is one of the rare groups
that pull off the acoustics-with-electronic-garnishing trick
well. While the slow-motion suicide is a bit of a slog, you get
the feeling that there’s not a moment of waste on slow
songs. In the filler-laden world of electronic pop, this might
be the greatest shock of all." -STYLUS
_______________________
"Minimalistic instrumentation, but luminescent
atmospheres define And the Slow Songs About the Dead Calm in
Your Arms, the follow-up to their debut Blue, from the Icelandic
duo Pornopop. Even the pair's track titles - "Nicotine and
the Backward Lounge",
Wired to the Cold Metallic Scene", "Sleep" - are
evocative, their music belying both the pornographic and pop of
their moniker.
Many of the numbers within have an almost
lullaby like quality, drifting languorously on a bed of gentle
guitars and blanketed by cottony synths, rocked by soft rhythms. "Death Tape",
however has a more shadowed feel, "Little Kafka" a more
abrupt rhythm, while "Stop" a more experimental edge.
Counter-pointing the song's wonderfully
somnolent atmospheres and cozy musical currents are the almost
icily cool vocals, floating almost disembodied across the backings,
adding an arctic breeze to the set. An alum to lose one's self
in, to ponder over, and let haunt one's dreams".-ALLMUSIC
__________________
"Two years after its
initial release in their home country of Iceland, Pornopop's And
The Slow Songs About The Dead Calm In Her Arms is finally being
properly dropped on American shores on Dynamophone - and not a
moment too soon. In
2004, it had been seven years since the release of their first
album, Blue, making this release ripe for evolution of their
increasingly representative Icelandic sound. As
it turned out, the Einarsson brothers created audio velvet with
slow, Matmosian electronica and lulling, magnetic vocal effects. Whatever
the name Pornopop might mean to you, this isn't pop, and it's
definitely not porno. It's
the slowest, darkest bedroom scene you'll ever see on a big screen.
The melancholy pace of And The Slow Songs About The Dead Calm In
Her Arms shapes the scene for the slow-motion ride through a superlunar
Icelandic landscape. The energy isn't merely subtle, it's
just slow and operatic - like the soundtrack to a delicate science
fiction. Synthetic, alien beats bounce under tranquil, atmospheric
guitars and strings while halogen vocals practically force your
eyes closed.
At its most intense, the album gets noisy instead of fast, but
always dark. "Death Tape" builds into an electronic
maelstrom, complete with swirling effects and a yelling background
voice, but always crawls along. Most tracks still move like
the eye of a hurricane. "Centre" has wispy vocals
and an occasional hollow, mechanized beat. It'd be hard to
believe any track ever reaches 90 bpm. "Wired To The
Cold Metallic Scene" closes the album with a glitchy lullaby,
with liquid voices intertwining and piano drips like a melting
icicle.
While they get intense at times,
Pornopop never rushes And The Slow Songs About The Dead Calm
In Her Arms. It's for when
the lights are off, but with nothing else going on. Half-frozen
guitars and chilly beats are the hallmark of their northern sound. The
visuals it conjures are minimal, unlike the videos of their namesake. Pornopop
must surely mean something completely different in Icelandic". -QROmag
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