Echo Collective JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann

Since his death in February 2018 aged 48, the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson seems to have spawned a posthumous catalogue to rival Tupac Shakur’s. In the last 18 months, we’ve seen five film soundtracks that were completed shortly before his death, an expanded version of his debut album Englabörn, and an epic seven-disc Retrospective of early film soundtracks, including several previously unreleased scores (Retrospective II will follow soon). Also being unearthed from the archives is an album of fractured synth-pop that he recorded in 1999 under the name Dip, featuring assorted Icelandic indie royalty including Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson, Jónsi from Sigur Rós and Emiliana Torrini.

Revisiting it now, Jóhannsson’s music seem oddly preoccupied with death. Sometimes, as with the soundtrack to Sicario, or the TV score to Trapped, his electro-acoustic soundscapes have the harrowing feel of a public execution. But generally, his music has an elegiac quality that seems tragically poignant in the months since his death. Nowhereis this more evident than on 12 Conversations, a suite inspired by the work of the German painter Thilo Heinzmann. Premiered with a British quartet in London three years ago (and since reworked by the Brussels-based Echo Collective, in line with Jóhannsson’s wishes), it was his first writing for a string quartet and sometimes sounds a little incomplete – there are moments where you expect to hear Jóhannsson’s trademark synth drones, or an arpeggio on a heavily dampered piano. But the spartan setting often enhances the grave, stately beauty, particularly when Jóhannsson starts to invokes early music. Shell resembles a Bach partita played in ultra-slow-motion; Low sounds like a Gregorian chant transcribed for strings; Lacrimoso is a heartbreaking, Vivaldi-like canon. There are a few moments where Jóhannsson hints at complexity – the baroque waltz Danse sees him shifting time signatures to disconcerting effect – and it’s tempting, if a little depressing, to imagine how he might have developed and matured in this setting. (John Lewis / The Guardian)