Johann Johannsson, Yair Elazar Glotman – Last And First Men (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:40 minutes | 634 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
While composing haunting, elegiac concept albums of lost utopias and working for TV and film the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson was thinking about a project on an even larger scale since 2010 – a multimedia work that would include his own visual concept, direction and music.
Based on the cult science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s opus magnum Last and First Men artfully combines music, film and narration from Tilda Swinton, sitting somewhere between fiction and documentary to form a poetic meditation on memory and loss.
Images of a decaying futuristic landscape – filmed in 16mm black and white in the former Yugoslav republics – are placed against Jóhannsson’s haunting orchestral score, crafted over seven years, before its live premiere at the 2017 Manchester International Festival. At the time of Jóhannsson’s death in 2018 he was still working on Last and First Men, revising it considerably from the version that premiered at the MIF, helped by Berlin-based composer and sound artist Yair Elazar Glotman who finished the score subsequently, whereas cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen continued Jóhann’s work as a stand-in-director and endeavoured to complete the film. The recording features Jóhannsson’s long-term musical collaborators like Hildur Guðnadóttir (vocals, cello, percussion), members of Theatre of Voices etc.
Tracklist:
01. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Prelude (02:35)
02. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: A Minor Astronomical Event (03:39)
03. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: A Move To Neptune (03:47)
04. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Physical Description Of The Last Human Beings (04:36)
05. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Architecture (05:00)
06. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Supreme Monuments (01:48)
07. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Telepathic Unity (01:58)
08. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Childhood / Land Of The Young (05:35)
09. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Navigators (08:08)
10. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Sun (01:28)
11. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: A New Doom (02:54)
12. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Task No. 1: The Scattering Of Seeds (01:56)
13. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Task No. 2: Communicating With The Past (01:05)
14. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Last Office Of Humanity (02:11)
15. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Slow Destruction Of Neptune (04:25)
16. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Few That Prevail (02:01)
17. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Last Men (03:19)
18. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Remembrance Of The Past (02:34)
19. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: The Universal End (01:23)
20. Johann Johannsson – Jóhannsson, Glotman: Epilogue (05:08)
