Some Kind of Peace: Olafur Arnolds

Icelandic

Olafur has been one of my favourite neoclassical artists for a couple of years now, ever since I accidentally heard “Erla’s Waltz” from his early album “Found Songs”.

Recently, I have started slowly leaning towards Nils Frahm for music I listen to during my work time. However, every time Olafur’s music comes up, it still brings me a sense of deep connection with the rest of the world.

I always think Icelandic artists all have the innate ability to resonate with nature and what could be called God, coming from an atheist. Their music speaks to the deepest part of the listeners in a language that can’t be translated but only felt.

Some people might say his music is a bit too simple. True, while it may be, judging art by simplicity is subjective to philosophical debates to begin with. To the listeners, whether the artist chose to adopt a device of simple harmony or complex arrangements of multiple sonic parts is completely personal and contextual. The power of which also isn’t determined by how complicated it is.

Certain simple expressions also cut deepest.

Some Kind of Peace

With that being said, this concert was loosely based on his recent album “some kind of peace,” which I am not a big fan of.

But after so many postponements of the show due to the pandemic, he finally started going on tour again. My friend Spike and I took the chance and booked the tickets. The tour only stops in London for two days; we went on the first day.

The concert started with “Loom,” which happened to be my favourite song from this album.

“Loom” is where he collaborated with Bonobo, another electronic artist I quite like. Here the piano notes act as decorations, sprinkled on top of the bass section, with a faint and distant minimalistic vocal part swimming in between, threading through all this.

Glitches

Halfway into the show, signal glitches started trickling in. They weren’t too imposing but enough to be noticed, especially considering all the songs were quiet and slow-paced.

It went on for about 10 to 20 minutes, on and off. I thought Olafur would stop the show to fix the issue, but he just went on, ignoring the glitches, which eventually faded away on their own.

The family sitting in front of us, all the children behaved like responsible adults. However, the mother just couldn’t help herself typing away on her phone. The dad tried to stop her many times, but she insisted there were things more important on the phone that needed to be dealt with immediately.

Another woman sitting next to them, completely unrelated to them, tried to take a photo of the show every few minutes. For some reason, she could not turn off the bloody flashlight, and every time she was surprised by the sudden beam of light shooting out of her phone. No matter how many times she annoyed people around her, she kept trying.

Quiet Olafur

Olafur didn’t talk a lot. I remember watching his show online where he became very chatty between songs, but not at this show, well, at least not until after he appeared for the encore.

He then told a story about the last song he was going to play. I’ll try to paraphrase the story, as it was a particularly heart-warming one.

Olafur’s grandma would often ask him to go visit her because her radio was broken, but he knew, every time, the radio wasn’t broken at all. But he went there, unexpectedly, to find out his grandma had prepared cookies and cakes for him and would ask him to listen to Chopin with her, and that’s what he did every time.

Before becoming the Olafur we know today, he was a drummer in a band called “Fighting Shit.” Of course, his grandma wasn’t a fan. After he quit the old funk band and started writing neoclassical music, he said, his grandma became the biggest fan. She would buy his albums in bulk and would just go out to meet her friends and sell them. Aren’t all grandmas like her?

For her last moments, Olafur sat next to her bed in the hospital and listened to Chopin before she eventually passed away. After he got home, he composed this piece dedicated to his grandma who, in his words, was the only reason why he started writing this kind of music. For without those hours spent with his grandma listening to Chopin, he would probably still be fighting shit.

Then he turned back to his upright piano on the stage, quietly and lovingly, played this last song of the night, Lag Fyrir Ommu.