This is their story and they tell it very well. Sólrún, María, Edda and Hildur, four Icelandic women in their mid twenties collectively known as Amiina first decided they wanted to write music together in 2004. They gathered together every last instrument they could find and piled them into their car. They then filled every available bit of space with food. This, they maintain, was a very, very important part of the process. But it was also very nearly the act that prevented the birth of Amiina. Their overloaded car was unable to struggle up the steep mountainous incline to the studio they had chosen, and had a local farmer not towed them to their destination with his tractor Amiina might never have come to be.
And here we arrive at ‘Kurr‘ almost inaudibly, without recourse to violence or swaggering announcement, tiptoeing onto our horizon like a group of junk-shop angels bringing with them their pot-pouri of instruments and gentle devices. Rather like a fairy-tale. Take one poor miller, a beautiful daughter, some straw and a spinning wheel and you have the basic components of ‘Kurr’, the band’s enchanting debut album.
Not songs, so much as a ‘movement’, ‘Kurr’ drifts from cello string to bell, to violin, to mandolin and to all manner of instruments many of us will have no prior knowledge of. No official bass players, no drummers, no guitarist, no singer. It’s like the first whisper of dawn and the last kiss goodnight – best experienced without conscious effort – and quite, quite beautiful. I have lost myself to this completely.