The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centres around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The piece revolves around the extremes on the spectrum between the Primordia and its resulting afterglow – and the conflict between these elements that are nevertheless fundamentally one and the same. The halo emerges from the Primordia but they have both lost perspective and the connection to one another, experiencing themselves individually as opposing forces rather than one and the same.

AIŌN is inspired by the abstract metaphor of being able to move freely in time, of being able to explore time as a space that you inhabit rather than experiencing it as a one-directional journey through a single dimension. Disorienting at first, you realize that time extends simultaneously in all directions and whenever you feel like it, you can access any moment. As you learn to control the journey, you find that the experience becomes different by taking different perspectives - you can see every moment at once, focus on just some of them, or go there to experience them. You are constantly zooming in and out, both in dimension and perspective. Some moments you want to visit more than others, noticing as you revisit the same moment, how your perception of it changes. This metaphor is connected to a number of broader background ideas in relation to the work: How we relate to our lives, to the ecosystem, and to our place in the broader scheme of things, and how at any given moment we are connected both to the past and to the future, not just of our own lives but across - and beyond - generations.

As with my music generally, the inspiration behind ARCHORA and AIŌN is not something I am trying to describe through the music or what the music is “about”, as such. Inspiration is a way to intuitively tap into parts of the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the music I am writing each time. It is a fuel for the musical ideas to come into existence, a tool to approach and work with the fundamental materials, the ideas and sensations, that provide and generate the initial spark to the music - the various sources of inspiration are ultimately effective because I perceive qualities in them that I find musically captivating. I do often spend quite a bit of time finding ways to articulate some of the important elements of the musical ideas or thoughts that play certain key roles in the origin of each piece but the music itself does not emerge from a verbal place, it emerges as a stream of consciousness that flows, is felt, sensed, shaped and then crafted. So inspiration is a part of the origin story of a piece, but in the end the music stands on its own.

- Anna Thorvaldsdottir

ARCHORA

AIŌN
I. Morphosis
II. Transcension
III. Entropia

Total time: 61:48
Release date: May 26, 2022
UPC: 053479226808

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Quotes & Reviews

“On ARCHORA / AIŌN, the contrast between immersive depths and sudden, euphoric heights creates narrative arcs without words, and certain passages are the most memorable of her career.” - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen

“The experience of listening to Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA / AIŌN is as discomfiting as it is jaw-dropping. In the truest sense of the word, it is awesome…. They are overwhelmingly intense and fascinating pieces of music that one can get completely lost in, and perfectly portray just how unique her work is.” - The Reykjavik Grapevine

“When the 20-minute ARCHORA opens there are violent, massed bass plucks that suggest tree branches lashing in a rainswept wind, while a magnificent cluster of descending strings signal a more general sort of dread that feels cyclonic. The three-movement AIŌN pulls even further away from the earlier work, with an abstract meditation on different iterations of time; the music toggles between micro and macro views, like some kind of aural VR experience. Thorvaldsdottir’s arrangements embrace the physical possibilities of an orchestra in a way that’s both exhilarating and terrifying.” - The Best Contemporary Classical On Bandcamp: May 2023, Peter Margasak

#8 Gramophone Official Specialist Classical Chart Top 20

#12 Billboard 100 Classical

“It has an extraordinary, overwhelming effect on me … I can hear connections to Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius, but it also draws me in by reminding me of Sunn O)))’s “Alice,” Charles Mingus’s Let My Children Hear Music, Laibach’s Krst Pod Triglavom/Baptism, and Dimmu Borgir’s Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. If those are your aesthetic sweet spots, too, then the dark forest of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music awaits you. Get in there.” - Phil Freeman, Burning Ambulance

“Among the many wonders of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music — exquisitely honed timbres, an intricate play of shadow and light — perhaps the most mysterious is the way it can sound so static yet be in a state of constant (if sometimes glacial) change. Take “ARCHORA,” the first of two spacious orchestral works on this welcome new release. It opens with a D flat in the low strings, winds and brass, a tenebrous and flatly final sound incapable of being dislodged by the thwacks and thumps surrounding it. Soon, though, a series of downward-sliding melodies in the violins begins to tug the music away; the pedal point returns, but feels slightly less fixed. By the time a long, deeply lyrical line unfolds about halfway through, the music is in a different world, even as you’re not quite sure how it left the old one.

This craftsmanship — a meticulous fusion of pacing, structure and coloring — is also at work in the three-movement “AION,” although the canvas is larger, and the mood less uniform. There is a stronger sense of direction: moments of stillness repeatedly disrupted by violent outbursts, as if the piece were evoking the weather system on some alien planet. The triumphant conclusion, again in D flat, seems both logical and a shock. Both pieces confirm the impression that Thorvaldsdottir is incapable of writing music that doesn’t immediately transfix an open-eared listener. The Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen, its chief conductor, offer glowing performances that have been beautifully captured by Sono Luminus.” - David Weininger, The New York Times

“Archora (2022) and Aiōn (2018) are fundamentally abstract, unleashing primordial energies in shifting layers of sound to different yet related ends. The former explicitly aims to explore these energies alongside ‘the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm…both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere.’ Quasi-Stravinskian conflicts abound in one, tautly written movement; through subterranean drones and pulses overlaid with chord clusters and brittle, percussive slaps.

Aiōn (2018) appears to pre-echo this material in longer and more overtly symphonic guise through three movements: ‘Morphosis’, ‘Transcension’ and ‘Entropia’. Here, as might be implied, the impetus is time, which Thorvaldsdottir explores in roiling, sometimes ritualistic textures underpinned by pounding bass drums (three in each piece), ‘as a space that you inhabit rather than … a one-directional journey through a single dimension.’

In effect, both works demonstrate the inseparability of time and space – and their key lies finally in Thorvaldsdottir’s extraordinarily subtle, constantly shifting details of foreground and background.” - Steph Power, Classical Music

“Sono Luminus has done an excellent job of capturing the power of the orchestra, and for those few who might have the requisite audio equipment, have included along with the regular CD a Pure Audio Blu-ray disc that supports both stereo and surround-sound (Native 7.1.4) playback.” - Karl Nehring, Classical Candor

“Glissandos sometimes punctuate the opaque clusters of strings, woodwinds, and horns that make up the ever-morphing mass. Despite the music's heaviness, mobility is very much present as the material moves fluidly through contrasting episodes of volume and mood, its unfolding rather akin to the unregulated flow of impressions coursing through consciousness.” - Ron Schepper, Textura

“Both are works of grand concept and could easily be called symphonies but the composer seems fond of metaphoric poetic titles. Regardless of the names given these works they demonstrate the composer’s grand sonic visions and her mastery of the orchestra…” - Allan J. Cronin, New Music Buff

“The work evokes the experience of briefly glimpsing this alternative realm and the “afterglow” or wonder that follows it. Deep horns, searching strings, and percussive interruptions  swirl around the listener. Moments of immense beauty are matched by descents into the depths of sound. Also included on the orchestral portrait she released this year is Aion, a symphony-scale work in three parts that speculatively explores the experience of time and space. Through slow movements that occasionally devolve into seemingly spontaneous chaos and others that expand into a majestic wall of sound, Thorvaldsdottir uses music to plumb the depths of our endlessly bewildering experience of space and time.” - Jennifer Smart, A Closer Listen

“The twenty minute opening piece “ARCHORA” begins like a vast, dark Icelandic winter before bursting into a thumping climax and then settling into a still somewhat unresolved finale. Aion, which comes in three movements, sees more dynamism than the first piece (inevitably, as its movements are titled “Morphosis,” “Transcension,” and “Entropia”) and ventures into higher registers. Though each section is unique, a certain foreboding murmur permeates the work from start to finish. ARCHORA / AIŌN seems to speak to the unfathomable reality lying behind our human perceptions of universal forces– energy, time, space.” - Maya Merberg, A Closer Listen

“4.5 Stars” Unsubtle Reviewer, 2023 New Music