This is a re-issue of Richard Pinhas ambient Prog album Iceland that originally came out in 1979. It was his third solo album and the first one since he split from Heldon. The album was recorded using a ARP 2600 as well as Richards original 1957 Les Paul Black Beauty and with Francois Auger on drums.
For this album I chose to use it as a soundtrack to footage of Iceland found on the internet from the 1970's and to sit back and allow the music to interact with the Icelandic backdrop of barren mountains floods and snowscapes so that Iceland parts 1 and 2 feature the flowers and nesting birds of Iceland and the sparse synths and drums marry perfectly with the sparse landscapes.
Ghostly voices emerge as on the film I watched the grass is scythed in the marshes almost like the workers are whispering to each other.
Was The Last King Of Thule a fisherman or a puffin catcher living beneath a volcano beating out an ancient tribal pattern riding his horse to a remote chapel on the volcano side.
As the third section of Iceland shows the ancient parades, with horses across the desolate plain, leading towards Gros Hof, hoping the volcano remains as calm as the music, as they climb the black volcanic rock looking for an ice-cold lake to swim in, but bubbling cauldrons of the hot springs are the more likely find.
The music shifts on Indicatif Radio to a brighter sound, perfect to prune trees too, as it morphs into the second part of The Last Kings Of Thule, as the tree branches start to burn upon the side of the volcano, before they dig the carboniferous lava out to use as coal to heat their houses, as the guitar wails away against the metronomic percussive rush, as the horses carry the coal across the tundra and the icy wastes.
The closing track Greenland is perfect to gaze at film of Icelandic glaciers as the black volcanic rock blends with the white ice and becomes this grey forbidding landscape, the music makes it feel floaty and very calm stark and desolate. Giving way to visions of Icelandic wool mills creating miles of white soft wool that as it's spun resembles the contours of the snowy landscape.
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