Ólafur Arnalds playing during the Rudolstadt-Festival 2019. Photo: Carsten Stiller
When he was young, Iceland was too quiet for Ólafur Arnalds.
At the age of 18, he jumped on a plane to London. He lived in a squat and played the drums in punk and heavy metal bands.
These days he's back in Iceland and he can't get enough of the still life.
Arnalds was in Auckland briefly as part of a Southern Hemisphere tour of the techno duo, Kiasmos, of which he is one half - the other half belong to the Faroe Islander, Janus Rasmussen.
Kiasmos mostly makes music to dance to, but when Arnalds isn't doing techno, he's increasing creating sounds that spill over into the classical world; music like the "Chopin Project" where he collaborated with the pianist Alice Sara Ott.
He's also composed for the choir Voces8, while the saxophonist Jess Gillam recently recorded an arrangment of his work "Saman" (which means "together" in Icelandic).
And he is increasingly drawn to silence.
Not just silence in terms of no sound, but silence as in taking a break from all the "noise" most of us bombard ourselves with when locked into the latest social media goings-on via our smartphones.
Arnalds spoke with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump about the power of silence, and how sometimes in his solo concerts (where he's usually playing keyboards) he takes his audience to a place where there's no sound at all - and leaves them there as long as he can.
They also spoke about Arnalds' latest album, "A Dawning", which he made with the Irish singer Eoin French (aka Talos) whose own voice was silenced by cancer before the album was finished.
Arnalds believes something important happens to people when they take a break from the "noise" of the modern world. They start paying more attention to the flesh and blood people around them.
He says that sense of community was especially important when he and his fellow musicians had to complete "A Dawning" after French's death.
