Kristín Anna - Howl (2015)

 

Drone / Ambient / A Capella

RIYL: múm, Eluvium, Julianna Barwick

★★★★

If you're like me and you love Icelandic enigma Kristín Anna's nymph-like voice (as showcased on early múm albums and in her solo work as Kría Brekkan), you'll be pleased to know that there exists an 83-minute album composed of just that and nothing else. Though titled ferociously as Howl, the record stitches together gentle coos and wordless lullabies looped ad infinitum until they dissolve into the thinnest of fibers that somehow still manage to give off an unimaginable warmth.

Monstrous only in their massive scope and vision, these ten gently droning tracks of wind whispering through cracks in a door come off light as a feather and often seem to float away as wispy clouds would drift through a pink, twilit sky. The hummed opus - so spectacularly lengthy that it wouldn't even fit on a standard CDR - is a strange delight, especially coming from a musician whose official solo work had previously comprised only a couple of brief 7" singles, and I'm tremendously grateful that its quiet 2015 release eventually managed to cross my radar so I could hear for myself the unfolding potential of Kristín Anna finally spreading her seraph wings.