EIVØR announces new album “ENN”, out June 14, publishes music video for the song “JARÐARTRÁ / Longing of the Earth”

Faroese Nordic Folk author Eivør (Eivør Pálsdóttir), is a well-known figure to the followers of the genre. In recent years, Eivør has composed extensively for film, television, and games(The Last Kingdom, God of War), and the cinematic structures of those scores found their way in alongside the music’s propulsive beats, omnipresent rooting in Faroese folk and the classical flourishes of her opera training — while boosting her popularity. This year, she will also come to the Tuska Festival in Finland.

From the press release:

The process of ENN built on Eivør’s recent immersion into production and beat-making, but began with a return to classical music. She and her partner, the classical composer Tróndur Bogason, had decamped to a tiny Faroe Islands mountain village of 50 people, called Tjørnuvík with no agenda but to “write freely” for a possible side project. “Slowly I realized: I shouldn’t think about this as a side project,” Eivør said. “This is where I am at right now creatively.”

“Jarðartrá” is an especially fitting first single. Just like the extreme contrasts that define life on the Faroe Islands, the song is dark yet glistening, swirling but propulsive. It’s also one of the very first songs that Eivør wrote for ENN.

“Back in 2021, I went to Tjørnuvík, a tiny village in the Faroe Islands”, Eivør says. Though arriving with no plans other than to entertain the thought of a possible side project, she realized that her ventures into classical music and beatmaking were actually the start of her new album.

“Jarðartrá” is one of the most beat-oriented songs on ENN. But as the video subtly suggests with the thump of Eivør’s hand drum, its steady electronic pulse stems from more ancient origins. “When I wrote this song, I envisioned the earth in its rawest elements: oceans, volcanoes, storms, soil”, remembers Eivør. “We all have echoes of these elements within us, but maybe we tend to forget that we are part of nature and its endless circle of decay and growth”.

The video’s laser light show glistens like a pearl necklace, but “Jarðartrá” beckons us away from our own greed and destruction and back into the warm embrace of mother nature. In English, the title translates as “Death Lust”, a primordial desire to return to the earth. The deep swells of strings and gently turning piano are rooted in an old Faroese folk melody.

“Come lie down in my blue embrace”, Eivør sings, reaching into her operatic register, as if beckoning us toward the light. Her voice sails so high and with such ease that it sends a shiver of astonishment up the spine once you realize that what we’re hearing is from her earliest demos.

“I recorded the vocals for ““Jarðartrá” in an old abandoned Tjørnuvík school during the middle of the night”, Eivør says. “I tried to re-do them later, but I couldn’t capture the same feeling”.

The video for “Jarðartrá” was directed by Einar Egils (www.einaregils.com)

(based on a press release from Season of Mist)