Erased Tapes will release a new LP from Icelandic composer and singer Högni, titled Two Trains.

Högni may best be recognized for his work in the indie band Hjaltalín and electronic group GusGus, but on Two Trains “he steps out on his own to embrace his Icelandic heritage,” the London label explains. The album will be his first album under his own name, though he’s also released solo ambient music under the name ADSR.

At the heart of the LP is an allusion to two locomotive trains central to Icelandic industrialization in 1913-17, the Minør and Pionér. The two locomotives ushered in a new age in Iceland, helping construct the Reykjavík harbor by hauling stone, concrete, and gravel across the country, thus bringing Iceland into modernity. However, upon completion of the harbor in 1917, the trains were permanently parked and never used again. Now they only serve to remind us of the grandeur of a bygone future. They are the only trains ever to have graced the Icelandic landscape.

The trains are representations of the different incarnations of Hogni’s persona during a difficult period in his life. “As a society, we are also quite often faced with a fork in the road and a decision to make, and most importantly the acceptance of one’s self,” the label says. The music in Two Trains “embraces the spirit of the original European avant-garde and invokes these concepts in its chugging rhythms, metallic clangs, and brooding choral arrangements (men’s choruses are a distinctly Icelandic phenomena related to the national/romantic politics of the 19th and 20th century) while the lyrics speak of ominous clouds on the war-ridden eastern horizon and freight cars filled with gravel and dreams.”

Words from Högni, July 2017:

“The music on Two Trains is a blueprint of a period in my life where I collided with my own self, and at that point, I felt the indifference between the personal and the universal, the absolute consciousness of life’s unconsciousness. Perhaps it’s a feeling that cannot be conveyed, like watercolors that just seem to wash off into the sea. But also a flashing mirage that you can enjoy before you arrive at your last destination.”

Tracklisting

01. Anda∂u
02. Shed Your Skin
03. Komdu Me∂
04. Crash
05. Drag∂u Mig
06. Óve∂urssky
07. Break Up
08. Moon Pitcher
09. Parallel
10. Enn Næ∂a Or∂

Erased Tapes will release Two Trains on October 20, with “Komdu Me∂” streamable in full below.