Johann Johannsson 'Last and First Men' 2xLP + Blu Ray

While composing haunting, elegiac concept albums of lost utopias and working for TV and film the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson was thinking about a project on an even larger scale since 2010 - a multimedia work that would include his own visual concept, direction & music. Based on the cult science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, Jóhann Jóhannsson's opus magnum Last and First Men artfully combines music, film and narration from Tilda Swinton, sitting somewhere between fiction and documentary to form a poetic meditation on memory and loss. At the time of Jóhannsson’s death in 2018 he was still working on Last and First Men, revising it considerably from the version that premiered at the MIF, helped by Berlin-based composer and sound artist Yair Elazar Glotman who finished the score subsequently. The recording features Jóhannsson’s long-term musical collaborators like Hildur Guðnadóttir (vocals, cello, percussion), members of Theatre of Voices etc.

 

Catalogue number: 4837415

Condition: New

Label: Deutsche Grammophon