An expressive electronic album filled with sadness, yet one with the sort of positive, stirring resolve that leaves you feeling utterly comforted, Bjarki’s new album Happy Earthday is influenced by his home country Iceland as well as environmental issues. Having released bodies of work on Nina Kraviz’s label трип and his own label bbbbbb, Bjarki views Happy Earthday as his proper debut album; he feels it’s a more coherent and conceptual body of work that finds him offering up music he never thought he would release. The album contains very personal material written over the last decade during fragile moments of introspection. There are skeletal rhythms with sombre chords lingering in the air, downbeat drums with heavy moods, and moments of more uplifting optimism along the way. Throughout the album - made up of comparatively short tracks that help the whole thing move at an engaging pace - Bjarki always manages to make his machines sing with real resonance; they ooze genuine pain and a stunning sense of melancholy that is comforting even when the tempo is raised and drums come to the fore.
