String driven things

Having toured the world as Sigur Rós's string section, four classically trained Icelandic quartet Amiina are now ready to carve out their own piece of sonic heaven, writes Brian Boyd

THEY used to call it "Dream Pop" - a sub-genre within alt.rock that did away with all rockist elements and replaced them with ethereal textures and a general slow, spacey sort of feel to the music.

Related, however obliquely, to the shoegazing scene, Dream Pop was also known as Beautiful Music when it was given an electric wallop by the likes of Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine. While the initial Dream Pop bands - Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star, most 4AD bands etc - sort of withered on the vine, the sub-genre has now been given more of a classically-orientated feel thanks largely to the intricate soundscapes of Sigur Rós.

Anyone who caught Sigur Rós on their Takk tour may well have been mightily impressed by their support band, who also doubled up as their string section. A four-piece classically-trained female group called Amiina, every time they played they would find themselves besieged by people wanting to know if they had any of their own work available.

"No, we're just the main band's string section," was the usual reply.

Although they have been playing with Sigur Rós for over seven years, it has only been in the last few years that Amiina have been darting into the studio in their native Iceland whenever they got a break from touring. The resulting album, Kurr, surprised even themselves with its head-spinning beauty. It is, quite simply, a stunning piece of work.

Comprising Hildur Ársælsdóttir, Edda Rún Ólafsdóttir, Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir and Sólrún Sumarlidadóttir, the women from Amiina are all serious multi-taskers. Among the instruments they play both live and on the record are metalophone, violin, viola, Celtic harp, glockenspiel, kalimba, tuba, a saw (as in a real saw) and "singing wine glasses".

By no means to be considered as anything even remotely New Age, Amiina produce an organic classical sound, with little or no lyrics, that almost redefines the notion of mood music.

"We didn't know what to expect sound-wise going into the studio," says Edda Rún Ólafsdóttir (chief instrument: viola). "Because of the constant touring with Sigur Rós, we did it little by little back in Iceland and we're happy that we are playing everything on it ourselves - except for a part when Orri from Sigur Rós plays drums.

"The four of us met in the same music school in Iceland in the early 1990s and we always worked together as a string quartet, but we just found it so difficult to get the time to record together, mainly because various members were living in three different countries, so we really only met when we were touring with Sigur Rós. But the more we toured with them, the more we developed an interest in recording our own stuff. So this really developed over a long time."

With Amiina having now completed a US tour, Edda admits that playing to their own audiences has become a lot less "scary".

"When we were the support band, we would be playing in places such as the Hollywood Bowl - which was an amazing experience," she says. "Now, though, it's different. The people are coming to see us. And it can get pretty crazy sometimes with all the instruments we use on stage, it can be difficult to get everything ready."

On stage, Amiina cover a lot of ground. Even during one song, it would not be unusual for all four members to move between three different instruments each as they try to recreate their heavily textured sound.

"Sometimes we simply can't get around to recreating every sound - even with the four of us moving quickly between instruments - so, for example, instead of using a certain live string sound, some of us will just sing the string line. It seems to work," she says.

Although nominally classical, Amiina's music has more of a contemporary, ambient feel than anything else. "Obviously we all share the same classical upbringing, but we're not pure classical," she says.

"As four people, we all have very different musical influences - everyone has their own individual taste. I think if, like us, you began as a classical quartet, that is obviously going to be a major influence on the music, but there's other stuff going on there as well."

With the album release date approaching, the acclaim is starting to gush in, including phrases such as "rare and wonderful".

"We can feel things slowly building up for us," says Edda. "And now we're having to learn all about the music business from a recording point of view, as opposed to touring. But it's all good fun and definitely doing our own tour really helped our confidence."

To date, all of Amiina's work has been wordless, but that was never a conscious decision made by the band. "We just don't think in terms of words, probably because we're classical musicians," she says. "It's certainly not an ideological objection to the use of words in songs, it's just the way the music turned out. Anyway, we're probably too busy getting around all the instruments on stage to be singing as well. Although, one of our songs does have three words in it and, with the new material, we do find that we are beginning to add more words.

"Maybe we'll make it up to four words in a song soon."