It's a little bit dizzying to think of what could have laid ahead of Jóhannsson if he'd have lived. His Hollywood work was growing, he could compose for the biggest and richest concert halls in the world, and his last album Orphée showed he had lost none of his ability to combine impossible darkness and weirdness with the kind of plaintive, instant melodic themes that could easily touch mass audiences at a super base level. The opening track here has the
kind of relentless hammering of such a theme that in lesser hands would be everything that's wrong with “neoclassical” music in the 2010s – but the combination of the scorching electrical crackle that surrounds it, the depth of bass and the patience of his pacing makes its emotions way too complex to ever be mere lifestyle music.