Amiina

String quartet electronica from Iceland

To date, Amiina have invariably been introduced as accomplices to fellow Icelanders Sigur Ros, and undoubtedly it’s alongside the post-rock superstars that this all-female quartet have cut their teeth, providing instantly recognisable string arrangements that must claim partial responsibility for defining that grandiose ocean of sound.

The years spent on the road and in the studio with Sigur Ros led Amiina into writing and recording their own music, making a debut with 2005’s ‘Animamina’ EP, a tantalising forerunner of their new album ‘Kurr’, which as it turns out is a remarkably warm and intimate listening experience, one which certainly doesn’t play into the hands of all the usual stereotypes: “A big part of this ‘Icelandic sound from the glacier’ is a cliché journalists have come up with,” dismisses violinist Maria Huld Markan, and certainly, it’d be reasonable to deduce that much of Amiina’s formative musical experience stems not from the topography of the band’s homeland, but from the fact that all four members studied at the Reykjavik College of Music.