»Feathermagnetik« is a majestic micro/macrocosm. A shapeshifter who's darkness is strewn with glowing lights.
Kira Kira is the alias of Icelandic composer and audio/visual artist Kristin Björk Kristjansdottir, whose album »Feathermagnetik« is her third release. As a founding member of Kitchen Motors, a mischievous label and collective based on experiments in electronic music and arts, she continually breaks boundaries between forms and genres through a repertoire that includes compositions for theatre, film, dance and art installations – as well as playful multi-disciplinary productions that exceed her work as merely a composer. Her first feature film as director and screenwriter, »Grandma Lo-fi - The Basement Tapes of Sigridur Nielsdottir« is just out and has been celebrated in New York's Museum of Modern Art; MoMA, SXSW and a plethora of other festivals around the world.
When Kira Kira wrote the first notes of »Feathermagnetik«, she was in between homes: stranded in an icy Berlin winter, re-figuring seemingly figured out things anew, questioning old belongings and longings and opening up to a vast new terrain. The album reflects this impulse to re-assemble lost parts and to give in to the process of transformation and re-orientation in a new and unexplored place. It is a manifestation of the strength and imperative of friendship at times of change when Kira Kira set out all her antennas to map out the firmament of this record with her friends as coordinates and lights in the night.
A wild array of amazing musicians appear on »Feathermagnetik« which was created in Berlin, Reykjavik and in the Ulappa studio on Finnish island Suomenlinna, headquarters of Kristin's closest collaborator, percussion wizard Samuli Kosminen who mixed and produced the album with her as well as playing custom made percussion, psaltery and taisho koto harp. Finnish violin wonder Pekka Kuusisto whistles, humms and pumps an old harmonium organ, Borgar Magnason – an active force with the Bedroom Community label; Ben Frost and Valgeir Sigurdsson, brings a beastly yet tender quality of rumble and drone to the mix; trumpeteer Eirikur Orri Olafsson another of Kristin's closest collaborators plays a big role on the record, layering gorgeous horns and whistles. Kitchen Motors co-conspirator Hilmar Jensson plays guitar, Finnish musicians Heikki Nikula and Jarmo Saari play contrabass clarinet and theremin, German photographer Antje Taiga Jandrig lends a vocal presence on the closing piece of the album and Petur Hallgrimsson plays lapsteel.
»Feathermagnetik« is crafted with Kristin's uncompromising surrender to emotions as a compass and music as a plane to either fly or float in bewildering places full of gloomy desires and graceful explorers who wander through their beguiling environment with tender curiosity.
