Enigmatic, ethereal, and endlessly immersive, the music of pianist/composer Magnús Jóhann emerges from moments when reason gives way to unbound intuition. “Many of my best musical ideas come from a state of flow—I could be somewhere like on a train, staring out the window, and a melody will suddenly come to me and intrigue me enough that I’ll need to capture it,” says the Reykjavík-based musician. As shown in the expansive body of work he’s amassed in recent years—including a series of solo albums, collaborative projects with the likes of legendary jazz bassist Skúli Sverrisson and jazz-pop singer GDRN, a multitude of film and theater scores, and hundreds of genre-spanning recordings featuring his in-demand work as a producer and session player— Magnús matches his unfettered imagination with the sophisticated musicianship essential for bringing those elaborate ideas to life. On his new album Rofnar, Magnús shares some of his most exquisitely realized work to date: a suite of meditative yet wildly experimental compositions, fully affirming his capacity to immediately transport listeners into a dreamlike state of mind.

Magnús’ fifth solo album and debut release for U.S.-based record label FOUND, Rofnar takes its title from the Icelandic word for “break” or “tear apart”—a perfect reflection of his deep-rooted affinity for sonic deconstruction. “I love working with lush sounds like live piano or violin or brass instruments, then taking them apart so they become almost unrecognizable,” he says. After initially composing the album’s musical foundation for a theater piece by esteemed playwright Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson, Magnús spent much of lockdown reimagining and building upon that material to create an album of its own right. Featuring contributions from Björk’s longtime musical director Bergur Þórisson (on trombone and flugelhorn) and globally renowned composer/musician Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason (on violin), the result is a selection of pieces revealing both the measured elegance of Jóhann’s improvisatory style (an element informed by his training as a jazz pianist) and the bold ingenuity of his sound design. “A lot of the sounds on this album came from heavily distorting the pianos or synth or brass—I’d take what I’d recorded and filter it, reverb it, bit-crush it, add layers and layers of effects,” says Magnús, whose palette of instruments on Rofnar includes piano, organ, and vintage monophonic synthesizers. “I very much enjoy that process of turning a previously analog source into something digital and hi-fi and strange.”

Comprised of 11 untitled tracks, Rofnar opens on one of the few pieces unaltered from its presentation in Tyrfingsson’s play (a Greek tragedy centered on a father and son in the funeral industry in the Icelandic town of Kópavogur). With its elegiac strings, jagged rhythms, and subtle merging of blown-out piano and booming sub-bass, “Rofnar I” instantly sets the tone for the album’s hypnotic and quietly haunting intensity. “The strings are in some way a representation of the epic Greek element of the play, although ultimately I hope that people will create their own narratives for how they interpret the music,” Magnús points out. Next, on “Rofnar II,” Magnús presents a sublimely unhurried piece in which delicate melodies surface and recede to mesmerizing effect, gently spotlighting the captivating power of his piano work. “In the theater piece there was essentially no piano, unless it was buried deep within filters or distortion, so it felt very natural for this song to flesh out the main theme on my primary instrument,” says Magnús. From there, Rofnar builds to the chilling beauty of its finale, a minimalistic but profoundly riveting track he conceptualized as “an apocalyptic tango.” “‘Rofnar XI’ is a piano tune that grew out of the final minor movements of the piece—it came from developing a new theme from the harmony sprinkled throughout the record, and to me feels like an epilogue of some sort,” Magnús says. “There’s generally not a great deal of chromaticism on the album, but I liked the idea of ending with some musical ideas that feel new or even a bit out of place.”

All throughout Rofnar, Magnús dreams up a cascade of otherworldly sounds by tapping into his most inventive impulses. In the making of “Rofnar IX,” for instance, he revisited a piece performed by a string quartet for Tyrfingsson’s play, then transformed the recording into an ambient track awash in reverb and eerie atmospherics. “It’s always exciting when I can rework something and turn it into a piece that makes me feel a completely different emotion than I’d originally had in mind,” he notes. But despite its incessant experimentation, Magnús’ work remains rooted in the refined musicality he first honed by taking piano and clarinet lessons as a young child and further cultivated by studying at the Reykjavík-based jazz conservatory FÍH/MÍT. During his high school years, he joined a band and began performing in bars all over town, a turn of events that soon found him enmeshed in Reykjavík’s close-knit music community. “There was a snowball effect, where I started out playing gigs with one band and getting to know other musicians, who then asked me to play on their records,” says Magnús, whose production and session work encompasses a dizzying spectrum of genres (pop, hip-hop, free jazz, R&B, to name a few). At 19, he entered Iceland’s famed music competition Músíktilraunir and took home the third-place prize, which included a block of time at a professional recording studio. Those sessions yielded his debut solo album Pronto, a 2016 release that served as a winning introduction to the poignant melodicism, genre-blurring originality, and daring yet graceful sense of composition that would come to define his post-classical work.

Naming such eclectic musicians as Ryuichi Sakamoto, D’Angelo, and Glenn Gould among his longtime inspirations, Magnús thrives on constantly exploring new aspects of his creativity through his ongoing collaborations with other artists. “I’m so consumed with music in all its shapes and forms, whether it’s classical or jazz or hip-hop or black metal, and I feel incredibly lucky to be part of a music scene where I’m able to participate in so many different genres,” he says. But as he continues to push into new sonic terrain, a certain immutable quality imbues all of Magnús’ solo output. “I read once that music should be emotional first and intellectual second, and that’s a principle I’ve applied to my work since I started composing,” he says. “I feel strongly that anything can be an inspiration as long as you keep your eyes and ears open, so I just try to let go and stay receptive to whatever inspiration might come to me.”

- Elizabeth Barker