hjaltalín ‘Traffic Music’

Gosh, is that the month already? The sharper knives among you will have noticed we completely dropped out back there, and for some considerable time too. So long in fact we missed Xmas, New Year, the entire month of January and, indeed, most of February.

If this was a proper job and not our own do what we like, when we like sort of place we’d have been sacked some time ago. Thankfully, it is our very own do what we like place. Ha.

Easing ourselves back in like you’d ease yourself into a very cold swimming pool, we were stumbling around with our cloth ears flapping madly when we discovered The Music Alliance Pact.

Essentially a collection of MP3 blogs from around the world, serving up a track a month, we found MAP on the rather nice swedesplease.net and spent a happy evening listening to stuff from Brazil and Argentina, Canada, Chile, New Zealand… February’s selection features tracks from 22 countries, the pick of the bunch, hands down, is Iceland’s magnificent hjaltalín.

We’re not sure how many of them there actually are, but we’ve studied pictures and have counted between seven and nine. A mini orchestra then, they come fully loaded with violins, cellos, bassoons, clarinets, accordions, trumpets, trombones, french horns, singing, the lot. They remind us of the very finest moments of Mr Jake Shillingford’s My Life Story polished with a hankie from the very top draw of (inevitably) The Arcade Fire. There’s probably some Paul Heaton in there too for good measure. Some say it’s a bit Mercury Rev, which you suppose it might be.

hjaltalín are hardly a secret we know, but give us a chance. We’re easing in slowly. They are uh-mazing. Louise, you will love them, but Simon won’t.

More fine new music soon. No, really.

More hear…
- This year we will be mostly bigging up last.fm. Hear more hjaltalín here
- We will also be continuing to point out that every band in the world has a MS
- And it would be deeply amiss of us not to point out you can actually still BUY music. Their very fine debut album, ‘Sleepdruk Sessions’ is here for less than a tenner.