Over the last two weeks we’ve had a couple of posts about an Icelandic band called Sólstafir and their new album on Season of Mist, Svartir Sandar. The most recent post (here) included a great video of the band performing a song from the album called “Fjara” on Icelandic television. Sólstafir has also nearly finished filming an official music video for the same song. I have no doubt we’ll be posting that at NCS as soon as it premieres. But for today, we’re focusing on album art instead of Sólstafir’s music.
Svartir Sandar is a two-CD album. The first disc is called “Andvari” and the second is titled “Gola”, and each of them includes six songs — 12 in total. I don’t yet have a physical copy of the album, but it apparently includes a booklet with artwork for each of the 12 songs. One at a time, Sólstafir has been adding the art for each song to their Facebook albums, and today they uploaded the last one.
I’ve been watching as these pieces of art have gone up on Facebook, and now that they’re all there, I’ve collected them in this post. For reasons I doubt I could articulate, they suit the music. Even standing alone without the amazing music, they’re very cool. All the art is by a Norwegian cartoonist named Kim Holm. Take a look at all 12 creations after the jump (and listen to a Sólstafir song while you’re doing that).
The music on this album is continuing to blow me away, it’s so fucking good. This song is the epic title track, “Svartir Sandar”:
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Disc-2-05-Svartir-Sandar.mp3|titles=Solstafir – Svartir Sandar]And here are Kim Holm’s creations for each song:
DISC 1: “ANDVARI”
“Ljós í Stormi”
“Fjara”
“Þín Orð”
“Sjúki Skugginn”
“Æra”
“Kukl”
DISC 2: “GOLA”
“Melrakkablús”
“Draumfari”
“Stinningskaldi”
“Stormfari”
“Svartir Sandar”
“Djákninn”
