Ragnheiður Gröndal // Tregagás

// CD // 2010 // sung in Icelandic // Traditional music // 12 tracks // 42 minutes //

Known in Iceland for her pop music steeped in rich local tradition, Ragnheiður Gröndal recorded this collection of "folkloric" tunes in 2009, to use the term, whose slightly corny connotation doesn't do justice to the genre's melodic richness.

Ragnheiður's crystalline voice surfs on layers of ancient instruments, rubs shoulders with Celtic rhythms, and accompanies atmospheres of pantheistic mysticism, a bit as if Kate Bush had taken over the medieval register.