OSMIUM share new single “OSMIUM 4”

Debut self-titled album – out 20^th June via Invada records

Hildur Guðnadóttir / Rully Shabara (Senyawa) / James Ginzburg (Emptyset) / Sam Slater

Credit: Camille Blake

“ritualistic and impactful. The strange instruments and Shabara’s unearthly vocals combine to make huge, pressing slabs of resonant noise.” – The Quietus

“Menacing raw energy” – Uncut

“The whole album feels important, not self important, just important. Important art, a piece of work to enjoy, to explore, to be with, to maybe feel a little uncomfortable with, enclosed by, to feel very comfortable with…” – The Organ

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Today, experimental collective OSMIUM have shared a new single titled “OSMIUM 4”. The track is taken from their eagerly awaited debut self-titled album, which was announced in late April earning plaudits from the likes of Stereogum and The Line Of Best Fit and is out 20^th June via Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records. Having previously debuted their material live at Unsound, the group is made up of the Oscar-winning Icelandic composer and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir, who has recorded with the likes of Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle and Múm, as well as performing live with Sunn O))) and Fennesz. She has composed the scores for, among others, “Chernobyl” and “Tár”, to much critical acclaim. She’s joined in Osmium by Emptyset and Subtext engineer and producer James Ginzburg, Senyawa’s idiosyncratic vocalist Rully Shabara and the Grammy-winning sound designer / producer Sam Slater.

Alloying burnished electroacoustic soundscapes with dense, metallic drones, barbed rhythms and buckled, bio-mechanical vocalizations, OSMIUM’s debut album doesn’t try to cast a rigid future. Rather, it tempers a viscous flow of unorthodox speculations that smolders through the distant past, blazing a trail all the way to the frontier of fate. Absorbed by questions about the relationship between humans and technology, tradition and progression, the individual and the group, OSMIUM channel their experience and expertise into a set of forward-thinking sonic interrogations that skewer established cultural preconceptions. And although genre is acknowledged – the album draws from folk, doom metal, 20th century minimalism, industrial music and extreme noise – there’s never a sense that it’s riveted firmly in place.

While each member brings along a laundry list of accolades, the project is far greater than the sum of its parts. Widely known for her aforementioned soundtrack work and run of acclaimed solo albums on Touch, Guðnadóttir plays the halldorophone, a unique cello-like electroacoustic instrument designed by Halldór Úlfarsson that allows the performer to harness unstable feedback loops. Taking his cues from this process, Sam Slater – who’s worked alongside Jóhann Jóhannsson, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost and others – generates rhythms using a self-oscillating drum he custom designed with KOMA Elektronik, and Ginzburg – one half of Emptyset and curator of Subtext Recordings – responds in kind, producing booming tambura-like sonorities from a device he developed himself based on the monocord, an ancient single-stringed resonator.

OSMIUM synchronize the three unique instruments using a custom system of robotics to generate basic rhythms that underpin their improvisations and experiments, and although Shabara just uses his voice, it’s his alien tones that supply the band with their conceptual fulcrum. The vocalist is one of South Asia’s most recognizable underground artists, and the sounds he’s able to create using exhaustively rehearsed extended techniques are so distinctive that he’s been studied by scientists back home in Indonesia. As part of OSMIUM, Shabara attempts to merge with the band’s machines, warping his vocal cords to mimic the robotics and originate hoarse percussive cracks and eldritch tonalities.

On today’s new single “OSMIUM 4”, Guðnadóttir’s eerie cinematic wails intersect with Shabara’s monastic chorales and Slater’s colourful haunting feedback, echoing her esteemed collaborations with Sunn O))) and Pan Sonic and oxidizing the scaffolding of liturgical music.

Speaking on the single James Ginzburg, says “This piece is an unexpectedly euphoric kraut rock inflected improvised interaction between Sam’s feedback drum and Hildur’s Haldorophone, while James plays percussion on the side of his Zither and Rully chants to a deity that exists only for the duration of this track. All of our instruments have minds of their own, and often it’s just enough to set them in motion with the lightest touch to produce complex textures and suggestions of harmony.”

HEAR / SHARE “OSMIUM 4” HERE

Never weighed down by needless sound design or modish ornamentation, it’s music that feels authentically experimental; OSMIUM have figured out an awkward symmetry between their discrete approaches, concentrating their gaze on the outcome rather than the process. The result is a work of science fiction that’s driven by interaction, conversation and sensation.

“OSMIUM” is out 20^th June via Invada Records – pre-order HERE