Consistently outstanding Icelandic composer and producer creates the soundtrack for a film about rodents that doubles as a well-done eco-parable.

As a recording, the album displays a few sides of Jóhannsson we haven’t heard before. Among his albums to date, it’s one of the most musically active, and befitting its origin, also the most soundtrack-y, which means something for a guy working in a genre frequently referred to as cinematic. We first got to know the Icelandic composer through two brilliant minimal electro-orchestral albums, Englabörn and Virðulegu forsetar, both of which displayed a knack for unifying the whole work by exploring and re-exploring the same themes in different contexts. And in the Endless Pause does the same, returning to a series of motifs and using the orchestration to imply different meanings each time. Though it does incorporate some of Jóhannsson’s trademark electronic treatments, this is largely an orchestral and choral work, given a vividly atmospheric, almost spectral performance by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

One of the biggest surprises of the score is how openly dramatic it is given the composer’s past work. The solo cello that moans up out of the droning morass of “Escape” before being swallowed by a hideous electro-acoustic groan is among the most nakedly emotional sounds I’ve heard in his music. The richness of the arrangements elsewhere gives them dramatic heft– “Rainwater” is so thick with strings it feels as if it could burst (it scores an odd scene in which huge flying jellyfish sprinkle dandelion seeds over the city). It has the glacial beauty of a lot of his past work without the glacial pacing. Which is not to say it’s better, as the slow pacing of Virðulegu forsetar was one of its assets, but it is more immediate, whether or not you’re watching those civilization-building rodents.