One can only hazard a guess as to the reaction at chez Jóhannsson when word spread about the imminent arrival of IBM 1401, the world's first 'mass-produced digital business computer' in 1964.   Full text...

Jóhann Jóhannsson's IBM 1401 - A User's Manual—in which the Icelandic composer combines vintage musical fragments coaxed out of one of the first digital data processing systems by his father (who was a chief maintenance engineer for the machine) in 1971 along with other, new Eno-esque electronic sounds and a 60-piece orchestra—gives you the sense of hearing something truly ancient being married to something very modern and present, and, then, something very futuristic.  Full text...

IBM 1401, A User's Manual, his third solo project, can be seen as a meditation on more topical empirical phenomena: obsolete technology, artificial life, and man-machine interaction.   Full text...

IBM 1401: A User's Manual is uncommonly beautiful and haunting, merging the conceptual philosophy of sound art with the emotional complexity of minimalist classical music.  Full text...

For the album, Jóhannsson conducted a 60-piece string orchestra, juxtaposing humanist emanations with the mechanical sounds of the computer, directly echoing one of the work's general themes: the human relationship with technology.  Full text...

In theory, this may sound like a disparate clash of sounds, but the combination of his deadpan, impassive tones with the deeply moving strings is a masterstroke and genuinely stirs great loss and nostalgia for a bygone technological age.  Full text...

To ears conditioned by syrupy Hollywood film music, some of these orchestrations can sound over-egged, almost to the point of crass manipulation. They're pretty, no question about that, but that's not enough for a composer like Jóhannsson; the best moments come when the sweetness is heard in contrast, usually cut by a pang of longing engendered by the aching nostalgia of a future imagined in the recent past.  Full text...