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Jóhann Jóhannsson, "Fordlandia"
Jóhannsson's second installment of a series inspired by iconic American names is as dazzling and solemn as we have come to expect. Hopefully the final component won't refer to The Golden Arches.
Johann Johannson’s preceding recording was devoted to the IBM 1401, the ‘Model T’ of computers. His father was chief maintenance engineer on the first such machine imported into Iceland so the theme is personal as well as intellectual. Furthermore, the album’s starting point was music which his father developed on the 1401. Related fact: Kubrick chose the three letters immediately preceding IBM as the onboard computer, HAL, in 2001.
Not that you need to know any of this to enjoy Johannsson’s music at a level of pure sound. At times it appears that he has managed to isolate the gene allowing for audio stimulus to trigger euphoria, life-affirmation, and weeping. So while Fordlandia expands upon his earliest work, in terms of composition and instrumentation, the capacity to engage the emotions remains intact. From the opening title track it is clear that the simple power first evidenced on the brief “Odi et Amo,” from Englaborn has not been lost. And thankfully, the blissful "Fordlandia" is more than thirteen minutes long. On this track, as always, Johannsson keeps things simple, despite having progressed from strings and vocoder to full orchestra with electronics, and he claims “the ending is a five minute long continous ritardando, quite possibly the longest one ever on record, should anyone care…”
Fordlandia was Henry Ford’s attempt to construct a model town for the indigenous workers at his rubber production plant in Brazil. Workers were supplied with ID badges, made to eat American-style hamburgers and Ford banned drinking and smoking anywhere within the town limits, even in workers own houses. The response to such “bunk” was the rapid growth of a settlement nearby complete with bars, nightclubs and brothels. Eventually the development of synthetic rubber erased the need for the natural product, Fordlandia was abandoned, and the land sold at a loss of 20 million dollars.
The second theme of rocketry, takes in two other stories. The first is of John Whiteside Parsons, by day a scientist and by night a disciple of Aleister Crowley. In the 1930s Parsons developed the first stable rocket fuel. Johannsson imagines him chanting Crowley’s “Ode to Pan” during test launches. Bizarrely, the scientist died after an explosion in his Californian garage. Another strand to this theme emerges on the piece “Guidelines for a Space Propulsion Device based on Heim's Quantum Theory." Apparently, German physicist Burkhard Hein proposed faster-than-light space travel and spent years trying to developing it. In WWII Hein was seriously injured in an explosion, left without hands and almost deaf and blind. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of his life searching for a unified theory of everything. No small task, I imagine.
A poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is sung on the lament “The Great God Pan Is Dead” and (after a considerable time without them) the human vocals are a superbly effective foil for all the instruments and machine made sounds we have heard. On this album, Jóhannsson illustrates the attempt to obliterate the forest God Pan and Paganism that preceded the rise of industrial capitalists such as Henry Ford and their dehumanizing mass production methods. Still, what goes up must come down. Pagan symbols such as the Christmas tree are still with us and, for his part, Jóhannsson more than hints at the forest slowly reclaiming Fordlandia. There's plenty of theory and concept around Fordlandia then, but the funereal atmospheres, studied pace, and gorgeous swells in the work all allow for wide interpretation. I find Johannsson's music to be equal part requiem and alarm call. Forget the triumphal music that strokes the pleasure glands of the wealthy and puffs their delusions of manifest destiny. In this year of Our Ford here is the sound of inevitable decay, destruction, folly, and rebirth.
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