II Reworked

Kiasmos – lafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen – have invited five trusted artists to completely reimagine their second album, II. Released in July 2024 to critical and fan acclaim, the comeback album took the duo across four continents to sold-out audiences worldwide over the following 18 months. The two friends entrusted the task to LA-based composers/producers/multi-instrumentalists Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith (AKA Disiniblud), fellow Icelandic composers Kjartan Holm and Sin Fang, and long-time friend and American composer Alex Somers. The result is a sprawling and shimmering trip back through the album’s melodies, with a dream-like haze more suited for after the dancefloor and when the lights have faded. The entirety of II has been reworked in sequence by the artists, each bringing their own distinctive colouring to the original songs. Nayar and Keith use electronic experimentation to reshape the emotional core, unveiling and highlighting stems that lay in the background of their original forms. Holm and Fang emphasise the simple beauty of the compositions, while Somers, working with analogue studio equipment, detunes pianos and strings and slows the pieces down, allowing the songs to reach new emotional heights.