PALME (LP)

This 2014 fourth album 'Palme' represents El?f?s most collaborative effort to date, and also perhaps her most profoundly sensual & affecting. Musically, it offers up an astonishing wellspring of fresh ideas and playful experimentation that move the sound on from the acoustic approach that predominantly defined her first three records, 'Vi? og Vi?' (2007), 'Innundir Skinni' (2009) and 'Sudden Elevation' (2013). El?f Arnalds is an Icelandic singer and multi-instrumentalist. Classically educated on the violin, viola and self-taught on guitar and charango, El?fAEs most distinctive asset is, nonetheless, her voice - instantly captivating and possessed of a magical, otherworldly quality. Favourably compared with the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Judee Sill and Kate Bush, El?fAEs approach to making music remains highly individual: playful but intimate; accessible and uplifting, yet deeply personal and suffused with a timelessness that goes beyond the puckish inscrutability of her native tongue.