When: 7.30pm on Thursday 6 June 2013
Where: Takk Coffee House, 6 Tariff Street, Northern Quarter, M1 2FF

We’re delighted to be presenting Icelandic folk musician Ólöf Arnalds at Manchester’s Icelandic coffee house.

Ólöf Arnalds is an Icelandic singer and multi-instrumentalist. Classically educated on the violin, viola and self-taught on guitar and charango, Ólöf’s 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, Ólöf’s 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. Ólöf has quickly proved herself a magnetic, self-assured stage performer, reliant as much on vaudevillian charm and even outright bawdiness, as much as the contrasting delicacy of her song delivery.

Recorded in her native Iceland, Sudden Elevation, Ólöf’s third full album and her first sung entirely in English, captures a rare and idiosyncratic songwriting talent in full bloom. From the breezily skipping rhythm of opener German Fields to the pealing vocals of closer, Perfect, Sudden Elevation’s particular brand of heartache is magical, dislocated and otherworldly; its harmonies complex and quietly electrifying. Produced again by long-time collaborator Skúli Sverrisson, Sudden Elevation was largely recorded in a late autumn 2011 stint in a seaside cabin in Hvalfjörður (literally ‘Whale-fjord’), in the west of Iceland.

Support comes from Shield Patterns. ‘Wandering electro-folk dreampop’, Shield Patterns’ songs are inspired by a combination of things heard, read, experienced, resulting in a sound that is dark and rhythmic, melancholy and fragile. The name Shield Patterns is an invented term derived from a compulsion to count, or to create habitual routines and personal ‘mantras’, used as protective forces from anxieties and fears.

Takk is an excellent new Icelandic-inspired coffee house on the edge of the Northern Quarter. Complimentary tea and coffee is included within the ticket price, with other refreshments available to purchase.

Book tickets now. Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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