April 23: Sono Luminus releases Kristín Anna’s I Must Be The Devil - with Bonus Track 'In Poem' - Now on CD

[Note: Review CDs available upon request.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts: Maggie Stapleton, Jensen Artists
646.536.7864 x2 | maggie@jensenartists.com

Sono Luminus Releases
Kristín Anna’s I Must Be The Devil

Now on CD from Sono Luminus: April 23, 2021
www.kristinanna.com | www.sonoluminus.com

Review CDs available upon request.
Watch the video for Forever Love: http://bit.ly/ForeverLoveVideo

"The former múm frontwoman steps out with a set of airy, orchestral folk that resembles early Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom.” – Pitchfork

Sono Luminus announces the April 23, 2021 worldwide release of I Must Be The Devil by Kristín Anna, a founder of the band múm, which was produced by and recorded with Kjartan Sveinsson, formerly of Sigur Rós. Sono Luminus is releasing the album in a physical format with a booklet and a brand-new bonus track, In Poem. A vinyl LP will follow this summer.

I Must Be The Devil is Kristín Anna’s solo EP written for piano and voice between 2005-2017. She says of the album, “The music I’d been writing over the years was a very personal affair, something I did for emotional and spiritual survival.” Regarding the album title, she says, “It just came to me, and then I went about my business, being an imperfect human being, my own centre, within this divine order we call the universe.”

Sono Luminus’ CD and vinyl release of the EP includes the bonus track, In Poem. Kristín Anna writes of the song, “A friend from the States visited Iceland with a music mix on a cassette that included Elizabeth Cotten’s ‘Shake Sugaree.’ After he left with his cassette the song kept playing in my head, and I was inspired to write an homage. There was internet back then, but not this instant access to things like now, so I created my own version based on my memory.” 

Filmed in Iceland, the video Forever Love, from the album, was directed by her best friend, visual artist Ragnar Kjartansson, and Allan Sigurðsson. Watch the video here: http://bit.ly/ForeverLoveVideo.

Sono Luminus CEO Collin Rae says, “Krístin Anna and Kjartan Sveinsson have created one of the most painfully beautiful albums I’ve heard in years. Kristin’s voice is as gorgeous as it is unique and Kjartan’s production is atmospherically sublime.”

Kristín Anna Explains the Music on I Must Be The Devil:

The Ocean Wave Rocks My Knee Shells

I started to sing this on walks while on tour with my old band múm in 2005. Imagining standing knee deep in the shore about to leave something behind, feeling both saddened and allured. That summer múm had a commission for Holland Festival to write and performed interludes to Iannis Xenakis pieces. The festival’s theme was “Heaven/Hell” and this song became one of our interludes.

Forever Love

I sat down with a pen and paper, wondering if I could draw a picture that would reflect my soul, and someone would see it and love me. I drew stupid flowers and wrote on the back of it, “the spell I cast to get you to love me” as a joke. Then I quickly wrote this song on the piano and saw a shooting star.  The scene was inspired by a musical I’d recently done with Ragnar Kjartansson, my twin sister Gyða, and the Dessner twins where we played lovers roaming the woods singing songs we’d written to poems by Berthold Brecht, Sappho, e.e. cummings and them alike.

Heartly Matters

A song I nearly forgot, yet the emotion of it keeps resurfacing in my life. Kjartan asked me if I had any more songs in the studio, and I dug it up. The lyrics imply a failure of communication; what happens when you keep all your thoughts to yourself, hoping someone else will set things right.

Star, Child

I was married to this guy who really liked films about women who eventually go mad. It had something to do with him. He was the star’s child, then became the star, and the rest is sung to a child who’s bewildered.

Clay and Vapour

On a spiritless autumn day at my mom’s house with my old band members, I placed my hands on the piano and said, “I could just write a song.” Then my fingers played it.  The lyrics came later. 

Like The Others

Made originally on a cheap keyboard at my home in Manhattan. I used organ sound effects, delay, and agony.

In the Air

My cousin told me about a peyote ceremony she experienced in Mexico, where she felt a whiff of air from Iceland on her face. From a spiritual homesickness, I return to where I come from when playing music.

Place of You

Written one sleepless night on the organ of a friend’s grandmother. I had the keys to the garage where it stood and sneaked in there in the middle of the night without permission. It came out just like that. Then I sneaked back out.

Girl

This song was written on a three-day guilt trip. Asking forgiveness. I had run into her, and we hit it off instantly. We met for dinner and roamed downtown Manhattan.  We really liked each other and didn’t say goodbye until very hungover and sombre the next day. That night I watched her play music, so sacred, I felt ashamed for having not shown this person the reverence I felt for her, and myself and the light that had shone around us. 

More about Kristín Anna:

Kristín Anna is a founding member of the band múm. In 2006, she began performing her piano songs along with more experimental electronic music under the alias Kría Brekkan. Kría Brekkan released few and hard to find odd-sizes before her creative output became purely performative, leaving little trace.

Performing music and art alike, she worked with Shoplifter and Guy Maddin composing and performing for their installations. Back in Iceland, she hosted soirée nights with various fellow Icelandic artist titled “Artist Theater” of uncanny performances. There among was Ragnar Kjartansson who in 2012 got Kristín Anna to perform in his acclaimed video installation The Visitors.  She has since worked with him on many of his pieces, variably as a musician and a performer. 

Kristín Anna released HOWL, an improvised vocal ambient album and art work created in the Mojave desert on Ragnar´s label Bel-Air Glamour Records in 2015. 

In 2016 Kristín Anna, along with her twin sister Gyða, Ragnar, and the Dessner twin brothers; Aaron and Bryce, wrote music and performed for a stage musical that Ragnar created for a music festival. The pair of twins repeatedly perform one song from that collaboration in Ragnar's video installation “Death is Elsewhere” that was first exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in April 2019.        

Kristín Anna has been writing music for radio, theater, dance and films. She has been a part of PEOPLE collective since its creation and participated in their collaborative festival. In February 2020 she toured as an opening act for the band Efterklang in Europe performing music from I Must Be The Devil.

I Must Be The Devil | Kristín Anna | Sono Luminus | Release Date: April 23, 2021 | Total time: 48:07

1. The Oceanwave Rocks My Kneeshells [4:02]

2. Forever Love [3:17]

3. Heartly Matters [6:02]

4. Star, Child [6:51]

5. Clay and Vapour [4:10]

6. Like The Others [3:45]

7. In The Air [4:18]

8. Place of You [1:57]

9. Girl [8:24]

10. In Poem [4:23]

 

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