Bassist Skúli Sverrisson has been a favorite of mine for well over 20 years. In this reissue, he teams with tenor saxophonist Óskar Guðjónsson in a quiet, minimal, yet somehow lush release of interplay between the two masters. From the release’s Bandcamp site:
“After Silence (Eftir þögn) was recorded in 2001 and marks the beginning of the Skúli Sverrisson & Óskar Guðjónsson duo. Their aesthetic was well described by Ben Ratliff of The New York Times when reviewed their second release: “If you put Stan Getz in an echo chamber, playing at the quietest volume possible, his breath audibly escaping around the reed, alongside someone playing a semi-acoustic bass with baroque-guitar technique, you’d get something roughly like “The Box Tree”… It’s a pulse-settler and an order-restorer: It could be the last thing you listen to before you go to bed, or something to lead you into sleep.” After Silence was originally released in 2002 by a local Icelandic label in a limited number of copies and soon became unavailable. Nevertheless, via burnt CDs, After Silence lived a healthy life and became a widely recognised underground favorite among musicians and music lovers around the world, who will without doubt celebrate this hidden gem finally being available to them again on streaming services.”
