{"id":2743,"date":"2010-10-15T01:41:34","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T21:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oontz.ru\/?p=2743"},"modified":"2011-01-22T21:52:03","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T17:52:03","slug":"is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/2010\/10\/15\/is\/","title":{"rendered":"Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd. Just Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t hear much <em>about<\/em> Iceland and even less is heard <em>from<\/em> there. The only news that reaches us these days concerns the state of the Icelandic economy, it&#8217;s all about the recession impact, the debts and the protests.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oontz.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/hm930.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" style=\"border: 4px double #999999;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oontz.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/hm470.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"304\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s something missing from all those reports. For example &#8211; the\u00a0 almost shamanic drums of those very protesters appearing on the front page of Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd &#8211; the field recording blog from Iceland, located at <a href=\"http:\/\/fieldrecording.net\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/fieldrecording.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It is not only about the protesters of course. Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd features a bunch of impressive nature recordings, a number of live recordings, a bit of technical advice, all muffled up with those beautiful Icelandic letters with lots of dashes and umlauts all over. There is not a single English word in Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd except for the url addresses.<\/p>\n<p>Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd means Sound Image. This is the case when your trusty <a href=\"http:\/\/translate.google.com\/#\" target=\"_blank\">Google Translate<\/a> cannot be fully trusted &#8211; what it offers is Sound File which makes the difference. But it could serve as a decent tool anyway if you want to break the spell of not knowing and get to know what this recording is all about.<\/p>\n<p>The website is run by an electrician from Reykjavik named Magnus Bergsson. Last week I contacted Magnus and asked him about Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd\u00a0the inspiration behind it. He kindly answered my questions which I&#8217;m really grateful for.<\/p>\n<p>Taking up DIY audio as a hobby in the 70s he got carried away with live performances of Icelandic artists. Magnus wasn&#8217;t happy with the quality of those recordings he has heard before so he decided to make his own tapes.  From the 1983 to 1995 he has recorded a lot of bands from the likes of jazz-funk Mezzoforte to Sugarcubes with not yet world famous Bjork. But most of his time was spent out in a field after finding out that if listened through speakers those nature sounds may act as a cure or as a lullaby or even as a party background.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" style=\"border: 4px double #999999;\" title=\"Photo by Magnus Bergsson\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oontz.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/rigning_rok_mg_3590.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"313\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Magnus says his major interest still lies in nature recordings but living in the capital means less opportunities available for that. He doesn&#8217;t drive a car and has no intention to so he doesn&#8217;t take his mics out in the field that often escaping the omnipresent traffic noise. But if he has a chance you can be sure it was worth waiting for.<\/p>\n<p>Listening to those recordings it is hard to believe that Icelandic nature is relatively quiet &#8211; as Magnus puts it. The island can&#8217;t boast about having noisy wild animals or bugs only birds in Spring, but Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd manages to yield great results even in such a quiet environment.<\/p>\n<p>One of my favourites <a href=\"http:\/\/fieldrecording.net\/2010\/04\/06\/fostudagurinn-langi-ari\u00f0-2010\/\" target=\"_blank\">recordings<\/a> is made on Good Friday this year &#8211; the chilling snowstorm easily turns your cosy and warm evening with a cup of tea handy into something different.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fieldrecording.net\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/fieldrecording.net<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Published October 15th, 2010.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Simply Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd. \u041f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0442\u043e Hlj\u00f3\u00f0mynd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-some-other-places","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oontz.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}