What ( ) went ahead and revealed to the likes of our giddy-pill-peddler there and his fierce skeptical client, was that something right wicked exciting was going on Iceland with regards the composition of melody and the kicking of notes about a stave.

For sure, everyone with half a drum in the ears knew about Bjork, and knew that her music was as beautiful and complex and evocative as anything anyone had ever even considered going about creating, and that it was as the sighing of the angels upon the frost-stung windows of heaven, or as the twitching of a sparrow's wings 'pon a dew-kissed hedgerow of a winter's morn, or as the swelling of a neon cityscape out the belly of Arcadia. Scarcely a man, woman or child walked the Earth in ignorance of these facts, but what ( ) suggested was that other individuals hidden away in the basements of Selfoss or wandering lonesome about the shores of Keflavík were creating music of a similarly compelling, fascinating, otherworldly nature, which, if not quite as astounding as Bjork's, was at least fit to sit upon the same shelf.

Left and right and hither and thither, folks with immense cravings for sounds not unlike those of violins melting in the guts of the gods, or for melodies akin to the solemn lamentations of dying fauns choking on the fog, there and then they tuned the lugs to Iceland, and lo!, what wonders they found.

These wonders, it turns out, have since been gathered together and stacked arse-to-jowl 'tween the opening and closing of Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon's 2005 documentary Screaming Masterpiece, or Gargandi Snilld, being an expansive, wide-reaching overview of the contemporary Icelandic music scene, released on DVD by Milan Records on the 6th of March 2007.

With Regards The Cinematic Worth Of Screaming Masterpiece

Screaming Masterpiece opens with a series of shots detailing the kinds of untouched, crystalline expanses I see back my eyes every time I talk to my good friend Maja about her homeland, being the land of Iceland, conveniently enough.

Great towering glaciers and frozen lakes and azure skylines hung precariously in the heavens like a cracked windscreen dangling 'tween the metal frame on God's own Volvo.

Vapors and mists hovering about the ice like opium smoke.

Gurgling, discombobulating wounds on the surface of the earth.

These opening images, they invite a number of loose associations and stereotypes to come jiggering and jiving up front the lobes; desolation, isolation, mythology, the footprints of the Vikings, tiny communities huddled about Lutheran church halls.

In-between the talking heads and the shredded violas and the incredible music and the drunken romping peppering Screaming Masterpiece's hour and a half run-time, we return time and again to those black beaches and silver pastures, mountain vistas and wetland sprawls, the resultant impression being that the creative genius on display every direction is as integral to the country as its topography or its history, and that each element feeds off the other.