Swallowed a Star

Daníel Ágúst | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 6, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: One Little Indian Us
• ASIN: B000MCICDI
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,829 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Daniel Agust's debut album, Swallowed A Star, is very much a departure from his work with GusGus. The album is a collection of songs Daniel has beautifully crafted, composed and orchestrated over the past couple of years. It's very much a collection of songs born out of Iceland. Unique, vast, melancholic, beautiful, dark and foreboding. It seems that many of the descriptions of the country's landscape equally apply to this record. Swallowed A Star sees Daniel collaborate again with Bix (remixer to Madonna, Beck & Sigur Ros) after the pair worked together so successfully on GusGus' second album, This Is Normal. Electronic hisses, fizzes, squelching bass and gorgeous strings characterize this weird and wonderful album. Daniel and Bix have created a rich tapestry of orchestration, eerie bleeps and rousing soulful vocals. Together, they have produced something sublime, a 21st century wall of sound with an almost classical feel. One Little Indian. 2006. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Daníel Ágúst - Swallowed A Star, April 27, 2011

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scoundrel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swallowed a Star (Audio CD)

Daníel Ágúst's debut, _Swallowed a Star_, represents his solo outing after being the voice for Gus Gus over the course of two albums. He eschews dance tracks for a more classical sound; the album swells with cellos. This is a personal move for Ágúst; "The Moss" dances around on it pizzicatos (a danceable version of this would appear on Gus Gus' album _Forever_, of course). "Nobody Else" shapes sharp intakes of breaths and bells to serve as the backdrop for lyrics that seems to have escaped from a disco track. Ágúst leaves a lot of spaciousness in his instrumentation, letting it remain sparse as necessary so that a fuller track like "Intersection" stands out. The bubbling electronics on "If You Leave Me Now" add a nice touch, while "Love and Respect" is nothing but strings. Though pleasant, Ágúst's voice has its limitations, and there's a lack of dynamic range to this album. Though he may have swallowed a star, he hasn't yet started to shine.