The self-styled ritualistic electro-mechanical ensemble OSMIUM is
a veritable supergroup. Made up of Oscar-winning composer and
instrumentalist Hildur Guðnadóttir, veteran engineer and producer
James Ginzburg, Senyawa’s idiosyncratic vocalist Rully Shabara and
Grammy-winning sound designer / producer Sam Slater, while each
member brings along a laundry list of accolades, the project is far
greater than the sum of its parts.
Alloying burnished electroacoustic soundscapes with dense,
metallic drones, barbed rhythms and buckled, bio-mechanical
vocalizations, OSMIUM’s eagerly awaited debut album doesn’t try
to cast a rigid future.
Rather, it tempers a viscous flow of unorthodox speculations that
smolders through the distant past, blazing a trail all the way to the
frontier of fate. Absorbed by questions about the relationship
between humans and technology, tradition and progression, the
individual and the group, OSMIUM channel their experience and
expertise into a set of forward-thinking sonic interrogations that
skewer established cultural preconceptions. And although genre is
acknowledged - the album draws from folk, doom metal, 20th
century minimalism, industrial music and extreme noise - there’s
never a sense that it’s riveted firmly in place.
Widely known for her soundtrack work (including ‘Joker’ and
‘Chernobyl’) Guðnadóttir plays the halldorophone, a unique
cello-like electroacoustic instrument designed by Halldór Úlfarsson
that allows the performer to harness unstable feedback loops.
Taking his cues from this process, Slater (who has worked alongside
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ben Frost and others) generates rhythms
using a self-oscillating drum he designed with KOMA Elektronik
and Subtext boss and Emptyset member Ginzburg responds in
kind, producing booming tambura-like sonorities from a device he

developed himself based on the monocord, an ancient single-
stringed resonator.

OSMIUM synchronize the three unique instruments using a custom
system of robotics to generate basic rhythms that underpin their
improvisations and experiments, and Shabara’s alien tones supply
the band with their conceptual fulcrum. The vocalist is one of South
Asia’s most recognizable underground artists, and the sounds he’s
able to create using exhaustively rehearsed extended techniques
are so distinctive that he’s been studied by scientists back home in
Indonesia.
Never weighed down by needless sound design or modish
ornamentation, it’s music that feels authentically experimental;
OSMIUM have figured out an awkward symmetry between their
discrete approaches, concentrating their gaze on the outcome
rather than the process. The result is a work of science fiction that’s
driven by interaction, conversation and sensation.

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