Johann Johannsson

After his homage to the IBM mainframe computers of his father's '60s career, Iceland's Johann Johannsson continues his proposed trilogy on technology and American brands with Fordlandia. Loosely based on the automaker's attempt to construct a utopian company town in the Brazilian jungle, the album is an appropriately lush, melancholic collection of pieces for orchestra and chamber ensemble, tinged by premonitions of doom and the certainty of the inevitable. It's the meeting of Bach (or Arvo Pärt) and the technological sublime.