MUGISON - LONELY MOUNTAIN - the original press release..

Lifelike are proud to announce the release of the debut album from Icelandic singer-songwriter Mugison. Signed to Lifelike from a demo he sent to the label, Lonely Mountain is entirely the work of one Ornelius Mugison and his fevered imagination.  

With Lonely Mountain Mugison has achieved the making of an album that sounds otherworldly and like nothing else but at the same time familiar and easy on the ear.  

So how to describe Lonely Mountain? The openers CY and Ear sound like an off-key tribute to Abbey Road (you can hear George Harrison’s slide guitar sound on Pet too). Elsewhere we can hear the gruff tones of Bonnie Prince Billy, the wonkiness of Herbert (One Day She'll Park The Car), Bone Machine-era Tom Waits and Sigur Ros (Poke A Pal), but mostly we can hear Mugison. Lonely Mountain is staggering in its ambition and fits more original ideas and melody into its 8 tracks than most manage on an album of twice the length.  

Mugison takes up his story…
“When I was forced to find Christ at the age of 13 my father gave me an acoustic guitar. I have always been a lousy player so it was only natural for me to write my own tunes so that way people would not spot the mistakes. For some years I did all kinds of funny jobs – was a messenger boy on a bike during a tough winter in Iceland, a sailor off the coast of Russia, worked on a trolley (a very small boat) which had all the gadgets of a bond car .. and recorded in my spare time on a 8 track tape machine.

In 2000 I did a little release called útbrot, which I sold to friends and relatives (70 copies) and used that money to buy a ticket to London and started to learn the art of recording. In the Summer of 2002 I decided not to pay any rent, instead spending the money to make a record. I got to stay at various flats that my friends had – taking care of their flats or rooms while they where on summer holiday in Ibiza. All the songs on ‘Lonely Mountain’ have their own houses, the songs are all connected to the people I was with at the time they were being recorded. I try to make the songs more personal by recording the ‘accidental sounds’ of something that has some relevance to the topic of the song. For example the song Ear which is a very chatty song, all the ‘accidental sounds’ are recordings of me making coffee for my friend, the kettle boiling and the sound of an instant coffee… the reason for this is only to give the songs some more personal value.”  

Like Cody Chestnutts Headphone Masterpiece,  another of this year’s most startling debuts, the lo-fi, one man production and “accidental sounds” of Lonely Mountain lend it an honest , singing-in-your-ear, bluesy quality.  

26 year old Mugison lives in Isafuroer with his family who have spent the long nights of the Icelandic winter stitching the sleeves for the first 10,000 copies of Lonely Mountain (honestly) There is a space in the sound of Lonely Mountain which is undoubtedly due to his nationality. A bubbling undercurrent of sound and song as though there is always something waiting, geyser-like, to spring to the surface  

Mugison is a regular on the Icelandic live circuit and made his UK live debut at the Accidental/Lifelike party at Londons Plastic People earlier this year. He played at The ICA with Manitoba as part of the Rough Trade weekend, is touring Japan with fellow Icelanders Mum and the UK with Twisted Nerve artist Luma Lee.  

Sea Y will be released later this year as a single with remixes from fellow Lifelike artist Phil Parnell and Arto Lindsay