By: Chris Pizzolo

Unnar Gísli Sigurmundsson aka Júníus Meyvant latest song “Hailslide” is beautifully composed and has a sound steeped in tradition. With hard panned percussion, sweet strings, silky bass grooves, happy horns and tasteful vocals, this song produces more positive pulp than your favorite orange juice. Júníus’ music is described as “The feeling you get from listening.. is equally as comfortable as resting under a thick wool blanket with a hot cup of cocoa in or even when one settles with an exotic beverage on a hot sandy beach far and away.” I can whole heartedly attest to that description after listening to this gentle musical earthquake.

When I first found out about Meyvant, I was curious to know more about him and his background. With such a unique sound, I had made the foolish assumption that he was either from Chicago, Nashville, or the UK, only to find out that this Icelandic artist hails from Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands), a town that has a population of less than 5,000 people (according to the internet). Just to put things in perspective, Astoria, Queens, the neighborhood in which I’m writing this article, has a population of over 150,000. Perhaps living in a place that is thirty times less inhabited affords a more accomplished masterpiece. If that’s the case, this song certainly supports such a hypothesis.