Eivør Shares Video For 'Only Love' Featuring Ásgeir

Faroese electronica artist Eivør has shared a video for "Only Love" featuring vocals from Ásgeir. The track is featured on Eivør's new album Segl released earlier this fall on BFD/The Orchard/Kobalt.

Watch the video here!

Including co-production from Lana Del Rey collaborator Dan Heath, Segl is the follow-up to Eivør's widely-praised, 2017 English-language debut, Slør, which triggered an appearance on Later....With Jools Holland. Eivør soundtracks the current series of Netflix/BBC flagship The Last Kingdom (co-written with Ivor Novello/BAFTA-nominated John Lunn), and her music has previously been synched on Homeland & Game Of Thrones alongside hit video games Metal Gear Survive and God Of War.

The video for "Only Love" was shot on location in Iceland and directed by Icelandic artist Anna Maggý. Speaking about the process, Eivør says, "I wrote the lyrics with David Hopkins and when this song was written I thought about "love" and all the things it makes us do. I will never get tired of writing about this subject. It's the most complex and yet the most basic of all things. It has so many shapes and shades and on this life journey it takes us through the whole palette of emotions. It's both strong and fragile at once. It breaks us and makes us whole. Sometimes we have to lose it first to find it and when we find it we are afraid of losing it. I believe that everyone we ever loved will always be a part of us somehow deep within. Even when the love didn't last. I find much beauty in that."

Speaking about their collaboration on the track, Ásgeir adds, "I got to know Eivør when I sang with her on her Christmas shows in Reykjavik in 2018 and we got along really well and I enjoyed working with her and her band. Later on Eivør sent me the track 'Only Love' and I was honored that she asked me to sing with her on this song."

Photo Credit: Sigga Ella

Eivør is an artist perfectly attuned to the savage vicissitudes of nature. Born & raised in Syðrugøta, a tiny community of just over 400 people on one of the northerly Faroe Islands, Eivør grew up surrounded by the windswept landscape of the North Atlantic, a backdrop that has deeply influenced the elemental electronica she creates. Segl - Eivør's ninth album, since releasing her debut at just 17 - builds on these motifs, exploring the journeys we undertake, both metaphorically and physically. The title - meaning 'sail' in Faroese - alludes to our desire for growth and direction, and the role of fate.

Eivør immersed herself in music from 13, fronting a trip-hop band after discovering seminal albums by Massive Attack and Portishead. Gigs soon followed, held afloat in rowing boats, in a huge cave on the island of Hestur. At 16 Eivør quit school, moving alone to Reykjavik to release her debut album and pursue classical singing training. She has since won the Icelandic Music Prize, twice - the first non-Icelandic artist to do so. Such itinerant tendencies have bled into her music, Segl no exception. "My creative process can be very chaotic and abstract, so I need to find the space to dive deeper into it and sculpt it," she says. "After sitting on songs for a year or more, I'd go in and edit the melody or the lyrics. Sometimes the production too. The whole album is very much about change, so it's quite apt." Working closely again with composer/producer Tróndur Bogason (also her husband), the extra space allowed Eivør to explore programming and production more thoroughly than ever before. She focussed on a free flow of ideas, and enriching collaborations.

The impetus to seize control of life is writ large across Segl. "Sleep On It" heads off insomnia with an exhortation for clear-sightedness, whilst "Let It Come" harnesses inner power to deal with whatever life throws your way. Elsewhere, "Mánasegl" counsels in clear terms, taking its title from a Faroese word for 'moonsail', the highest sail found on square rigged clippers, and also known as the hope sail. Eivør's working partnership with Golden Globe nominee Dan Heath brings Segl to a spine-tingling conclusion on "Gullspunnin" - with lyrics written by poet Marjun Syderbø Kjælnes and a title meaning 'cocooned in gold', it transmits the essence of the islands. "I wanted to be very playful," says Eivør; "Visiting other people's creative world, and inviting them into mine. Something magical happens when two different worlds meet, it expands the space. And it's full of contrast; that's quite interesting to me."

Eivør will tour the UK, October 2021. Tickets: https://www.musicglue.com/eivor/

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