FM PRO PREMIERE
Icelandic composer and cellist Eythor Arnalds returns with Music for Walking, a ten-track album built around movement, stillness, and deep instrumental focus.
Released via Alda Music, the record blends contemporary classical, cinematic ambience, and mindful listening into music made to move with the body, not fade behind it.
Recorded with the Reykjavík Symphony Orchestra at Harpa Concert Hall and produced with Bergur Þórisson, Music for Walking uses strings, piano, harp, repetition, and space as slow-moving reflection. No rush, no overbuild — just breath.
Arnalds’ sound draws from a wider minimalist and ambient lineage, with echoes of Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Brian Eno, Nils Frahm, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, while staying deeply connected to Icelandic landscape and internal motion.
At the centre sits Progression, paired with a new visual from filmmaker Karim Iliya.
Built around four broken chords, the piece lets violin, harp, piano, and cello move in slow accumulation. Nothing forces the feeling. It rises by degrees.
Arnalds explains:
Life is a progression. It is a mental journey. In many ways walking is symbolic of our life. The walking may have a destination, but it has meaning in itself. The experience of walking makes our thoughts progress, like seeds into a plant. A progression in a state of no words, listening to music is a form of meditation which I like to do with my headphones, preferably on a mountain in Iceland. The album Music for Walking is made for such experiences. No words, pure music and walking. In the current age of sensational news and polarisation, it should be a break from that noise and bring waves of tranquility and calm.
Repetition, breath, and pace carry through Body of Water, Opening, and Promenade No. 7, where restrained arrangements, orchestral depth, and minimalist patterns leave space for each piece to move.
That same language extends into the Progression visual, with Iceland’s glaciers, icebergs, volcanic terrain, and Arctic skies becoming part of the composition, not just scenery.
Iliya says:
Arctic landscapes can be harsh but beautiful. Even in a world locked in ice, there is movement as clouds drape the mountain sides, glaciers carve their way through mountains, and icebergs drift through the blue. As the ice melts, and the sun returns, Eythor moves through the arctic landscape with his cello, playing to the ice, the birds, the mountains and the rivers.
With Music for Walking, Eythor Arnalds shapes motion without urgency: ambient classical music with a pulse, made for headphones, open air, and the thoughts that only arrive once the noise drops.