The combination of modular synthesizer and viola is an uncommon one, but musicians Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer manage to create a distinctive dyad that comes together with grace and truth.

Traveling in 2017 together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer decided to capture the serene and strange quality of their surroundings through a collaborative musical project, released in March 2022 on International Anthem as Recordings from the Åland Islands.

Reflecting on the dynamic landscape, perpetually lit under the summer sun, their debut album offers plaintive, meditative and melodic pieces that gently sublimate the splendour of the Åland Islands. The result, sparkling with Chiu’s soothing arpeggio’s and Honer’s scintillating string instrument, could be compared to acoustic-ambient classics like Jon Hassell’s Vernal Equinox or Brian Eno’s Another Green World, however without any trace of retro-tinged nostalgia.