OUTER Freezes Time on the Glacial Beauty of ‘Svartsengi’
- Rachel Leong
- Jan 6
- 2 min read
There’s a quiet gravity to ‘Svartsengi’, the latest single from OUTER, the alter ego of Belgian composer and producer Tom Soetaert. The track unfolds slowly, resisting resolution, as if suspended between past and present. It’s music that doesn’t rush to explain itself, instead allowing space, silence, and texture to do the emotional work.
Named after the volcanic zone near Grindavík in southwest Iceland, ‘Svartsengi’ is steeped in a sense of place. The region’s recent evacuations - the result of ongoing volcanic activity - inform the piece not through spectacle, but through absence. The home of Soetaert’s close friends still stands, yet remains unreachable, caught in a strange limbo. That unresolved tension becomes the track’s emotional centre: the feeling of holding onto something that hasn’t disappeared, but can no longer be touched.
At its core is a lo-fi piano tape loop, delicate and slightly worn, looping like a memory that refuses to settle. It’s joined by mist-softened vocals and the plaintive trumpet of Arve Henriksen, whose phrasing feels almost breath-like, drifting in and out of focus. Together, these elements create a sense of motion without movement: a slow circling around grief, patience, and the fragile persistence of hope.
Soetaert’s background in contemporary classical and ambient post-rock is evident, but ‘Svartsengi’ never feels academic. Instead, it leans toward intimacy, drawing subtle parallels to the emotional minimalism of Ólafur Arnalds or the cinematic stillness of Sigur Rós, without leaning too heavily on comparison. The track feels lived in, shaped by time and restraint rather than grand gestures.
Even the artwork reinforces this sense of embedded history: a photograph by Hans Vera, himself a former resident of Grindavík, grounding the release in personal testimony rather than abstraction. It’s a quiet but powerful decision, mirroring the music’s refusal to dramatise what is already profound.
As a second glimpse into OUTER’s forthcoming album Glowing Mountains in the Sky, ‘Svartsengi’ suggests a record preoccupied not with arrival, but with waiting - with the spaces between loss and acceptance. It’s a piece that lingers long after it ends, like a landscape glimpsed through fog, half-remembered yet impossible to forget.
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