Hailing from Iceland and the Faroes, the duo who comprise Kiasmos know a great deal about wild landscapes that can inspire sonic atmospheres. Listen to any Kiasmos track and images of nature will often enter your head; not in a soporific Eno-esque manner, but more likely something that will inspire you to go for a run, down by the beach or across some grass. On this album’s gorgeous penultimate track, ‘Dazed’, you can hear the ambient-techno version of a babbling brook or a flowing fjord.

With their own projects constantly on the go, Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen certainly don’t churn out albums together so the expectancy of a Kiasmos record is high: a first full, self-titled set came way back in 2014. And while their lush dance music (Arnalds calls it ‘emotional rave’) has the occasional insertion of anomalies this time around (specifically the video-game bleeps and bloops on ‘Burst’ and an intriguing steel-drum vibe on ‘Flown’), that pulsing melancholy which is the Kiasmos signature remains in place.

Most tracks clock in at a digestible four or five-minute mark (only the throb-calm-throb of ‘Bound’ breaches the 360-second mark) while they all maintain the pair’s strict policy of single-word titles (‘Sailed’, ‘Laced’ and ‘Sworn’ for three): Arnalds and Rasmussen always add a name to a tune once it’s complete in order to avoid subconsciously trying to apply a perfect sound to that solo word. II is all about open minds and big hearts.

Gentle and lulling are also standard tropes of the Kiasmos manifesto, but some vaguely menacing undertones can be detected in the album’s closer, ‘Squared’; a discordant cacophony threatens to trash the beauty which the album has cultivated to this point. But it’s an exciting and energising finale to another wonderful, albeit rare collection. 

Kiasmos: II is released on Erased Tapes, Friday 5 July; main picture: Maximilian König.