“Eerie, wailing sounds over distorted feedback drones… vibrato-heavy harmonies chirrup and throb in agonisingly slow motion.”
The Guardian, Album of the Month

“Cinematic… carefully orchestrated… delicately explores unfamiliar territory with uncanny finesse.”
The Wire

"I've never heard a theremin played so well."
Iggy Pop, BBC 6Music


Acclaimed Icelandic theremin musician Hekla follows her stunning 2025 album Turnar with Gjá, a brand new EP of characteristically heavy, spectral soundscape-songwriting, entering a sublime paranormal plane of haunting dread.

Now augmenting her virtuosic solo theremin work with cello, voice, and the sacred church organ of Icelandic master Kristján Hrannar, the evolution of Hekla’s unique magic summoned new worlds with her third album Turnar. The album and Gjá - a new collection of accompanying tracks - were both partly recorded in (and named after) a medieval castle tower in rural France, its ruinous black broken in spare beams of angelic stained-glass light. But, writes Hekla, “the sound of theremin kind of opens up a portal into a new realm that both looks into a dark old world and to the future.” As with the album, Gjá is an alternately beautiful and crushing space voyage into a glacial underworld cascading with phosphorescence and cave drip, conjuring ancient choral ritual just as readily as redolent sci-fi gloam.

Opener “Værð” begins with softly elegiac theremin melodies that slice and shudder against each other in desolate slo-mo, before a mourning lead line takes hold, filling the negative space with lamenting, eldritch sonics. Next, “Vitrun” is ghostly and uncanny, reverberate as an abandoned cathedral, as deeper and deeper frequencies appear in waves, summoning new portals with every rising spume of distortion and crackle. Co-produced with Brainfeeder artist and NTS resident Paul “PBDY” Preston, the EP’s final track “Hinn Sýnilegi Heimur” is held in a shimmering, glistening fortress, hypnotic for its opening and eventually apocalyptic when bass tones force open the gates.

Hekla is a rare specialist of the theremin, a notoriously inscrutable electronic instrument, joining a miniscule group of musicians in mastery of its esoteric mysteries. Classically informed, her playing covers an enormous range, from skittering birdsong of chirrups and chirps to tectonic sub-bass. Her fans in the wider music community - PJ Harvey, for example - describe her style alongside musicians such as Colleen, Julia Holter or the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Gjá is Hekla’s fourth release with Phantom Limb, following Turnar, 2018 debut Á, 2020 EP Sprungur, and 2022’s Xiuxiuejar.