Jóhann Jóhannsson was an Icelandic composer, born in Reykjavík, who came to composition through the country’s indie rock scene, worked in Copenhagen and Berlin, and died in Berlin in February 2018 at the age of 48. Albums such as Englabörn (2002), IBM 1401, A User’s Manual (2006) and Fordlândia (2008) set slow, melancholic writing for strings against electronics and processed sound; his music for Bill Morrison’s documentary The Miners’ Hymns (2010) brought him wide recognition.
In cinema he earned Oscar nominations for The Theory of Everything, which also won him a Golden Globe, and for Sicario, the second of three films with Denis Villeneuve, between Prisoners and Arrival. Sicario’s processed percussion, massed double basses and church-organ pedal tones, and Arrival’s choral drones and throat singing, showed how sustained, deep-register sound could carry a mainstream thriller or science-fiction film.