The core of this album, Englabörn, is the composer’s debut 2002 album. Completed shortly before Jóhannsson’s death, the new release with DG was intended to be a celebration of his career to date – a remastering of the 2001 recording and a disc of remixes and reinterpretations of the original material. With his death, it takes on something more sombre, an elegiac statement of finality bringing his career back to its origins.

Composed at the time of the September 11 attacks, Englabörn had always been a mournful work, emerging from the same tumultuous atmosphere as Basinski’s Disintegration Loops and bearing the marks of melancholy and dread. Its remastering has coaxed a new urgency from the music, which now looks inward, toward a more deeply personal loss.

The reinterpretations bring together Jóhannsson’s friends and collaborators. The Variations do not cover all the compositions on Englabörn, but provide reflections on Jóhannsson’s work from new perspectives. The most poignant is Víkingur Ólafsson’s solo piano performance of the title track. Together, both sides to Englabörn & Variations offer something of a musical eulogy for a composer who will be sorely missed.