IBM 1401 A User's Manual

Never before pressed on vinyl, IBM 1401, A User's Manual, is one of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s most-loved works. Released in 2006, the decade since its release has seen Jóhann establish himself as one of the most important composers in the World, notably scoring movies such as Arrival, Sicario and The Theory of Everything. The first ever pressing of IBM 1401, A User's Manual comes in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, reworked by Chris Bigg (v23) from his original design. Pressed on clear vinyl, two live tracks recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra have also been added. Inspired by the work his father did in the sixties when chief maintenance engineer of one of Iceland’s first computers, Jóhann originally wrote IBM 1401, A User's Manual to accompany a dance piece by long-standing collaborator and friend, Erna Ómarsdóttir. For the album release, he rewrote the piece for a sixty-piece string orchestra, with a new final movement (built around a poem by Dorothy Parker) and incorporating both electronics and reel-to-reel recordings made by his father and friends in 1971 of the IBM 1401 mainframe computer singing the hymn Ísland Ögrum Skorið by Sigvaldi Kaldalóns as it was being decommissioned.