A long time ago, Atli Bollason adopted the name Allenheimer for the purpose of DJing at parties in Reykjavík because it sounded German. For his friends, the name came to jestfully represent his leftfield tendencies which, at the time, were overshadowed by his involvement with a britpop-inspired pop group. With Fivefiles EP, his debut release under the old moniker, he is back where he started: disregarding songs but in love with sounds that lap like water against a pier and hazeful spaces reeking of memories both real and imagined.

Having turned most of his attention to literature, criticism, media arts and childrearing over the last decade, Fivefiles has been slowly brewing ever since the first seeds were sown during a festival-residency in the small town of Hildesheim, Germany in 2012. Atli was attracted to the idea of deconstructing little-known Icelandic pop songs and amplifying the haunted quality he sensed in certain passages. Three Iceland-sampling tracks made it on to the EP but the remaining two channel similar sonic impulses, making for a set of eerie yet nostalgic sounds.

Good Moon Deer

Files and records. At this point in history, it seems like that’s what everyone trades in. Everything is recorded and filed away in the great digital cabinets of our corporate sky. It makes you wonder: Wouldn’t it be nice if something – just anything – were left unfiled? It may be a fantasy (one our mission of releasing music digitally definitely betrays) but we need those to cope. In reality, Unfiled aims to release hard-to-file music, often with an unpolished edge.

Releasing music that resists categorization isn’t necessarily about leaving genre behind or arrogantly claiming to be a step ahead of the rest. Rather, it is insisting on a space where genres, styles, moods, instruments and sounds can happily co-exist. The cohesion is conceptual or atmospheric; not necessarily what we do but how we do it. It is a space where experimental doesn’t mean impenetrable but playful.