Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson was a pioneer of modern music. He was the first Icelandic composer tow rite electronic music. Born in 1925 in the far North-East of Iceland, he began improvising and writing music at the age of four. At the age of ten he was sent to music school in Reykjavik, in 1946 to New York, where he studied conducting, composing and piano at Juilliard. Back in Iceland, he created his most significant compositions: the ballet "Frostrosir", early "Electronica", and "Constellation" and "Punktar" (which combined orhcestra and electronic sounds for the first time in the history of Icelandic music) as well as "Na No Mani". He later came into contact with filmmaker Osvaldur Knudsen, whose film recordings of Icelandic volcano eruptions he intertpreted musically. Excerpts of this can be seen here, besides extensive interviews with Magnús Blöndal himself and composer Hans Ulrich Obrist – recorded on 09.08.2004, nine days before he fell into a koma from which he never woke up.