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Bubbi – 06.06.06
This 2-CD set is the live recording of Bubbi’s 50th birthday concert, which he managed to sell out in at least two different ways. The venue was packed with people who bought tickets and some bank bought some hefty advertising space. But…
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Lay Low – Please don’t hate me
Lay Low’s country blues is a breath of fresh air into Icelandic music life. Especially considering the fact that girls of her age hardly ever produce anything this original. Lay Low’s strength lies in composing fine tunes but it’s the lyrical department…
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Hildur Vala – Lalala
Hildur Vala, the winner of the hugely popular TV show/singing competition Icelandic Idol, is back with her second album and this time it’s not an album of covers but all new songs by various Icelandic musicians. It’s called Lalala. Here’s an Icelandic…
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Birthday’s Birthday
Seeing that the legendary Sugarcubes (Sykurmolarnir) haven’t played in public together since November 1992, the news on the groups’ November 17th reunion came as a pleasant surprise to fans in Iceland and around the globe. The reason for the reunion show is…
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Spontaneous Self-Pleasuring
Meeting up with legendary electro hitmongers Daft Punk backstage at NASA for a short interview, just minutes before one half of the eclectic duo took the stage to perform a rare DJ set, the pair made abundantly clear just how French they…
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Nashville in the North
In explaining the success of Iceland Airwaves, the organisers, Mr. Destiny, surprised me by explaining that 9/11 had a strong effect on the festival. Coming up on 2001, Airwaves featured large acts, and that year they planned on featuring the Gorillaz. Instead,…
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Airwaves Highlights
The star of the show in almost every way was Valgeir Sigurðsson, whose new Bedroom Community label served as the evening’s thread and whose performance – egoless, seated off to the side of a large group including strings, laptops, and drums –…
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A Basic Form of Communicating
“Music has been intertwined with my life from the age of six. Actually, I didn’t give up my soul to it until I turned nine and started playing an instrument. After that, there was no turning back, really,” says soft-spoken Valgeir Sigurðsson.…
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Another Glorious Week of Noise
Once again, the whole of Reykjavík, nay Iceland, braces itself to welcome the annual Iceland Airwaves festival and the plethora of young and exciting musical talent it brings, both local and international. The festival has steadily grown ever since its inception as…
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Tómas R. Einarsson – Romm Tomm Tomm
Bassist Tómas R. Einarsson is an institution in the small Icelandic jazz world. He is known for excellent bass playing on numerous albums with a handful of bands. Apparently he bought his first bass with money earned on an oil rig in…
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Brain Police – Beyond the Wasteland
Veteran rockers Brain Police return with their fourth studio album, sporting a new guitarist, Búi Bendtsen. The result is more guitar heavy than past albums without losing their distinctive stoner-rock sound. The band is as tight as Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout knots –…
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Toggi – Puppy
Toggi has spent the last three years honing his début album and it shows. The first single, Heart in Line, is a polished melancholy acoustic pop tune – complete with a full-blown string chorus. These 12 songs are well-written, well-executed and well……
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Donni And Clout – Monkey Paw
Ah yes, improv music: Why? Why the fuck? This is stupid and retarded jam music for stupid and retarded people, and if that isn’t bad enough, they’ve taken the liberty of writing all kinds of cute little anecdotes and comments on the…
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Fighting Shit – Forgotten Daughters, Abandoned Sons
Fighting Shit’s second full-lengther is a tasty, if somewhat shallow chunk of thrashcore that speeds through its half-hour with vigorous power, stopping just long enough in the quiet areas to keep one from losing interest. The whole thing is rounded up nicely…
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Gestir – Burtur Frá Toftunum
This Faroese melodrama doesn’t really focus on its strengths enough to create the rain-drenched mental murk it strives for, but there are slices of brilliance here, such as the cavernous, smoggy waft of Í Skuggum Av Sólini and Døgg’s indulgent croon. Too…
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Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Iceland Airwaves is Coming Again!
Now that last year’s Airwaves hangovers have finally receded to the point that we can once more look one another in the eye, listen to modern music without retching and even contemplate engulfing ourselves in the evil spectacle again, it seems like…
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Vulgar Display of Re-arrangements
So, Nick Cave had returned to Iceland. Again. As I entered the stadium and saw the assembly of VIPs, celebrities, socialites and one head of state for good measure, gathered for the show, I wondered if – were it not for a…
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Nick Cave’s Love Affair with Iceland Continues
In October 1986, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds visited Iceland. The visit has long since entered the annals of Icelandic rock n’ roll history, not for the musical performance per se, as much as for the circulating rumours of how the…
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Good Intentions Fall Short
In the terminology of “the industry” (read: the entertainment industry), the phrase “to pull a spinal” is reserved for situations where, despite the producer’s best intentions, larger than life expectations fail to be realised. It could be defined basically (if redundantly) as…
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The Night Horny Electronica Lostto the Horny Countryside
“You know you’re at a Sveitaball when someone is vomiting outside and the show hasn’t even started yet,” a friend and veteran country boy informed me around 11:30 p.m., 30 minutes after Trabant were supposed to take the stage. Surprisingly enough, though,…
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The Ringleader Refuses to Fail
For me, You Are the Quarry, by Morrissey, is one of the best comeback albums ever. Up there with Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. The chance to see him after the comeback was a dream, though I was nervous: I’d not…
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Are You Ready to Eat Fiber!!!
The suburb of Grafarvogur was quiet the night Roger Hodgson, former leading man of Supertramp, performed at Broadway in Reykjavík. All the middle-aged men and women in southern Iceland had gathered, after all, to listen to the corniest singer of all time…
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Return to Form
Who: Mínus and Langi Seli og Skuggarnir Where: Sirkus When: August 19th 2006 Feminist philosopher Sandra Harding is perhaps best known for her critique on Western science’s claim to complete and utter objectivity and “universal reason”. According to her, true math-like objectivity…