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Grapevine Music Awards 2021: You Should Have Heard This – Hekla & RYBA
At the 2021 Grapevine Music Awards, there was a tie in the highly coveted “You Should Have Heard This” category. Both of our winners—one a theremin savant, the other a local supergroup—were so incredibly fantastic that the panel decided to not even…
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Grapevine Music Awards 2021: Best Video – Jónsi ‘Sumarið sem aldrei kom’
“Jónsi wanted to show the other side of Iceland, not the delusional version we’ve seen in the ‘Inspired by Iceland’ campaigns. The flip-side of the coin—arguably the more real version of our country,” director Frosti Jón Runólfsson (Frosti Gringo) explains of the…
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Grapevine Music Awards 2021: Artist To Watch – Holdgervlar
“The Holdgervlar themselves are xenobots, ready-made organisms, with human roots. They look back with nostalgia at human cultures, but with different levels of attachment to their roots. They see themselves as the same as their makers, but are only as clear a…
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Grapevine Music Awards 2021: Best Livestream – Live From Reykjavík & Post-Sessions
For the 2021 iteration of our Grapevine Music Awards, we decided to forgo one of our usual categories—Best Live Band—and replace it with something more fitting to the last 12 months. So it is with great honour that we present the inaugural…
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Exactly What It’s Supposed To Be: Ingibjörg Turchi Reflects On ‘Meliae’
In Greek mythology, the Meliae were a type of tree nymph. According to some sources, mankind actually originated from them. But regardless, the group represented the core of the primal, natural word, existing as creatures that were at once earthly and ancient…
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A Glorious Shrine To Nothing: Núll Is The Band To Not-Exist To
In years prior, I used to always describe Núll with silly epitaphs like ‘The Most Ungoogleable Band In Iceland’ or other such nonsense. I’m going to stop that now. There’s nothing funny about this group and to even approach their music with…
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The Grapevine Music Awards 2021: The Winners Are Here!
Oh, you thought a pandemic would stop us? No way! It’s January, and that means the Grapevine Music Awards 2021 is here! As is tradition, we at the Grapevine once again (virtually) convened a panel of valued experts (see who they were…
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Grapevine Playlist: Bashar Murad, Oscar Leone, Birnir, Páll Óskar & More!
Music—have you of it? Here’s some of our favourite tracks from the last month. Bashar Murad – MASKHARA Bashar Murad—who you might know from his collaborations with Hatari and appearance at Airwaves 2019—is here to sway away the bullshit. This track, which…
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Track By Track: ‘Inspector Spacetime’ By… Inspector Spacetime
Dance-lovers Inspector Spacetime—Egill Gauti Sigurjónsson, Vaka Agnarsdóttir and Elías Geir Óskarsson—walk us through their debut effort track by track. Intro The simplest track on the album is the silliest at the same time. The sample at the beginning is the origin of…
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Our Culture Editor’s Top Three Albums Of 2020: An Exhaustive Write-Up
This was supposed to be a top five list but after writing 2,000 words about three albums, I decided to make it the top three albums of 2020 as determined by me, the Culture Editor of the Reykjavík Grapevine. So here’s the…
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The Official 2020 Reykjavík Grapevine Holiday Playlist
On Tuesday, December 22nd, the Grapevine staff put together a selection of their favourite Icelandic Christmas songs and then sent it to their intern Megan, who speaks no Icelandic and knew nothing of Icelandic Christmas before last month. She then gave her…
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Limitless, Effortless, Genreless: Magnús Jóhann Refuses To Be Defined
“Basically, the whole beginning of this whole album process was not a single note of music, it was the cover,” Magnús Jóhann states. He’s referring to his recently released effort ‘Without Listening,’ the cover of which shows a haphazardly constructed half-built house…
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Track By Track: ‘What Love Is’ By Rex Pistols
Goth isn’t dead, people. It’s alive and thriving in downtown Reykjavík in the form of Rex Pistols, who recently dropped ‘What Love Is,’ a soundtrack for the lace-gown-wearing introspective romantic heroines of the world. To satiate our synthcore goth needs, we sat…
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Ultraflex Just Wanna Have Fun: The Group Talks Debut Album, Fashion, And What The Future Holds
Inspired by soviet aerobics videos, Ultraflex’s debut album ‘Visions of Ultraflex’, is sure to get you up and moving. You only need to check out the band’s defining single “Work Out Tonight” to be lured into their pop disco world. This track…
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Grapevine Playlist: amiina, Atli Örvarsson, Brikcs & More!
It’s almost Christmas! Celebrate the end of Christmas music with this holiday feature. amiina – I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing Remember that Christmas soda commercial where all these hippies sang standing in lines while hawking a multi-billion dollar corporation?…
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Grapevine Playlist: KARÍTAS, Fortíð, Emmsjé Gauti & More!
When you get tired of blasting Radiohead and crying, check out these songs. KARÍTAS – The Girl That You Want Last year, KARÍTAS made us v sad with the release of her debut EP ‘Songs 4 Crying’. Now she’s here with an…
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Track Premiere! “Þoka” By Herdís Stefánsdóttir
Composer Herdís Stefánsdóttir is most well-known for her soundtrack work—you might have heard her compositions on HBO’s ‘We’re Here’ or Russo-Young’s ‘The Sun Is Also A Star’. But today, she’s here with a new solo work entitled “Þoka“, released on 7K! Records’…
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Soundtrack To The Plague: Become Prisoner To Auðn’s Waking Dream
The newest album by Auðn, ‘Vökudraumsins Fangi’ (‘Prisoner Of A Waking Dream’), ends on the line “Minning þess sem aldrei varð.” It means “Memory of what never existed.” Vökudraumsins Fangi by Auðn Eeriness encapsulated “It’s open to interpretation, but it’s the memory…
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Grapevine Playlist: Redwood Moon, Hugar, JFDR, Daði Freyr & More!
Happy Friday readers! Here’s your weekly dose of tunes. Sturle Dagsland – Kusanagi Honestly, it took me a while to work out if I enjoyed this song or not. I think I did… in the end. The colourful, children’s storybook-esque music video—which…
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Release Alert! sóley Goes Experimental Accordion On Harmóník
Friday the 13th in the year 2020 might seem an auspicious day, but the lovely songstress sóley has livened it up with today’s release of a new 10″ entitled ‘Harmóník I & II’—a conglomeration of her two previous sold-out Harmóník releases. The…
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Some Kind Of Peace In A Chaotic World: Ólafur Arnalds On His Most Intimate Album Yet
Sometimes an album or a song comes along at a point where it feels like it’s exactly what the world needed. Ólafur Arnalds’ latest offering, ‘Some Kind of Peace’, is one of those albums. Described as his most intimate album yet, ‘Some…
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Grapevine Playlist: Jelena Ciric, gugusar, boncyan & More!
Oh Friday, you’ve come at last. What does that mean? Your weekly dose of Grapevine-approved tunes. Jelena Ciric – Lines In the midst of all this worldwide chaos, turn to singer-songwriter Jelena Ciric to remember the sweetness of ordinary life. “I went…
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On Human Nature: Mammút Talk Their New Album, The Pandemic & The Importance Of Touch
“Easy to hide. My mind needs light. I open up my mouth. My mind needs light.” And so begin the first few seconds of Mammút’s recently released fifth effort ‘Ride The Fire’. The song—entitled “Sun and Me”—is an apt anthem for these…