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GusGus Ask Eurovision: “Is It True?”
GusGus get gas
Well it’s true that our favourite electronic music art collective is, of course, the incomparable GusGus. The band changed its tune a little bit for the domestic Eurovision preliminaries when they performed the famous Icelandic tune “Is It True?”, which came second in 2009’s Eurovision when performed by Jóhanna Guðrún.
GusGus will be performing four separate shows at Harpa on March 18th and 19th, where the whole gang—including past members—will reunite to celebrate 27 years of the band by playing their biggest hits. It’s safe to say that this will be nothing less than a historic moment in Icelandic culture; few artists have such an impressive catalogue, and a remarkable history, as GusGus. VG
Icelandic Teen Beatmaker Chosen By Ye
Konráð Darri Birgisson, a seventeen-year-old Icelander who goes by the artist name K1d Krono, recently hit the jackpot when hip-hop maestro Kanye West used a loop of his in the song “Louie Bags”.
Of course Kanye changed the hip-hop game with his original approach to the genre, and has singlehandedly shaped a whole new generation of artists. Konráð is the son of well-known Icelandic musician Birgir Konráð Sigurðsson, (Biggi Bix), and has been living in the US for some time now. VG
Viking Composer Raids Netflix
More Icelandic composers are dipping their toes into the film business. Of course, Hildur Guðnadóttir won an Oscar, a Grammy and pretty much every other award it’s possible to win, (except perhaps an Olympic medal), for her ‘Joker’ and ‘Chernobyl’ scores. But there’s a new Icelandic composer in town.
Karlotta Skagfield recently wrote music for the new Netflix series, ‘Vikings: Valhalla’. Karlotta said in an interview with Visir that she was initially recommended by Icelandic composer Karl Övarsson to Netflix, who then connected her with the team behind ‘Vikings: Valhalla’. And from there, things began rolling.
As a side note, the show stars fantastic Icelandic actor Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, who was raised in the most beautiful town in the world—Hafnarfjörður—where both Hildur Guðnadóttir and the author of this piece hail from. Jóhannes plays the complicated power-hungry character, Ólafur “Digri” Haraldsson, who went on to become a legendary Norwegian king. VG
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