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Das Experiment, But Without All The Violence And Grown Men Pissing On Each Other
If you’re reading this and have any interest in Icelandic music, do everything in your power to see this. Between March 25 and April 2, the youngest generation of Icelandic musicians are going to strut their stuff at the annual Icelandic Music…
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Remembering Biogen
Sigurbjörn Þorgrímsson was an electronic musician best known under the name of Biogen. To many he was simply known as Bjössi Biogen. A pivotal figure in Iceland’s electronic music scene, whether it was during his early forays into electronic music as a…
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Valdimar: Undraland
A laid-back collection of organ-driven pop, this album doesn’t do much of anything too interesting or remarkable, just kind of chilling in its own little universe of indolence. None of this would be that special if it weren’t for the somewhat surprising…
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Deerhunter Are Coming! Deerhunter Are Coming!
For the first time ever, tickets are on sale for the Reykjavík Music Mess, an independent music festival that will take over NASA and the Nordic House on April 16 and 17. The fest will feature a slew of local bands (Mugison,…
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BlazRoca: KópaCabana
BlazRoca’s epic-length, 21-track return to the Icelandic hip-hop scene is about as chaotic as you’d expect. It has about 15 tracks of booze-fuelled party anthems (there’s a few vaguely political ramblings in there as well) dedicated to Kópavogur, Iceland’s own white-trash, suburban,…
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Prepare For Battle At Sódóma!
Six bands square off at Sódóma on Saturday for the honor of playing at Wacken Open Air, a massive outdoor metal festival in Wacken, Germany. The festival is one of the biggest of its kind, with over 80,000 attendees last year. They…
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Singing Goddess Graces Iceland
It’s always a treat to have Eivór Pálsdóttir in Iceland. It’s a treat because Eivór, a singer/songwriter from neighbouring Faroe Islands, has an exceptionally beautiful voice. Her voice is so beautiful that it won her ‘Best singer’ and ‘Best performer’, at the…
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A New Reign of Terror Over Iceland
A relatively new group of Vikings calling themselves, Skálmöld, plan to terrorize Tjarnarbíó with their big bad, Viking metal on February 24. The occasion? They’re celebrating the release of their inaugural album, ‘Baldur’. In Norse mythology, Baldur is the son of Odin,…
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Hjaltalín And Other Stuff At Café Rosenberg
Café Rosenberg may not be this town’s hipster mecca. To be sure, the atmosphere there is more reminiscent of bars in even smaller town Iceland. You may not have the honour of lining-up in the freezing rain to have your toes trod…
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Prinspóló: Jukk
With ‘Átján og hundrað’, Prins Póló created one of Iceland’s more hideously catchy songs 2009. Fast forward a year and Svavar Pétur Eysteinsson’s (of Skakkamanage) one-man project (now called Prinspóló) again enchants with the same lo-fi acoustic pop, this time with the…
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Release Concert FRENZY Tonight!
Everyone’s two favourite Icelandic albums from last year are being celebrated tonight, with massive release concert party fun shindigs a go-go carrying on through the night. The records in question are of course Prinspóló’s ‘Jukk’ and Agent Fresco’s ‘A Long Time Listening’,…
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Get Your Geek On With Booka Shade
If you’re one of those weird people who like to go out and get monstrously drunk to rave music without being punched in the face, the CCP annual Fanfest might appeal to you. For those of you not in the know, CCP…
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Lifun: Fögur fyrirheit
The beginning of Lifun’s debut album seems designed to bring out feelings of despondency with trite pop pap that’s as disposable as last week’s newspapers. Improvements occur, but while they can play and sing nice melodies you get the feeling that this…
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New Music Festival Hits Reykjavik
Reykjavik welcomes a new music festival this month called, BERGEN-REYKJAVIK-NUUK, which celebrates the relationship between Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. The festival will be held at the Norðurpóllin theatre on February 24 and 25, and the acts will span a range of musical…
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Dr. Gunni’s History Of Icelandic Rock / Part 27
Scoring a ‘Single of the Week’ in the English music press doesn’t necessary mean the instant access to the big time, but in The Sugarcubes’ case it did. After ‘Birthday’ got the honour, One Little Indian Records was swamped with interview requests…
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Enzyme Compatibility
Icelandic alt-rock champions Ensími have been proving that punk needn’t be simple and indie needn’t be complicated over four albums and fourteen years, and have recently emerged from hiatus to support their latest full-length offering, Gæludýr. While the album may be hit-and-miss…
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Klassart: Bréf frá París
Klassart’s blues-y country (or is that country-style blues? Who can tell?), seems to have mistaken mellowness and intimacy for boredom and a complete and total lack of dynamism. Tiresome, plodding blues guitar lines, with country melodies that have shrivelled up from being…
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Ask The Slave: The Order Of Things
This is the type of music that experts and self-appointed authorities on what’s cool make fun of or are intimidated by. ‘The Order Of Things’ is equal part a display of: the joyousness of playing with individuals that gel together, yeswecanism (evident…
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Dark Music Days
Reykjavík’s Dark Music Days Festival (Myrkir Músíkdagar) is a bit like Iceland Airwaves, if Airwaves catered mostly to hip classical musicians, threw in a ton of contrabass instruments, and was operated entirely by about four people. This year, the usual multi-week festival…
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You Don’t Know What You’ve Got…
By the time this goes to print, Havarí will be shut. Temporarily closed while they seek a new locale, the independent record store/bookstore/small venue/art gallery/recording studio/coffee shop has been forced to make way for a new downtown hotel after seventeen months of…
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Go Muck Yourself
Muck need some money to record their album, so go help them out, and see some of Reykjavik’s finest strut their stuff in the process, as it seems pretty much every hip young band in Iceland has decided to help them out.…
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Apparat Organ Quartet Plays ‘Pólýfónía’ – Heads Bob
After allowing eight years to pass since the release of their debut album, Apparat Organ Quartet have finally put out a second album, ‘Pólýfónía.’ While reassuringly belonging to the same family of sound as their first album, ‘Pólýfónía’ claims some peculiar inspirations…
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Headbanging Over A Piano
Viktoriya ‘Vika’ Yermoleva is a 32-year old classically educated pianist who hails from Ukraine. She plays, for the most part, piano versions of contemporary metal songs, and by contemporary, we mean the kind-of-cheesy, wish-you-couldn’t-still-remember-all-the-words-to kind of teen anthems that were blasted out…