Iceland Airwaves 2022 is over, baby! It’s been quite a few intense days for our team and most likely for you too. But we hope that you followed our hangover cure guide and survived the festival. If you didn’t, bless your soul and RIP.
In addition to running between venues trying to break a world record of the biggest number of concerts seen in one night, we also managed to produce a podcast. GRAPEWAVES, the official podcast of Iceland Airwaves and The Reykjavík Grapevine, aired for three days from the stage of the IA Center, hosted by Tim Pogo.
Before we go into Iceland Airwaves hibernation for a year, let’s relive it all over again.
We started off our festival by visiting some pre-opening events on Wednesday. We were moved by the performance of Önnu Jónu Son and felt a warm welcome at a special event by publisher INNI.
On day 1, Tim Pogo spoke with Colm O’Herlihy, founder of Icelandic music company INNI and musician/producer Sindri Már Sigfússon (Seabear, Sin Fang) to talk about what’s new in Icelandic music, as well as the latest bands to check out, and inside info on some special events happening in the city throughout the week that you won’t want to miss.
Tim was also joined by our Culture Editor Josie Anne Gaitens to interview Silla and Julius of the band BSÍ. We also welcomed West African-born, U.S.-raised, current Iceland resident, and Airwaves artist snny to talk about being a foreign artist in Iceland and being welcomed into the music community. And finally, Tara Mobee delivered a special live performance.
Our team was mesmerised by gugusar and her dance moves, the energy of Daughters of Reykjavík and almost had a fight as our opinions divided on Nation of Language. Find our review of day 1 here.
As we were recovering from the previous night, Tim Pogo was back on stage of the IA Center for GRAPEWAVES episode #2. Tim spoke with Kim Wagenaar (Peer Agency, shesaid.so Iceland, MMF Iceland, Grapevine), plus musicians/songwriters Sandrayati and Alysha Brilla as they discuss the launch of the Icelandic chapter of shesaid.so.
Tim also chatted with musician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Haraldur Þorleifsson (Önnu Jónu Son). The podcast also featured live performances from the guests.
On Friday night, we were absolutely blown away by the infamous Faroese rapper Marius DC, shocked by the lines to get to Metronomy and dazed by Turkish psychedelic rock by Altın Gün. How did we like Day 2 of the IA festival? Read here.
The further we went into Airwaves, the harder it was to wake up. But at 12:30 on Saturday afternoon, host Tim Pogo was at the IA Center for the final episode of our GRAPEWAVES podcast. This time, he spoke to the Icelandic indie pop band Supersport! band member Bjarni Daníel and musician Ida Schuften, both involved with the Post-dreifing independent music collective, about the importance of collaboration in music. Then, Tim interviewed Marius DC, a Faroese rapper/artist, and Glenn Larsen, the head of Faroe Music Export to learn about music and life on the Faroe Islands and how it has shaped Marius’ music. Icelandic sibling group Systur talked about growing up in a musical family, their appearance on Eurovision 2022, and ended the show with a live performance.
The final night left our team members breathless as they managed to see energetic Ukrainian electro-folk Go_A, fantastic Arlo Parks and found a moment to appreciate Axel Flóvent’s pants.
Let us know what was your favourite moment of the Iceland Airwaves festival and enjoy a selection of photos from the 2022 edition. Until next time!
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