John Rogers
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Inside Cooper & Gorfer’s Mesmerising Weather Diaries
Very occasionally, arriving in a new place can feel like stepping into another world. It might be a spot within nature like Dyrholæy beach, where the violent waves lift thousands of black pebbles before dashing them into the surf in an overwhelming,…
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A Space Of Colour: Tonik Ensemble On Making The Album Of 2015
Sometimes, “dance music” goes beyond its implied mission of moving people’s feet, and moves them in other ways, too. Grapevine’s album of the year 2015—Tonik Ensemble’s ’Snapshots’—does just that. An educated, simmering take on house-techno-pop, it’s a lush production of cello, saxophone…
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Loving The Alien: Growing Up With David Bowie
When I was six years old, one of my cousins recorded some fragment of a music TV programme on VHS tape. One of the videos was for David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” I was fascinated, lying in front of the TV, and rewinding…
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Stitch Punk: James Merry’s Post-Apocalyptic Embroidery
James Merry comes clomping down his garden path in snow boots, his long red hair braided neatly into two plaits, smiling warmly on a bitterly cold winter evening. “Did you find the place okay?” he asks, as we slither carefully up the…
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Gamla Laugin: At Flúðir, The Secret’s Out
Flúðir is a sleepy village of around 400 people, just over an hour’s drive from Reykjavík. After turning off the well-beaten path of the southbound Route 1 at the town of Selfoss, it’s a 45km inland drive through some some surprisingly verdant…
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Hacking Politics: An In-Depth Look At Iceland’s Pirate Party
Alþingishúsið, or The Parliament House, is a hulking grey stone building that sits on the edge of the sleepy Austurvöllur square in downtown Reykjavík. It’s the seat of Iceland’s Alþingi, an institution that was famously inaugurated in the year 930 by a…
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A Milkywhale-Watching Tour of Airwaves
Please Do Not Eat Milkywhale With much of the earth’s oceans left unexplored, we mere humans should feel lucky whenever an unknown species of marine animal is discovered or a known-but-illusive one photographed, filmed, or recorded. This year in Antarctica, scientists believe…
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Happening Tonight: ‘Back To The Future’ Trilogy Screening
Anyone who spends their time scrolling through social media when they should be working might get deja-vu right about now. The “today is the day that Marty McFly arrives when he travels to the future!” meme first appeared in 2010, when a…
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Ongoing Now: ‘Looking in – Sculptures and Models’ by Katrín Sigurðardóttir
Katrín Sigurðardóttir is one of Iceland’s most successful and well-known contemporary artists. Her works often play on scale, shrinking down buildings, rooms or landscapes to trick the eye and befuddle the mind, and transplanting or splicing locations in unexpected ways. Katrín represented…
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The Future (Brown) Of Rap Washes Over Iceland Airwaves
Something that might come as as surpsrise to many Björk-loving, Sigur Rós-adoring, Ásgeir-fancying Airwaves newcomers is that Iceland loves hip-hop. From the rapid rise of local stars like Gísli Pálmi, Úlfur Úlfur, Reykjavíkurdætur and Emmsjé Gauti to the emergence of hip-hop and…
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Úlfur Eldjárn Is Composing Futuristic, Emotional Utopias For All Of Us
Smartly dressed, long-bearded, bespectacled Icelandic composer Úlfur Eldjárn bustled into Harpa’s cafe, dodging cstomers and pushing a trolley piled high with flight cases and topped with a glittering silver snare drum. He’s in a rush, and stops to catch his breath, grinning…
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Breathing Space: Yoga In The Icelandic Wilderness
For all of Reykjavík’s obvious charms, ask anyone who’s lived in the city for a while, and they’ll tell you that they need to escape sometimes. In sharp contrast to larger national capitals, Reykjavík’s central island is a tiny area—walking the same…
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Treading New Ground: Swimming At Iceland’s New Lava Field
There are few things more exciting than waking up in Iceland with a full day of travel ahead. As I pull open the blinds of a bedroom at Akureyri Backpackers—lodgings so comfortable that the term “hostel” seems ungenerous—I’m overjoyed to see the…
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Gone Skying: Helicopter Tours Are A High-Flying Treat
There’s something about the position of Reykjavík’s city centre—perched on a hill, with the sea and mountains on all sides—that invites daydreams about seeing it from above. Standing at the top of Skólavörðustígur, the flat top of Mount Esja seems just a…
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Inside Langjökull’s Ice Cave: The Glacial Cavemen
Just outside of Reykjavík, past the snowy bulge of Úlfarsfell and the small satellite town of Mosfellsbær, lies the way to the northern reaches of Iceland. The road passes the hiking trails at the feet of mount Esja before arcing up past…
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Music Champions Rythmatik Embrace Musical Diversity, Play For The Love Of It
It’s not often that a music journalist is picked up for a ride to an interview by the band’s mother. But the short story of Rythmatik is already one made up of firsts. Perhaps most significantly, they’re the first band from the…
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Download This: Rythmatik – “Tiny Knots”
This issue’s track of the issue comes from Rythmatik, the recent winners of Músiktilraunir, Iceland’s national Battle of the bands. This young four-piece, from the tiny town of Suðureyri up in the Westfjords, clearly haven’t let the brutal winter dim their spirits—their…
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WHERE WERE YOU? REMEMBERING THAT TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE
Boy, feels like it was only yesterday that we were running down the street in a screaming panic, all excited to witness a total solar eclipse. Remember that solar eclipse? It was great! Aren’t you glad you didn’t sleep in? We sure…
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Under The Ice: Beneath Vatnajökull Lies A Photographer’s Paradise
Seeing a glacier for the first time is a memorable experience. As the southern ring road from Reykjavík gently loops towards the coast, the peaks of Eyjafjallajökull start to appear, a white shadow against the sky, almost unbelievably high. It’s soon followed…
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What’s Going On At DesignMarch? Director Sara Jónsdóttir Tells All
As the winter passes its nadir and the days start to grow lighter, a bright fixture on Iceland’s cultural calendar once again approaches. Every March, Reykjavík bursts into a celebration of the sprawling and multi-faceted emerging industry of Icelandic design. Whether “speculative…
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DesignMarch Seminars At Harpa: Play To Win
One of the major components of DesignMarch is DesignTalks—a packed day of lectures and seminars held at Harpa, where leading design professionals from around the world share their projects, methods, thoughts and ideas. Each year comes with a theme, and 2015 will…
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SMOKE THE CROWS. It’s a Sónar Podcast Feat. dj flugvél og geimskip!
This week’s studio guest in our second Sónar Reykjavík Podcast is Steinunn, the pilot of the wonderful one-woman-band dj flugvél og geimskip. She came in to pick some songs and to tell us about how the bottom of the ocean is actually…
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Welcome To The Dark Side
Winter is upon us. It’s here, enshrouding your very being in short, frosty days with only a few hours of sunlight, followed by long, frozen, windy nights. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Some handle it just fine, getting cosy at home as the weather…