Grapevine New Music Picks: Inspector Spacetime, Árný Margrét & John Grant

Tomorrow sees the return of Live From Reykjavík! You can choose to brave the Icelandic chill to catch the live music across the city, or stay toasty and watch the global stream at home. Either way, all three of this week’s picks are playing the event and have released shiny new material in the run up to it.

As ever, you can get your ears around all the new music recently recommended by The Grapevine through our New Music Picks Spotify playlist.

Inspector Spacetime – Bára

Inspector Spacetime will bring the dansa og bánsa vibe to Gaukurinn tomorrow night, but not before they’ve delivered this tight, funky French-disco-flecked groove to get you warmed up. The trio take to an ice rink for this video, made specially to preview Live From Reykjavík, wrapping themselves in a fur-coated eighties Bond villain vibe. And they manage to dance without slipping and falling on their arses, (at least not in the final cut).

Árný Margrét – Intertwined

Árný Margrét is a big Grapevine favourite, and with good reason. Her finely-crafted folk songs are aural beauty distilled to its essence, captured and displayed through delicate guitar and a voice which conveys the purest emotional expression. In this video, shot for the festival in Reykjavík’s Hallgrímskirkja, she’s wheeled around the inside of the church on a trolley as she performs one of her most haunting creations. Tomorrow she’ll play in another Reykjavík church—Fríkirkjan—but will hopefully be stationary.

John Grant – Faint Positive Lateral Flow

Reykjavík resident John Grant headlines Fríkirkjan tomorrow, but it’s his association with UK venue and arts organisation Sage Gateshead which has resulted in this remarkable new material. Asked to compose an audio-visual response to the pandemic and the climate crisis, John teamed up with his regular video collaborators Casey and Ewan to create this unsettling piece. Visualised viruses spin around our world, staccato strings and squelchy analogue bass stab, and a low drone threatens to surround and consume us all. You’ll need to trust me when I say that it’s actually very beautiful.

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