Straumur Dispatch: Vagina (dot) Love

One of our favourite Icelandic musicians, Sin Fang, is playing a show at Húrra on May 26. That alone is newsworthy, but the warm-up band also caught our attention with their name, Vagina Boys, and we look forward to seeing them for the first time.
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They have one original song on their Soundcloud page, “Elskan af því bara” (“Baby, just because”). It’s a wonderfully bittersweet r’n’b slow jam painted with old sounding drum machines and warm synth pads. But the icing on the 80s cake are the vocals, which have layers upon layers of autotune and vocoder effects piled on them and tweaked in all sorts of unexpected ways. They also have an interesting cover of Jai Paul’s excellent BTSU and a remix of the aforementioned “Elskan af því bara.” Their page has no information about the band members, but it was definitely the find of the month for us.

The following day, at the same venue, a release show will take place for a new album by the Icelandic musician Helgi Valur Ásgeirsson. His third and most personal record to date, ‘Notes from the Underground’ is about an inner struggle between sanity and madness. The album’s highlight is the epic closure “Love Love Love Love.” Clocking in at over 13 minutes, this Lou Reed-esque gem will take you on a love-fuelled journey.

The first album by Guðmundur Úlfarsson aka Good Moon Deer will see the light of day later this month [Ed. It’s actually out now, download it here]. On the album, ‘Dot’, Guðmundur mixes all kinds of modern electronic music styles together and uses sampling, sequencing and tweaking heavily.  The outcome is some of the freshest electronica coming out of Reykjavík this year and bears a striking resemblance to the best from the likes of Four Tet and Caribou. Head over here to download the opening track!

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Straumur has been active since last summer, with writers Óli Dóri and Davíð Roach documenting the local music scene and helping people discover new music at straum.is. It is associated with the radio show Straumur on X977, which airs every Monday evening at 23:00.