Bloodgroup - My Arms

Not as creepy as the name might imply, this electro-dance four-piece are bonded by blood… family blood. Siblings Lilja Jonsdottir, Halez and Raggi Jonsson, along with Janus Rasmussen, all hail from a small town in Iceland and create upbeat dance music that has drawn comparisons to The Knife, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip and other booty shake-inducing groups. Their 2007 debut, Sticky Situation, was quite well received and their live shows can be explosive, typically inciting the ecstatic fans and band to crowd surf. Their latest single, “My Arms,” which they performed for us in their studio, shows an equally beat-driven but more melodic Bloodgroup, and could be a big hit in the U.S. [MySpace]

Mammút - Rauðilækur

One of the tightest bands I saw play Airwaves, the Reykjavik-based Mammút consists of five members all in their late teens and early 20’s. Katrína “Kata” Mogensen (vocals, accordion), Vilborg “Ása” Dýradottir (bass), Alexandra Baldursdottir (guitar), Arnar Pétursson (guitar), and Andri Bjartur Jakobsson (percussion) write and perform songs that would easily appeal to American audiences despite the consistently Icelandic lyrics. Sharp guitars, thudding bass lines, typically pop structured rock songs, and most importantly a killer voice from Mogensen, who was nominated for best singer this year during Iceland Airwaves (their album, Karkari, was nominated for best album) all contribute to a really appealing sound that KEXP listeners would surely dig. The band invited us to their practice space to record this live version of “Rauðilækur”:

Kimono - Tomorrow

Kimono is a bit more of an international band. Not only does one of the trio (Alex MacNeil) hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, but the band lived for a while in Berlin, where they garnered favorable media attention. Their sound is heavier and more experimental than either Mammút or Bloodgroup, and definitely darker, but there’s still a pulsating vibrancy that keeps them from sounding too bleak, weary or uninteresting. Quite the opposite, in fact! At their rehearsal/recording space, which they share with another good Icelandic band, Jeff Who?, Kimono performed a newer song, “Tomorrow,” from their upcoming album, Easy Music For Difficult People:

Check back for more recordings from Sin Fang Buos, Pascal Pinon, Skúli Sverrisson and more!

Hyaltalin performing at RUV Radio
photo by Scott Holpainen

Just before the week-long CMJ broadcast, KEXP was invited to cover the Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavik, where over 215 artists, the majority from Iceland, performed at venues around the city.

Iceland itself is a microcosm of a music scene; in a city of only 200,000, comprising two-thirds of the country’s entire population — which is itself just over half of Seattle’s population — there’s an inordinate number of bands… and all of them are great! Perhaps it’s due to an educational system that values the arts and provides most students have some form of musical training, or maybe it’s the cold weather and short winter days, but nearly every young person we met during the festival seemed to be in a band. Sure, it does seem like that in Ballard on most days of the week, and Williamsburg definitely has a high residency of musicians, but it’s hard to image a larger concentration of talent than in Reykjavik. And thanks to both the small location and the lingering punk aesthetic that demands that art always be new, the range of genres, styles and sounds is far more diverse than in much more dense populations. In other words, not everyone in Iceland wants to be Bjork or Sigur Ros. In fact, no one does!

As proof of Iceland’s wide range of fantastic music, we’ll be featuring videos of band performing in-studio, at venues, and even in their living rooms here on the KEXP Blog over the next couple of weeks. As part of our experience there, we broadcast six local bands the the national statjion, RUV Radio, four of which you can listen to and watch right now. Here’s Hjaltalín, FM Belfast, For A Minor Reflection, and Hafdis Huld, all about as different from each other, but whether it’s pop, orchestral-, post-, or electronic rock, it’s invariably great.

Our final featured guests recorded live at RUV Radio in Iceland during the Iceland Airwaves festival have both received some success outside of their country. The quartet For A Minor Reflection create instrumental post-rock that appeal to fans of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Mogwai, and even toured for a bit with Sigur Ros, while the singer/songwriter Hafdís Huld, a former vocalist of Icelandic electronic collective GusGus who now lives in England, has has supported popular UK acts like Paolo Nutini and Mika, has guested on Tricky’s latest album, and has lent her songs to several international commercials, including Mercedes Benz. Despite their differences, both bands share one important thing in common: an continued career trajectory that should bring them more and more fans worldwide.

For A Minor Reflection:

Hafdís Huld:

photos by Scott Holpainen:

Hjaltalín:

FM Belfast:

]]> http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/16/iceland-airwaves-hjaltalin-and-fm-belfast/feed/ 0 http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/15/iceland-airwaves-day-2/ http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/15/iceland-airwaves-day-2/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:51:29 +0000 Jim Beckmann http://blog.kexp.org/blog/?p=27755

The first full day of the Iceland Airwaves festival ended and it’s clear from seeing even a small handful of the 40 acts or so playing that night that Iceland is place of extraordinary passion — not the love kind so much, but the outright explosion of feeling. “It’s from being on the island,” says one Icelander, who had lived for over a decade in Los Angeles and who now owns the West Coast influenced restaurant Glo. “When I came back here I immediately felt different. There’s an energy in the land, in wind and volcanoes that we all feel.” And despite the varying influences of each band, there’s a recognizable similarity in the need for expression, perhaps best exemplified by the band of the capitol city’s own name, Reykjavik! Although they can be melodic when they need to be, any calm in their set is a moment to catch one’s breath before the ensuing melee.

Iceland is also a place of contrasts, not just in the quickly cycling weather patterns, but most definitely in music. Just before Reykjavik!’s tinnitus-inducing set, we caught its inverse in Pascal Pinon, a quartet of 15-year old girls who catchy twee pop, song entirely in Icelandic:

Among the other bands we caught that night were Dynamo Fog, whose jokey lyrics and hard synth rock edge recall a ballsier Cake or a poppier Ween, and Bummer, a new project of a prolific young songwriter, Þórir Georg Jónsson, whose darker pulse would appeal to fans of Interpol and Joy Division, though with neither the pathos of the latter nor the affectation of the former. “Bummer” may have have seemed an apt moniker to those who would rather fist-pump to Dynamo Fog’s “Rock ‘N’ Rock,” but the throbbing Peter Hook-inspired bass lines and guitar fuzz showed great promise.

Today, over at RUV Radio, Iceland’s national public broadcasting station, KEXP hosted two more bands for you to check out today on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole: the incredible orchestral rock band Hjaltalín and the super-fun dance-pop group FM Belfast.

]]> http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/15/iceland-airwaves-day-2/feed/ 1 http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/14/iceland-airwaves-begins-day-1/ http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/10/14/iceland-airwaves-begins-day-1/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:00:29 +0000 Jim Beckmann http://blog.kexp.org/blog/?p=27691

writeup by Jim Beckmann
photos by Scott Holpainen

Iceland Airwaves, the country’s premier music festival, begins today in Reykjavik, and KEXP is there… well, a couple of us at least! Today through Friday, we’re featuring six live bands (two a day) from some of the most buzzworthy bands at the festival — tune in to the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole to hear them.

Our host is Einar Örn Benediktsson, who you might remember from the Sugarcubes, and who now records experimental electronic music with the Icelandic producer Curver in a project called Ghostdigital. Today, Einar presented two very young Icelandic bands, Sudden Weather Change and Agent Fresco, neither of which makes the ambient chill sounds that outsiders often equate with Icelandic music (thanks, Sigur Ros!). The five-piece Sudden Weather Change makes noisy rock that’s sometimes compared to Sonic Youth, Pavement, and Polvo, none of which are too far off, but you might also hear they’ve got a bit of Fugazi in there as well. Agent Fresco are also decidedly not chill and can easily equal SWC’s noise quotient, but, like the weather of their home island, give them a few minutes and they’ll be completely different as they slip from one time signature to the next.

Tune in tomorrow for two more sessions, from Hjaltalín and FM Belfast.

Sudden Weather Change:

Agent Fresco:

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