After our excursion we were pretty tired, but this did not stop us from carrying on and meeting interesting people and artists. Tuesday evening we met with Harpa and Daniel, about their upcoming Jónsvaka-festival (this interview will be the first one we publish in its entirety, so watch this space).

Wednesday then was marked by beautiful sunshine in Reykjavík, and us heading to the oldest recording studio in Iceland, the Sýrland studios in Hafnarfjörður, to meet one of Iceland’s biggest bands, Hjálmar.

Not only are these very like-able guys the first reggae band in Iceland, they are also winning one award after another at the annual Icelandic Music Awards. We had a very interesting chat with the guys at the kitchen of the studio, where we talked about their influences and their motives to record at the famous Tuff Gong studios in Jamaica. Plus, we fell in love with the dog of guitar player Kiddi, a pug named Dylan who is undoubtful the coolest dog in Iceland.

In the evening we attended a show in a venue named Venue (!), watching performances of For A Minor Reflection, Lada Sport, Bloodgroup and Sykur.

As the four guys of For A Minor Reflection have just released their new album “Höldum í átt að óreiðu” in Iceland, we took the opportunity to chat about the album, why the boys choose Pledge instead of a traditional label and why & how they imported an producer from LA for the album. And, as Kai points out, he was able to take some band photos at 0.30 AM with ISO 400. Not that this makes any sense to me, but you photographers out there will know what he means.

After the interview with FAMR we also talked briefly to the guys from Sykur, about making electronic music in Iceland and how the situation is when playing live (as this was their third show in and around Reykjavik in a week). After that we enjoyed their gig, and also the fact that the bars were open until early morning. The next day was National Day, after all.

Here are some more photos from Wednesday.

Hjálmar

For A Minor Reflection

Sykur

Bloodgroup