Sonic Iceland is off to a strange start. Yesterday we met our first artists, inhaled more volcanic ash than ever before, and finally enjoyed a private concert in an old cinema around the corner of a Viking village.

Meeting gogoyoko

First, we went to have a chat with the guys at the Iceland-based online-music community gogoyoko, to learn about more about their platform (which is currently only open for Iceland and the rest of Scandinavia) and about how the internet can and will change the way people value art and music, and how us Indie-listeners can influence this. CEO Haukur, Alex from Kimono and Hallur from Bloodgroup (who both work for gogoyoko) threw their ideas at us, and some of the things they said really made me over-think my own behaviour as consuming fan, even more as I always considered myself quite aware of ways to support my favourite artists.

On our way to the gogoyoko-offices we encountered the last remnants of Eyjafjallajökull – a dense, fog-like ash cloud all over Reykjavik (and all the west of Iceland, as we would find out later), which made the ash settle everywhere: cars, cameras, eyes, mouth. Don’t ask me what it looks like when I sneeze my nose today…

Elves, Vikings, ash and an empty cinema

From the gogoyoko-headquarter in a business park in eastern Reykjavik we then travelled by bus to Hafnarfjörður, to meet both Bloodgroup and Sykur, who were playing a show in this seaside-town south of Reykjavik. Hafnarfjörður is known for it’s Viking-village, Viking-hotel and Viking-restaurant, and is known as one of the most popular residences for elves in Iceland – and not much else it seemed. As we arrived the town was virtually deserted, a fact that may have been connected to ash in the air, which by that time really had become a nuisance – but mostly for us, the only two idiots walking around in it all day.

Anyhow, after a chat with Bloodgroup about their music and how the live-scene in Iceland complete differs from the normal tour-and-travel-circuit in Europe and the US, we were treated with an unexpected event: both bands played in an (almost) empty cinema. It seems they were booked because of a town-festival in Hafnarfjörður (of which there was no indication, see above), but the promoter failed to do more promotion than putting up on A3-poster next to the entrance of the cinema.

Hence, the audience consisted of aforementioned German-ash-inhaling-idiots, a mother with 3 kids, a German acquaintance of ours (who was actually the only one who paid for the gig), Biogen and Gisli from Trabant. Nevertheless, both bands played full sets (and were kindly making all announcements in English), Sykur invited the lovely Rakel Mjoell to the stage and Janus from Bloodgroup treated us with 3 encores, even though his bandmates seemed not to share his enthusiasm.

This was, besides a gig that I once played with my band to my mother and two aunts, the most surreal gig experience I had so far. But nevertheless worth inhaling all that ash.

PS: It’s pretty bright here in Iceland. The picture above was taken at sunset at 1.25 AM 2 days ago. The sun came up about 30 minutes later again. Did I mention that Kai brought an eye mask?