Reykjavík! Interview
Our second interview with an Icelandic group, the guitar outfit Reykjavík! (who Kai had met at the Aldrei fór ég suður festival before), starts with us introducing our project and ourselves.
Marcel: The idea behind our project is also a comparison between the music scenes in Ireland, Germany and Iceland. I’m from a really small town in Germany, Solingen near Cologne, with the same size as Reykjavik, about 160,000 and because of our agile live scene we gave ourselves the name “Rock City No. 1”. But then no one knows about this name except the people who live there and make music. On the other hand, if you tell someone about Reykjavik and Iceland, everyone is like “Ah, ok, elves and glaciers and Björk” – so we want to find out if it is really like this for a band making music here at the moment. Is this really special [the notion of place] or is it just like in any average middle-sized city, trying to make your music? And how do you do it?
Bóas: We don’t really have a comparison, we never made music in another city (laughs).
Haukur: Well in Isafjordur, we made music, most of us. So I take the question, when you are in Solingen or Amsterdam or wherever, there’s a certain road to take when you are in a band, and is it the same here?
Marcel: Yes.
Marcel: But what’s it for a band like you? Would you prefer to play on proper stages with a proper PA compared to what’s here? I’ve seen only shows in record stores and old cinemas so far.
Bóas: We are lucky enough to have a few good live venues, in Reykjavik and in other places in Iceland. It’s pretty easy to put up a medium-sized gig with a pretty good PA.
Gummi: But I would wish that Iceland would be connected to Europe, so that we could just drive there.
Marcel: For example, if you set up a nice show but no one’s showing up, is this something that could happen in Iceland as well?
Haukur: That’s a multi-layered question you are asking. I think one of the good things about the local scene is that no one gets paid to enter. And that’s good – if you play in London, you have to pay everyone. The guy who hangs up the posters, the venue, the doorman, the sound man, the light guy, it’s a whole process. Like starting a company, for just one show. Here, we can say: want to have a show? Ok – let’s get a floor, get some speakers, let’s do it. And we can even promote this properly without that much trouble. So that adds to the spirit of it.
Kristján: I think things have changed so much in the last 10 or 20 years, the world is getting smaller every day, and like Gummi said, it’s very easy for a band to get concerts in Europe. It was such a big thing for a band here in Iceland to play in London or somewhere else ten years ago.
Gummi: The main newspapers were writing about it – “This and this guy is going abroad!”
Kristján: That has changed. Dramatically.
Haukur: And we can do a big production show. Plus, we can promote it properly. And people would show up. For sure. We’ve done it.
Kristján: I think all our bands here in Iceland are more ready then bands elsewhere, because they’ve done all the work from the start, the posters and promotion and everything.
Bóas: Another positive thing about being from here: we’ve never been involved in the rock scene. There is one here, but we’ve never been involved in it. Because we would rather play with our friends that play different music than to play with people we don’t really know or like, just because their music is similar to ours. So here you have a cross-bred scene made up of friends. Which makes it even more easier to put up a show or an event – either record store or 300-people sized.
Marcel: And how do you start and make songs and progress as a band here? For example in Germany, when I was starting a band, we always knew what we’d need to do even before we had the first three songs finished. Write enough songs for a 30 minute-set, record an EP, go tour more, etc.
Haukur: I think it’s the exact opposite here. The only people making money from music, except from pop-musicians playing cover songs, are Björk and Sigur Rós, and maybe Múm, but they moonlight as janitors somewhere, haha. So when we came together to form a band, like most people do, we said “Cool, let’s form a band. Cool, we have songs. Let’s play a show. Good idea!” So there’s nobody – or very very few people – saying: “I want to be a musician. And this is my business plan. Now I just need a band.”
Kristján: I think it’s much more complicated now, other than just hanging around drinking beer and making music. We first thought, let’s make an album, and then things started to get really complicated, paying taxes and everything. We suck at that.
Marcel: Is there any support from the Icelandic state? We always had the image that this is a very cultural and creative nation…
Haukur: There’s not much support for grassroots-music. There are funds you can apply for, and certain state-sponsored entities that you can go to, but not for a rehearsal space or so. You get a grant when you go on tour, or when you make an album – but that’s more for established musicians. A kid that’s 19 or 21 wouldn’t know how to write an application. So there’s no support for the lower tiers of musicians – except the music schools, and they offer basic instruments, they are all state-sponsored.
Marcel: But you wouldn’t declare that you’re an artist at your tax return? Like in Ireland: if you are an artists, you don’t pay any income-tax. That’s why Bono and Enya are still living in Ireland and not in Barbados. Such a thing may be a big incentive for Ielandic artists – but maybe that’s just German thinking…
Haukur: But Icelandic thinking would be (shouts) “Who do they think they are? Not paying taxes? For a hobby? That’s ridiculous!” They pay out a very very small artists stipend, a total of 300,000,000 ISK yearly to support visual arts, music, the whole thing. Whenever it’s announced whom it’s awarded to, people say “What? Who gets it? We are paying for this bullshit?”
Gummi: “Parasites!”
Haukur: I was telling this to another guy today – we come from such a different environment than mainland Europe, where people have been making beautiful things for hundreds of years. Hundred years ago, we were looking to find new ways to eat parts of the animal that we normally couldn’t eat. There was just so little food. “Horse-hoofs? Maybe, soak them in brine for six months so we can eat them!” This was a really – and I think Icelanders often forget this now – one of the poorest countries on Earth. People lived in mud holes and they ate rotten food. My mother, she told me a story about my great-grandfather: she was coming to visit him in the 1970ies, and he would have a green bread in his closet, really foul disgusting bread and she’d say “Throw this away!” and he’d answer “No, we don’t throw away food here!”. And today people are complaining when they can’t go out every night. It’s very much “Make! Stuff! You can sell! Produce money!” There’s the Icelandic incentive.
Marcel: But that seems paranoid to me when you look at this new campaign from Visit Iceland, where they are trying to milk this artistic image.
Gummi: What do you think about that?
Marcel: It’s crap.
Kai: When we were in Hafnarfjörður on Friday, and there was this ash everywhere, we thought about filming our own version of it. Empty housing estates, only ash and no tourists. I think the video is showing how other countries look at Iceland. Or should look at Iceland.
Haukur: It’s not about what’s really here. I’ve never seen anyone dancing, not even at the bar.
Bóas: But I like your question, and I’d like to stay positive when it comes to this. I truly hope that when we gain some financial stability again, people do realise that we don’t have to look further than Sweden, to see that when they injected support into the music scene there, it grew to become one of their biggest exports.
Haukur: But just look at yourselves. There’s no money available, but you guys said let’s make a documentary and tell everybody about it. “Yeah yeah, come back next year.” There was a big breakthrough 5 years ago, when a guy called August Einarrson made a big report, The Economic Results of Music, and all the musicians were like: “Ha! Look! We also contribute! See that?”
Gummi: And everyone forgot about it by now.
Haukur: I have the book at home though.
Bóas: It was a great moment for Icelandic musicians, haha.
Haukur: We have a saying in Iceland, “you can’t eat book linen”, and that’s very much the attitude. Now they think: when we make them learn something, they can all make us money on the stock market. It’s not like book linen, but you can’t eat art-making.
But don’t get us wrong: we love making music here – and I don’t think it would be better with state support. It’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Look at us: we’re having a band going for 6 years, having a great time, having played all over the world, released 2 albums, about to make a third one. Sure we are not making a living out of it.
Bóas: But we know that when we started.
Kai: And that’s why we are here. There are so many good Icelandic bands compared to German bands…
Haukur: Yeah, of course (everyone laughs)
Marcel: For me, if I tell people about Irish music, no one has this image of a lonely fiddler down at the pub, people would think more about U2 and Damien Rice without the image of the landscape in the background. This is why we want to go below all those images people connect with Iceland.
Haukur: You want to go below the elf? You should call your documentary “Under the Elf”!
Marcel: Sounds like porn, though.
This interview belongs to Chapter 4 – Another Day in Quicksand.
Bóas: We don’t really have a comparison, we never made music in another city (laughs).
Haukur: Well in Isafjordur, we made music, most of us. So I take the question, when you are in Solingen or Amsterdam or wherever, there’s a certain road to take when you are in a band, and is it the same here?
Marcel: Yes.
I say it’s a little bit different over here. For two reasons: firstly because Iceland is quite an obscure country, like the Faroes and Greenland, it’s an interesting place. So whenever you want to write a news report about something that’s going on in Iceland you already have half of your story written – “This crazy place! You have glaciers and volcanoes!”.Haukur: I say it’s a little bit different over here. For two reasons: firstly because Iceland is quite an obscure country, like the Faroes and Greenland, it’s an interesting place. So whenever you want to write a news report about something that’s going on in Iceland you already have half of your story written – “This crazy place! You have glaciers and volcanoes!”. Bands from Iceland have it a little bit more easy, but that would be meaningless, because secondly we had Björk, too. That’s why bands from the Faroes or Greenland don’t have the same stigma – they never had a breakthrough artist. Bjork is the Icelandic breakthrough artist, who managed to break the mainstream, sell millions of records, so thanks to her people are writing about Icelandic music for almost twenty years, but in a specific way. We also have Iceland Airwaves Festival, which is marketed with her [Björk’s] spirit, the elf-spirit, in mind. So it’s easy to get journalists to come here and label people. And then a band like Me, The Slumbering Napoleon or us, they take us over. They come here to see an Icelandic band play in Iceland – but for example no one goes to Amsterdam to check out the music scene. And I think that’s the difference.
Marcel: But what’s it for a band like you? Would you prefer to play on proper stages with a proper PA compared to what’s here? I’ve seen only shows in record stores and old cinemas so far.
Bóas: We are lucky enough to have a few good live venues, in Reykjavik and in other places in Iceland. It’s pretty easy to put up a medium-sized gig with a pretty good PA.
Gummi: But I would wish that Iceland would be connected to Europe, so that we could just drive there.
Marcel: For example, if you set up a nice show but no one’s showing up, is this something that could happen in Iceland as well?
Haukur: That’s a multi-layered question you are asking. I think one of the good things about the local scene is that no one gets paid to enter. And that’s good – if you play in London, you have to pay everyone. The guy who hangs up the posters, the venue, the doorman, the sound man, the light guy, it’s a whole process. Like starting a company, for just one show. Here, we can say: want to have a show? Ok – let’s get a floor, get some speakers, let’s do it. And we can even promote this properly without that much trouble. So that adds to the spirit of it.
Kristján: I think things have changed so much in the last 10 or 20 years, the world is getting smaller every day, and like Gummi said, it’s very easy for a band to get concerts in Europe. It was such a big thing for a band here in Iceland to play in London or somewhere else ten years ago.
Gummi: The main newspapers were writing about it – “This and this guy is going abroad!”
Kristján: That has changed. Dramatically.
Haukur: And we can do a big production show. Plus, we can promote it properly. And people would show up. For sure. We’ve done it.
I think all our bands here in Iceland are more ready then bands elsewhere, because they’ve done all the work from the start, the posters and promotion and everything.
Kristján: I think all our bands here in Iceland are more ready then bands elsewhere, because they’ve done all the work from the start, the posters and promotion and everything.
Bóas: Another positive thing about being from here: we’ve never been involved in the rock scene. There is one here, but we’ve never been involved in it. Because we would rather play with our friends that play different music than to play with people we don’t really know or like, just because their music is similar to ours. So here you have a cross-bred scene made up of friends. Which makes it even more easier to put up a show or an event – either record store or 300-people sized.
Marcel: And how do you start and make songs and progress as a band here? For example in Germany, when I was starting a band, we always knew what we’d need to do even before we had the first three songs finished. Write enough songs for a 30 minute-set, record an EP, go tour more, etc.
Haukur: I think it’s the exact opposite here. The only people making money from music, except from pop-musicians playing cover songs, are Björk and Sigur Rós, and maybe Múm, but they moonlight as janitors somewhere, haha. So when we came together to form a band, like most people do, we said “Cool, let’s form a band. Cool, we have songs. Let’s play a show. Good idea!” So there’s nobody – or very very few people – saying: “I want to be a musician. And this is my business plan. Now I just need a band.”
Kristján: I think it’s much more complicated now, other than just hanging around drinking beer and making music. We first thought, let’s make an album, and then things started to get really complicated, paying taxes and everything. We suck at that.
Marcel: Is there any support from the Icelandic state? We always had the image that this is a very cultural and creative nation…
Haukur: There’s not much support for grassroots-music. There are funds you can apply for, and certain state-sponsored entities that you can go to, but not for a rehearsal space or so. You get a grant when you go on tour, or when you make an album – but that’s more for established musicians. A kid that’s 19 or 21 wouldn’t know how to write an application. So there’s no support for the lower tiers of musicians – except the music schools, and they offer basic instruments, they are all state-sponsored.
Marcel: But you wouldn’t declare that you’re an artist at your tax return? Like in Ireland: if you are an artists, you don’t pay any income-tax. That’s why Bono and Enya are still living in Ireland and not in Barbados. Such a thing may be a big incentive for Ielandic artists – but maybe that’s just German thinking…
Haukur: But Icelandic thinking would be (shouts) “Who do they think they are? Not paying taxes? For a hobby? That’s ridiculous!” They pay out a very very small artists stipend, a total of 300,000,000 ISK yearly to support visual arts, music, the whole thing. Whenever it’s announced whom it’s awarded to, people say “What? Who gets it? We are paying for this bullshit?”
Gummi: “Parasites!”
Hundred years ago, we were looking to find new ways to eat parts of the animal that we normally couldn’t eat. There was just so little food. “Horse-hoofs? Maybe, soak them in brine for six months so we can eat them!” This was a really – and I think Icelanders often forget this now – one of the poorest countries on Earth.
Haukur: I was telling this to another guy today – we come from such a different environment than mainland Europe, where people have been making beautiful things for hundreds of years. Hundred years ago, we were looking to find new ways to eat parts of the animal that we normally couldn’t eat. There was just so little food. “Horse-hoofs? Maybe, soak them in brine for six months so we can eat them!” This was a really – and I think Icelanders often forget this now – one of the poorest countries on Earth. People lived in mud holes and they ate rotten food. My mother, she told me a story about my great-grandfather: she was coming to visit him in the 1970ies, and he would have a green bread in his closet, really foul disgusting bread and she’d say “Throw this away!” and he’d answer “No, we don’t throw away food here!”. And today people are complaining when they can’t go out every night. It’s very much “Make! Stuff! You can sell! Produce money!” There’s the Icelandic incentive.
Marcel: But that seems paranoid to me when you look at this new campaign from Visit Iceland, where they are trying to milk this artistic image.
Gummi: What do you think about that?
Marcel: It’s crap.
Kai: When we were in Hafnarfjörður on Friday, and there was this ash everywhere, we thought about filming our own version of it. Empty housing estates, only ash and no tourists. I think the video is showing how other countries look at Iceland. Or should look at Iceland.
Haukur: It’s not about what’s really here. I’ve never seen anyone dancing, not even at the bar.
Bóas: But I like your question, and I’d like to stay positive when it comes to this. I truly hope that when we gain some financial stability again, people do realise that we don’t have to look further than Sweden, to see that when they injected support into the music scene there, it grew to become one of their biggest exports.
Haukur: But just look at yourselves. There’s no money available, but you guys said let’s make a documentary and tell everybody about it. “Yeah yeah, come back next year.” There was a big breakthrough 5 years ago, when a guy called August Einarrson made a big report, The Economic Results of Music, and all the musicians were like: “Ha! Look! We also contribute! See that?”
Gummi: And everyone forgot about it by now.
Haukur: I have the book at home though.
Bóas: It was a great moment for Icelandic musicians, haha.
But don’t get us wrong: we love making music here – and I don’t think it would be better with state support. It’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Look at us: we’re having a band going for 6 years, having a great time, having played all over the world, released 2 albums, about to make a third one. Sure we are not making a living out of it.
Haukur: We have a saying in Iceland, “you can’t eat book linen”, and that’s very much the attitude. Now they think: when we make them learn something, they can all make us money on the stock market. It’s not like book linen, but you can’t eat art-making.
But don’t get us wrong: we love making music here – and I don’t think it would be better with state support. It’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Look at us: we’re having a band going for 6 years, having a great time, having played all over the world, released 2 albums, about to make a third one. Sure we are not making a living out of it.
Bóas: But we know that when we started.
Kai: And that’s why we are here. There are so many good Icelandic bands compared to German bands…
Haukur: Yeah, of course (everyone laughs)
Marcel: For me, if I tell people about Irish music, no one has this image of a lonely fiddler down at the pub, people would think more about U2 and Damien Rice without the image of the landscape in the background. This is why we want to go below all those images people connect with Iceland.
Haukur: You want to go below the elf? You should call your documentary “Under the Elf”!
Marcel: Sounds like porn, though.
This interview belongs to Chapter 4 – Another Day in Quicksand.
