Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.06.2010, Side 31

Feature | Backyard
ÁP: Well, it’s just a document. We didn’t
really have an idea of what the scene was,
I just knew who they were and what they
were about.
ÁS: It wasn’t really deliberate.
ÁP: No, it wasn’t conscious.
ÁS: But it made sense. We put together
a list, and everybody except Björk was
able to come. We asked her, seriously. We
asked her because we had this idea that
we were going to do this lo-fi produc-
tion and blah blah blah. We saw her one
night in Karamba and we thought, what
the hell! We kind of know her. We asked
her if she was interested. She wasn’t able
to come, but she was very positive. But I
think in hindsight…
ÁP: It’s a good thing. It wouldn’t have fit
the idea.
ÁS: Now we know what it is, but at the
time we didn’t really know. We didn’t
even know if it would work! That is also
a very important thing, that we were play-
ing it so low-key to the people, because I
think no one was expecting anything. So
I think that keeps the human feeling. No
one was gearing up to be in this film.
ÁP: I think it was also a good approach.
It was not very deliberate, but it seems to
have worked.
ÁP: Also the story of ‘The Making Of
The Concert’ that’s in the film, he kind
of fooled me into it. He just said “Oh, this
will just be the extra material, it won’t be
important,” and I was like OK! It will just
be a concert movie! And then he edited
the movie and I was all like, “Shit! Huh,
uhm, what!?”
“I will just film you tidying the place.”
So that was just his sneaky manoeuvres?
Because a good part of the film is about
you organizing the concert and setting it
up.
ÁP: I didn’t know!
ÁS: I had to downplay it! Otherwise you
would have maybe been like, [makes fake
smile and awkward pose], but if it was
just me and you…
ÁP: I would have just been walking
around in a suit! With a briefcase.
That is a nice thing about the movie is the
casualness of it, especially when talking
to people and the little interviews with the
artists. They were so charming. How did
you make that happen?
ÁS: I have a lot experience. I’ve done a
lot of promos for bands. There’s always
this approach in Iceland where you
ask:“What’s your name, how long have
you been playing, have you played abroad,
and how’s that working out for you?” All
of these bands have been playing abroad
but that’s so beside the point. Here is a
band, they probably have a good story
about how they got started, so that was
our main focus. I think we got that. Also
just throwing stuff in of them talking
amongst themselves.
ÁS: Everybody had a good story. The
múm story is very nice.
ÁP: Was it “Trallalavoffvoff”? [Árni
Sveins nods and they laugh.]
“Maybe one day I can form a band
called Trallalavoffvoff.”
múm seems to be kind of a unifier with
these bands. How do they bring all these
groups together?
ÁS: They are the grandparents. They are
the oldest band in the scene.
ÁP: They made music that all of these
other bands were interested in, from
the beginning, I think. They influenced
them a lot.
ÁS: Not only the music, but also the aes-
thetic, the idea. They did it very much
themselves. I think these younger bands,
they look at múm and think, “Wow, how
they did it, that’s how I want to do it.”
ÁP: I don’t want to raise my mark really,
really high. I’d rather just be permanent,
like they have been.
ÁS: Just do what you do, and continue do-
ing it.
ÁP: Right. And maybe not go too far into
the money side of music.
ÁS: A lot of these rock guys now, and
through the years, have been set on mak-
ing it outside of Iceland. They are always
looking at record labels like some great
saviour. They’re like, “Oh, all these labels
are coming to our show blah blah blah,”
and it’s like, yeah what? They’re gonna
throw money at you? They’re gonna save
you? They’re gonna take you from here
and bring you somewhere else great? You
don’t think you have to pay them back,
you don’t think you have to work really
hard? This attitude has been very appar-
ent in the Icelandic music scene for the
last decade.
ÁP: For us, múm have taught FM Belfast
a lot on how to deal with the business
side of things and what to avoid. This is
a reason that a lot of the bands don’t have
really bad contracts, because múm tried
and failed or avoided something. We
learn from each other also. They helped
our band out a lot.
ÁS: This is very important.
ÁP: It’s very, very important, because if
a band is signed somewhere and it’s hor-
rible, they are more likely to quit and not
be a band anymore because they’re not
having fun. They might just go and work
at something else that they don’t enjoy. If
you’re doing music you should enjoy it,
otherwise there are other jobs.
So is this do-it-yourself, helpful attitude a
defining point of this community of mu-
sicians?
ÁP: Yeah. There is one guy in the film
named Robbi. He’s in Borko, múm and
Sin Fang Bous. He’s played with us as
well.
ÁS: You don’t notice him unless you
watch the movie maybe twice. People
don’t notice because he’s a guitar player
and he’s in the back. But this is just one
scene in Iceland. This is a movie we did
about this one scene.
ÁP: There are probably ten more scenes
in Iceland.
ÁS: Yeah, and they do things similarly, or
maybe more traditionally.
Was this kind of about sticking with your
clique?
ÁP: Most of these people got to know
each other through music, so they be-
came friends because they were doing
music or the same things.
ÁS: It’s a chain. These people know these
people know these people. And there are
possibly ten more bands that could be af-
filiated with us, or more. But this group
just kind of made sense.
These bands have been around for a
while. Do you think they will fade out and
something new will take over soon, or is
there lasting power?
ÁP: Some bands are going to fade out and
some are going to continue, but there’s no
way of knowing, because múm has been
running for what, like…
ÁS: Ten years? It’s what they say in the
film.
ÁP: And Retro Stefson is pretty young,
they’ve just made one album. We’ve just
made one album. Seabear is on their sec-
ond album. They’re young in records,
mostly. Maybe they’re on the way out for
listeners, I don’t know.
ÁS: I think the majority of the people in
this scene we have here will be around
for a while. Maybe not the exact bands,
but these members, these people will be
around for the next twenty years making
music. I think so.
ÁP: I think these people are just serious
about their stuff and I think they will
keep on doing it. They will probably make
other bands, but this core of people could
be around for a very long time.
ÁS: There have been many scenes like
this. It was documented in Rokk Í Reyk-
javík, this film from the early ‘80s. That
scene is not as defined. There are a lot of
different kinds of music. Those bands
weren’t interacting as much with each
other. It was shot over a month or some-
thing all over Reykjavík. But the people
that came forth from that were a lot of the
people that made up the scene around the
Sugarcubes.
ÁP: That group ended up being the ruler
of the time.
ÁS: This do-it-yourself attitude has been
around in various forms in different
scenes in Iceland for a very long time,
probably since the ‘60s.
“But this happens tomorrow.” “yeah,
we’ll manage somehow.”
As for the show itself, what was the pro-
cess of setting it all up?
ÁP: No sleep, because I was so stressed
about the whole thing. Even though I
had contacted the city, the police, got
everything necessary and then brought
letters explaining what was going to all
the houses in the neighbourhood, I was
so worried that someone would show up
and be like “Turn it off!” No one did.
ÁS: I remember I was getting really
stressed because you were so laid back.
ÁP: No, that’s my front! Laid back front,
but stressed inside.
And the neighbours never complained?
ÁP: No. I talked to one neighbour, and
she was worried that it would be a bit too
loud, so she made arrangements to just
stay elsewhere during the day, which was
really nice of her. The other neighbours
just came to the show instead.
ÁS: Because it was Culture Night. So you
can see in the film, there were parties
next door.
So it ended up being a neighbourhood
block party?
ÁP: Kind of.
ÁS: I mean, we didn’t advertise or any-
thing.
ÁP: The only advertisement there was
was the paper we passed out to the neigh-
bours saying we were having a concert
and sorry about the noise, but they were
invited to the concert and it said the line-
up.
ÁS: But the thing is, the people in the
bands told people about it so it was kind
of funny how it constantly grew.
“There are teenagers drinking in our
backyard!”
ÁP: I was kind of worried right before
we played because there were so many
drunken teenagers in our backyard. I was
worried that this would be a problem, and
they kind of were! He was trying to film
and they were pushing him.
ÁS: That was the hardest show to film,
because they were basically just crowding
the front of the stage.
ÁP: But I don’t really know who told
them.
ÁS: It must be the bands that are this
young, so it must be Retro Stefson
[laughs, and Árni Plúseinn mutters de-
nials]. No, I know who it is! It was these
young kids who came specially to see
múm. They were big múm fans, and
they started to call their friends to tell
them there was a party here. I know this
because my little cousin was one of these
kids.
ÁP: It just teaches us not to have a big
party.
As for the filming, who all was involved?
ÁS: I just got these guys together, these
people I know. Some were experienced,
some were not that experienced. I kind
of liked that though. We also didn’t want
to have it really produced. I just needed
a couple of cameras that I could trust,
and of course my own. Two of them were
shooting for the first time, but they are
photographers, so I taught them the day
before. I just gave them the cameras and
gave them a crash course on how to work
it. For most of them it worked. When we
were editing it, we had so much mate-
rial because some bands even played
four songs, but I think of the whole live
performances we have five or six shots,
because we wanted to have the feeling of
being really live.
ÁP: And it was just to save for when you
had really nothing to work with.
ÁS: No, it was more because the shots
were so nice, that I didn’t want to waste
them!
The filming style of the performances
is also pretty interesting. Every perfor-
mance felt like the shooting was tailored
to fit the music. Was that a product of edit-
ing or the way it was intended to be shot?
ÁS: It was a little bit of editing but I think
the feeling in shooting it was also very
difficult, especially for all the cameras
that I couldn’t really control. After the
first song we talked together and real-
ized we all had that feeling. It also goes
with the type of music it was. There were
two cameras in the front that were domi-
nant and static, then the other ones were
kind of random because they are not that
used to it. Maybe in some places you use
those cameras a little bit more, like for
Reykjavík! for instance, because they’re
that kind of a band. And then you have
the much more subtle and easy stuff like
múm.
“We wouldn’t need much overhead
to make it work, and then this idea
somehow grew.”
Have you done any other of these kind of
impromptu, spur of the moment happen-
ings?
ÁP: Kind of. It made the idea of doing it a
little bit easier. If that show was possible
in under twenty-four hours, then my side
of it would be possible with two weeks
preparation. I could manage it from my
side.
I don’t like the idea that everything
has to cost money. I don’t like the idea
that something nice like this has to make
money for someone.
ÁS: But we still need one and a half mil-
lion to release it! [Both laugh.]
ÁP: That was not my idea!
ÁS: I’ll go to the bank tomorrow.
ÁP: But the idea of doing something like
this doesn’t necessarily have to involve
any money. Like the concert at Karam-
ba… well, actually that wound up making
Karamba some money.
ÁS: There’s always money involved.
ÁP: But the people did it because they
knew it would be fun and people would
come and listen to their music, and it
would be a great party.
ÁS: He’s a hippie, and I’m a Satanist. So
we weigh each other out like this. [Árni
PlúsEinn nods in comical agreement.]
Do you think Iceland is just too small a
place to have that kind of system of man-
agers and booking agents and everything?
ÁP: It would be weird if I would meet
someone here who wanted to book a con-
cert in the next hour, and I can’t say any-
thing because I have to contact someone
who is two houses away. I could just say
yes or no. It’s not that big of a production
to do things here.
ÁS: Also in the film business. You can ba-
sically walk around in Reykjavík, filming
everything without a permit. This would
never fly in any other city. I know that.
I was shooting for a German TV station
the other day with some Germans and
they thought this was amazing. This of
course is amazing, and it can be really
positive. But it also creates an environ-
ment with maybe a lack of professional-
ism in other senses. Like paying the bills,
maybe? There are a lot of people here in
Iceland that struggle with being socio-
paths. It is kind of common here in Ice-
land where people go and do some stuff,
and they have people working for them,
and they don’t pay them. They don’t feel
bad about it. They just keep on truckin’
and just jump to the next group and just
stop talking to the people they don’t pay.
ÁP: And this might be a problem because
there are no middlemen who are just
there to collect the money, in any way
necessary [jokes about thumb-breaking
ensue].
ÁS: You would of course be on much
stronger ground with a contract, because
there would be something written may-
be. This method of doing things involves
a lot of trust.
ÁP: There’s no legal document about
your job that you did for maybe two or
three months. This is the problem with
how it’s all loose. But I’d rather live with
this than everything being stiff and it be-
ing almost impossible to have concerts.
“Are you done?”
If that were the case here, would your film
have been a lot more difficult to produce?
ÁP: I don’t think we would have done it.
I just think the idea would have been too
difficult.
ÁS: Maybe it would have been a foreign
idea to us to begin with if we were in that
kind of environment. Maybe it would
have never occurred to us.
So is the movie a product of the environ-
ment of the artistic community here?
ÁP: It’s the ideas of all these people
that were involved in the movie. Hau-
kur [Magnússon, of Reykjavík! and the
Grapevine‘s editor] pointed it out in the
movie, which was kind of cool.
ÁS: Everything we are talking about is in
the movie. You’ll see. Stop reading now
and go see the movie!
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07 — 2010
19
“There are a lot of
people here in Iceland
that struggle with being
sociopaths. It is kind of
common here in Iceland
where people go and do
some stuff and they have
people working for them,
and they don’t pay them.”
Borko
Björn Kristjánsson, the one-man brains
and bones of Borko, is an enigma who
keeps his back-story under lock and key.
He plays quirky little ditties with a variety
of musicians helping him out live. He re-
leased his latest album, Celebrating Life,
in March 2008.
www.myspace.com/borkoborko
Hjaltalín
Hjaltalín began gaining local attention
in 2006, and their career was greatly
boosted in 2008 as their reinterpretation
of Páll Óskar’s ‘Þú komst við hjartað í mér’
became a huge hit. Their first full-length
garnered international success, and they
recently released their second album,
Terminal, soon to be available throughout
Europe.
www.myspace.com/hjaltalinband
múm
Since founding in 1998, múm have ce-
mented their reputation as one of the
island’s most influential Icelandic bands,
both locally and abroad. They have re-
corded six full-length albums, their last
one, Sing Along to Songs You Don’t
Know, was released last summer. They
tour constantly, and are consistently awe-
some.
www.mum.is/
Retro Stefson
This group of Reykjavík youngsters came
together in 2006, when their frontman
Unnsteinn Manúel was encouraged by
Árni of FM Belfast and Bóas of Reykja-
vík! (who worked in the kids’ community
centre) to publish song he wrote. Unnste-
inn gathered his best friends together to
perform the track, and the rest is his-
tory. Their debut album, Montaña, was
released in 2008, and their frequent live
shows usually turn into massive dance
parties.
www.facebook.com/retrostefson
FM Belfast
Started by a couple making an Xmas
present song for their friends in 2005, FM
Belfast slowly gained recognition as be-
ing one of the most notable electro-pop
outfits in the 101 music scene. They re-
leased their first full-length album, How
To Make Friends, in October of 2008, and
are currently working on the follow up in-
between treks of touring Europe.
http://www.fmbelfast.com/
Reykjavík!
Reykjavík was formed in the mid-
noughties by a group of philosophy stu-
dents, booksellers and longshoremen
from Ísafjörður and their singer friend
from Reyðarfjörður. The group has re-
leased two albums and is currently work-
ing on new material. Be on the lookout for
cool Reykjavík! stuff in the not too distant
future.
www.reykjaviktheband.com
As the article mentions, there are many, many cool music scenes happening in Reykjavík these days, and many many great bands
and musicians working in many many different feels. The bands featured in Backyard represent one aspect - you should try your
best to acquaint yourself with all the others. It is well worth your time, we promise!