Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.03.2011, Síða 27

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 3 — 2011 Friends of Biogen are planning a tribute concert for him at Tjarnarbíó on Saturday March 19th.
It will be a six hour programme from 18:00 to midnight. Over twenty key players in the Icelandic
electronic scene will donate their work, with proceeds going to Bjössi Biogen’s family. Tickets
are 1.000 ISK and can be found at tjarnarbio.is.
Music | In memory of...
Sigurbjörn Þorgrímsson was an elec-
tronic musician best known under the
name of Biogen. To many he was simply
known as Bjössi Biogen. A pivotal fig-
ure in Iceland’s electronic music scene,
whether it was during his early forays
into electronic music as a member of
the legendary hardcore techno band
Ajax or through the many collabora-
tions and side projects he was involved
with, Biogen had a personal hand in
shaping the last two decades of Ice-
landic music. His influence is felt by his
contemporaries and will be gleaned by
those who follow.

EARlY dAzE
In 1990, Sigurbjörn Þorgrímsson (Bjös-
si) and Þórhallur Skúlason, influenced
by shifting currents in the UK dance
scene, founded Ajax and thrust their
lightningfast hardcore sound on an un-
suspecting Iceland. With songs stuffed
with muted hoover synths and whimsi-
cal (and sometimes awkward) samples,
the Icelandic music community greeted
them with suspicion. Local critics would
take another five years to warm to the
idea of electronic music in general.
In '92 under the moniker Ajax Proj-
ect, they released the hardcore anthem
‘Ruffige’ in collaboration with a little-
known graffiti artist called Goldie. It
became the first hardcore record to be
released in Iceland and helped usher
in the rave culture locally along with
prominent local DJs such as Agzilla
and Grétar. In addition, following the
moderate success of that first record,
that graffiti artist they collaborated with
would go on to release a few drum &
bass records of his own.
In the words of Þórhallur: “We were
dealing with music which wasn’t go-
ing around in Iceland. I was DJ-ing this
music in Frostaskjól [a youth recre-
ation centre in Reykjavík] and a com-
mon friend told me that Bjössi had a
computer that could make music. It
only took me and Bjössi a second to
become friends. It was an adventure,
playing around with all this equipment,
we didn’t know what we were doing
and there was no one to guide us. We
made the first songs on a Commodore
and were asked to play at a [legendary]
local club called Tunglið. So we went
to the studio a few days before, but
turned out to be some sort of Christian
recording studio, and the guy who ran
it didn’t know what to do with us. The
show went well but it was the same, to
start with, people didn’t know whether
to dance or run away.”
BioGEn iS BoRn
Bjössi first appeared under the name of
Biogen on the 1994 compilation album
‘Egg 94’, and the name quickly stuck.
As Biogen, he maintained a steady
output over the next seventeen years,
carving out a place for himself as a bit
of an oddball visionary. His style ranged
from ambient to jungle but always
glitchy and chopped and undercut with
echoes of ‘80s noise music.
At the end of the ‘90s, Bjössi was
involved in forming the Thule Musik re-
cord label, arguably Iceland’s most am-
bitious undertaking in electronic music
publishing to this day. Thule became
an indispensable hub for the electronic
community and oversaw key releases
for artists such as Exos, múm, Sana-
sol and Thor, as well as Bjössi Biogen
himself (such as his excellent double LP
chillout album ‘Eternalizer’).
In 1998, Bjössi released the record
‘B-sides The Code of B-haviour’ on the
Electrolux label to much acclaim, this
time under the name ‘Babel’.
At the start of a new decade, and
with shifting tastes, the experimental
electronic scene was lulled and would
come to mark the end of Thule Musik.
Bjössi would shift more of his attention
to independent releases and released a
string of home releases, the 2003 ‘Stab
Stab / b.w.c.u’ ranking high among
those.
EnTER ThE WEiRd
As electronica came on the rise again
in the late '00s, Bjössi continued where
he left off with Thule by establishing
the Weirdcore collective/concert series
with Tanya Pollock in 2006, with the
outspoken aim of showcasing strange
or offbeat Icelandic electronica.
This is how Weirdcore collaborator
Tanya remembers Biogen: "My first in-
troduction to Bjössi Biogen was when I
was living in the U.S. I was about thir-
teen years old and already experiment-
ing with electronic music. My cousin
Marlon sent me the Icerave cassette
and it blew me away. That was the first
time I heard Ajax I wished I had made
their songs, so I sampled them and
made my own melodies over their beats
and made my first complete songs by
copying them. They were my idols."
Bjössi Biogen moved from the hard-
core rave to glitchy ambient (with a
regular pit stop in jungle) in a trajectory
that wasn’t unlike Aphex Twin’s (whom
he has often been compared to). But as
small and fragmented as the electronic
scene may have been in the UK it was
even more so in Iceland.
ThE RESulTS SpEAk FoR ThEM-
SElVES
Bjössi fought to carve out a place for
electronic music in his community and
the results speak for themselves. Pio-
neers like him helped prepare the soil
that bands like múm and Gus Gus grew
out of, and directly influenced others.
But two decades is a long time in mu-
sic, let alone a compartment in con-
stant flux, as electronica is bound to
be. And as an early adopter, he took on
the unenviable role of bridging the gap
between two styles of electronic music,
with little to moor the bridge on either
end.
Yet Bjössi continued to pioneer
and mutate electronic music his whole
career and proved tireless in helping
other musicians gain exposure and col-
laborating widely. One such collabora-
tor was Pan Thorarensen, half of the
duo Stereo Hypnosis:
“The peak was the Extreme Chill fes-
tival we had in Snæfellsnes last year.
We all got along so well. All the friends
were back together to play for an entire
weekend. Bjössi wouldn’t stop talking
about it for months afterwards, saying
he had never had this much fun before.
Biogen was an absolute trailblazer in
Icelandic electronic music history and
has influenced numerous artists, not
just in his field but all across the music
in Iceland. Losing such a good man is a
great blow to me as a friend, and a loss
to Icelandic music in general.”

WhERE doES ThE VETERAn Go?
Another pioneer of weird electronica,
Trish Keenan of Broadcast, passed
away in January, a month earlier. The
tragic loss of Keenan and Bjössi are
timely reminders that electronic music
is long past its adolescence. The style
is now as old as rock ‘n’ roll was when
punk came around.
But where do those who choose to
make electronic music for a living turn
as they get older? What are the career
prospects for a veteran in the Icelandic
electronic music scene? Or the Icelan-
dic music scene overall? The speed of
change within electronic music has al-
ways been staggering and professional
musicians are left fighting a constant
struggle for relevancy and placement.
Bjössi never seemed interested in try-
ing his luck abroad, instead focusing
his efforts on building and maintaining
the scene within Iceland, sometimes
expressing frustration at his ambitions
clashing against the size of the mar-
ket. The dearth of venues and variety
in Iceland can leave musicians open to
isolation and fears of stagnation, but
visionary Bjössi Biogen nonetheless
soldiered on in his quest to build up
and partake in a vibrant local electronic
music scene.
Now gone, Bjössi Biogen has thank-
fully blessed us with a treasure trove
of music, which, like himself, was com-
plex, delicate, playful, bizarre, sombre
and sincere.
In the Ajax song ‘Forget’ the refrain
commands: “Forget your name”—this
may happen to us listeners as we get
older, but we will make sure to remem-
ber Biogen.
Remembering Biogen
BIOGEN
(February 24th, 1976
February 18th, 2011)
RAGnAR EGilSSon
EMMA SVEnSSon