Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.07.2013, Qupperneq 20

20The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 9 — 2013
Step into
the Viking Age
Experience Viking-Age Reykja­vík a­t the
new Settlement Exhibition. The focus of the
exhibition is a­n exca­va­ted longhouse site which
da­tes from the 10th century ad. It includes
relics of huma­n ha­bita­tion from a­bout 871, the
oldest such site found in Icela­nd.

Multimedia­ techniques bring Reykja­vík’s
pa­st to life, providing visitors with insights
into how people lived in the Viking Age, a­nd
wha­t the Reykja­vík environment looked like
to the first settlers.
The exhibition a­nd
museum shop a­re open
da­ily 10–17
Aða­lstræti 16
101 Reykja­vík / Icela­nd
Phone +(354) 411 6370
www.reykja­vikmuseum.is
List of licenced Tour
Operators and Travel
Agencies on:
visiticeland.com
Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Hooray! We turned ten this year. For a humble street
rag like Grapevine, turning ten is a pretty big deal—we
barely expected to make it to ten issues (and, indeed,
all of our contemporaries Reykjavík's street rag market
have long since bid farewell... miss u, Undirtónar!).
To celebrate our decade of existence, we thought
we'd get a little introspective and reprint some
choice articles from the past that are for some reason
significant, accompanied by commentary and even
updates. Call it a "blast from the past" or "a look into
the dark cauldron of time" if you want to—we call
it fun. Thus, for ten issues, expect a page dedicated
to a year of Grapevine's existence, starting one issue
ago, with a look back into magical 2003.
This issue is a look at 2005, our third year of ex-
istence when Valur Gunnarsson and Bart Cameron
were editors. The articles below are printed as they
were printed then, typos and everything.
I didn’t personally download your al-
bum. I overheard someone listening to
it and confiscated it. I swear. After we
heard that you weren’t that upset over
the fact that it was online.
Jónsi: How does it sound when you down-
load it? I haven’t downloaded it myself.
Really high quality for a pirated re-
cording.
Jónsi: I like that better than if it were a
crappy recording.
We’ve spent all week dealing with Sigur
Rós fans, honestly. I’ve been surprised
by the international community behind
your band. At how interested they are
solely in the music, not in the personal-
ity or the lifestyle of the members. The
Sigur Rós website, for example, focuses
only on types of keyboards.
Jónsi: That’s how it should be. Though I
never go to the website. I think it’s quite
scary, actually, how everyone wants an
explanation for everything. I never go.
Is it scary even if they’re only discussing
music? We had someone looking at the
photo we had from the studio explain-
ing that the keyboard is a Casio 87, ask-
ing which song it might be on.
Jónsi: Well that’s obviously wrong. It’s
just nerdy, though I think it’s cute, actu-
ally, when they’re asking about how we
got the guitar sound, but then it gets scary
beyond that. A lot of weird discussions go
on.
Regarding the music versus personal,
there is an aspect I liked about Sigur
Rós and the coverage in Iceland. When
The Grapevine went to your studio last
year, even though you and I had met be-
fore, we discussed nothing personal at
all—a Sigur Rós interview used to just
be a reminder that you should be con-
tent with the CD. But then this week, in
Iceland, I’ve been seeing your personal
life in the media. All about who you’re
dating and who got married.
Jónsi: I know, I think it’s fucking ridicu-
lous. I think it’s because of the website.
The web designer put it up for news, but
then Fréttablaðið just took it and printed it.
It makes everything weird for us.
You’d rather be left alone when you’re
at home.
Jónsi: Yes, but we can’t get frustrated
about this. That’s just the way journalism
is. We just leave it alone.
That said, it’s hard for journalists to
cover Sigur Rós. I’ve been thinking
about this: with rock or folk music, you
have lyrics and patterns that interact
with journalists as much as fans, as op-
posed to say jazz and classical music,
which doesn’t directly transfer into
print. Plus, Sigur Rós doesn’t react with
journalists. There’s an interesting pres-
sure when we just have to review music
like its music, not like it’s somebody’s
article.
But you’re really fucking with rock
journalists when you put out an album
that considers influences and styles out-
side of our small space of known mate-
rial.
Jónsi: Especially with the brackets album.
That was so hard for them. No titles, no
lyrics. Nothing for them to hold on to.
When they got it and they realized there
were no titles and you just had to listen, it
was too much for them, I think. And they
talked more about that than the music.
And I think when the journalists are not
being fed everything then they get a little
scared.
But you sympathize with that, I imag-
ine. A lot of musicians in Iceland have
written or commented on local music in
addition to performing. Are you one of
them?
Jónsi: No. I think it’s scary to analyze
music too much. There should be a certain
amount of magic that shouldn’t be thought
about too much. It should happen natu-
rally. I think that’s always the best thing.
Talking about the album, Takk. Can
we begin with the overall organization?
How it works together. I noticed songs
blended together, it felt like a complete
symphony more than a collection of
tracks.
Jónsi: It was not organized: there are
many songs, which connect with each
other. The order just came along that way.
Of course number 11 had to be number 11.
And track 3 and 4 are looped. And they’re
actually made from a loop from Ágætis
Byrjun, a reverse loop of track 7. So it’s
a lot of recycling going on. I think it’d be
fun to take one song and try to sample
something from that, then sample some-
thing from that. And make something
from that. It would be fun. Do you want
to know something about the songs or
something?
Anything you want to tell. The song that
most fascinates me is Lest, track 5. The
composition, the mixture of beats. The
polka.
Jónsi: That was funny. We got a celeste,
do you know the instrument?
No, I honestly hardly knew any of the
instruments at your studio.
Jónsi: A celeste is like a small upright pia-
no. There’s a picture of it here (in issue 12
of The Grapevine), this is Björk’s celeste.
It sounds a lot like a glockenspiel. But it is
played like a piano.
Ah ha. This explains a lot.
Jónsi: It’s really a beautiful instrument.
We got that on loan from Björk. And we
got a vibraphone that we bought at a flea
market in New York. When you get toys
like this you start to write differently.
Then we started playing different instru-
ments. It keeps us awake and happy.
So this song was written right when
we got the celeste.
The whole composition? With that
many layers and change-ups. I figured
it was a long project. What was Orri
just going crazy with drum beats or
something? There’s a waltz in that one,
too.
Jónsi: It kind of happens like this a lot.
This is actually two songs put together.
We wrote the first part then the second.
We wrote it like that and then we found
that it really worked together.
A lot of our music is like that. Nice ac-
cidents. Accidents that really work well.
Kind of accidental art.
We changed a lot on this song. In the
first part, I play piano, Orri played vibra-
phone and Kjartan played celeste, and,
in the second part, I play the vibraphone,
Orri plays the celeste and Kjartan plays
the piano. But it’s really fun though.
So when we hear things like the thun-
dering basslines, we can’t assume it’s
Georg.
Jónsi: You know it’s him. He plays so
massive. I really like the bass sounds—he
has a signature sound.
Do you have any favourite tracks on this
album?
Jónsi: Right now my favourites are tracks
3 and 4. These are studio songs, songs we
found by accident and just played around
with. (Reading from The Grapevine)
“Also we developed a sneaking suspicion
that track 4 may present a reversal from
track 3,” já, that’s exactly what it is. It’s
just backwards.
One good guess. The main advantage
to doing early reviews is that it will be
out of print before the album comes out.
Everything I got wrong I’ll say “I was
right, you just aren’t remembering cor-
rectly.”
But you prefer composing in a studio as
opposed to live.
Jónsi: Já. Most was written in the studio.
Gong was the only complete song before
we went in. Glósóli (track 2) was the first
song we wrote for the album, and then a
lot of the others are just us playing.
How are you going to prepare for the
reaction to this? I’m thinking it will be
quite a different critical response than
for the bracket album.
Jónsi: This is definitely more accessible.
The bracket album was a lot heavier.
When we did this album we wanted to
have more fun. For the other album we’d
been touring with the songs for so long
before we went to record them. So it was
very hard to be creative. But for this the
songs were fresh.
And I think we silently agreed that we
were tired of the heaviness. Because we
aren’t very heavy, we’re just a bunch of
silly guys. Definitely not serious. I think
we just wanted to have fun.
(Looks closely at The Grapevine.)
Heh heh heh. You wrote [regarding track
6, Sæglópir] “Opens with a reverb piano
part strangely reminiscent of 90s metal
ballads” that is very true I think.
So you’re not pissed?
Jónsi: Does it get many beers?
Oh shit. You read our paper. It would get
six beers, I think. One thing that I find
especially commendable, something that
is hard to cover, is how much pressure
this album had on it. You really had a lot
of magazines and websites wondering,
especially when movies like Life Aquatic
were featuring the old material.
Jónsi: I just wasn’t listening to them. Es-
pecially after the brackets album. We had
so many people saying for that album can
they follow Ágætis Byrjun again, and we
just never listened to them.
The fans who emailed us wanted to
know what track the toy piano featured
in our photo of your studio is on.
Jónsi: It’s on track 5, your favourite song.
Yeah, okay I’m a dork for liking polkas.
But if you were going to make a sequel
to The Triplets of Belleville, I really
think that could be the soundtrack—it’s
such a blend of energy and melancholy.
Jónsi: (laughing) Yes, it would fit very
well in there.
Read the rest of this interview at
www.grapevine.is in Issue 13, 2005.
One of the most exciting articles
we printed in 2005 was from an
Iraq War veteran explaining how
Sigur Rós helped him keep his
soul during the war. I thought that
said a lot about the power of art.
The Sigur Rós interviews were
enormous for us during my time.
They didn't have to reach out to
us, but they did. My first attempt
to interview them was so bad that I
used it as a lesson and developed a
‘How not to interview musicians’
based on my own conduct. This
cover story, when they released
‘Takk’ and gave us an enormous
interview and let us shoot them
at the small restaurant that was
the site of their first Reykjavík
concert, was a vindication. There
are thousands of crappy Sigur
Rós interviews, but I believe we
have one of the few good ones.
– Bart Cameron