Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.09.2014, Blaðsíða 21

Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús is making more noise than usual. Normally a quiet
gallery building, today it’s throbbing with bass, the big glass windows rattling in their
frames. Through an open service door, the cavernous main hall ripples with light—
against the back of the stage, three huge projected figures made of geometric shapes
blossom then deteriorate into mazes and matrices of neon lines. Sound techs run around
with arms full of coiled leads, and a battalion of lights strafes the stage through thick
mist.
The building is warming up for Gusgus to present their latest album ‘Mexico’ in Reyk-
javík for the first time. In the somewhat stark dressing room, though, the atmosphere
cools down. Birgir Þórarinsson (aka Biggi Veira or Veiran), at this point the only constant
and ever-present member in the band’s history, sits on a crate with his legs crossed, non-
chalantly sipping a Campari as he waits for his bandmates to arrive for rehearsal.
“Hello!” he says, beckoning. “Come in! Welcome!”
It’s been almost two decades since Gus-
gus first came together, drifting into be-
ing in a way that seems preternaturally
effortless. Whilst working together on an
Icelandic film production that was suf-
fering delays, singer Daníel Ágúst, who
was an actor in the production, had been
playing with electronic composition, and
suggested the eclectic group should work
together on some music. After a period
of play, gestation and experimentation,
the revered UK label 4AD heard some
recordings and came calling, and the
loosely strung collective snapped into fo-
cus as a band.
The label sent out a black and white
panorama-postcard of the band’s full
lineup to announce the new signing.
Biggi remembers it well. “Our manager
was in that picture too,” he says. “We
were seven onstage, then—three singers,
two of us making the music, and then two
doing live visuals. And everyone brought
something important to the mix. It was
kind of just a collection of interesting
people—an experiment. Nobody was too
stressed about what it was. We were just
having fun with music.”
Daníel also remembers the period
fondly. “It was a good time, us getting
together,” he says. ”It was a very intrigu-
ing work environment to have all these
talents—ten or twelve creative people,
all contributing to the project. We would
work on music day and night. I was also
in a musical and rehearsing a play—I was
sleeping for just two or three hours a day.
It was busy, but a lot fun.”
Attention
“Polyesterday” became a cult hit, es-
tablishing the band outside of Iceland
as they toured throughout Europe. The
band reconvened in Reykjavík after-
wards to write and record the follow-up
album, ‘This Is Normal’, but as Gusgus
became a more formal entity, internal
frictions started to surface.
“Basically, it was in chaos after the re-
cording,” Biggi says. “People had become
more aware that this was a band, and that
it had become a bigger thing. It came to
the surface what each individual wanted
to do with music. And there were some
clashes when people didn’t totally agree
on it. We toured nonetheless, without
Hafdís Huld, but basically we realised
the band was falling apart.”
After the tour, the lineup was deci-
mated as people went their separate
ways. The core unit of Stephan Stephens-
sen (aka Steppi or President Bongo) and
Biggi remained, working on a new album
with Daníel as their vocal foil, but before
the album had reached fruition, Daníel
too left, with his mind
set on solo work.
“I felt like I need-
ed to explore more of
what music had to of-
fer, and I couldn’t go
all the way within the
realms of Gusgus,”
Daníel says. “I had to
do it on my own, but
we stayed connect-
ed—I wrote a song
called “Desire” for
the ‘Attention’ album,
and a song of mine
called “Moss” was reworked on ‘Forever.’
And of course, I came back, having kind
of masturbated with my deepest musical
desires of the time. Those desires change
constantly, anyway—I wouldn’t say I’m
easily bored, but I do love regenerating
what I’m doing, regenerating the ap-
proach, looking at what I can do next. It’s
an ever-evolving path.”
Thin ice
For a time, the future seemed uncertain.
“When Daníel quit, the album we were
planning ground to a halt,” Biggi says. “So
we decided to release an album of tracks
from T-World, the band Maggi Lego
and I had been in before, that was kind
of swamped into Gusgus. We had these
unreleased songs from ’93 and ’94. If
we hadn’t done that album, there’d have
been no point in continuing.”
Says Daníel, of the band’s crisis point:
“The future has been critical a couple of
times, sure. When I left in 2000, it was
just Biggi and Stephan. There was a point
in time where they
were thinking, ‘Shall
we make this happen,
or call it quits?’ But,
we’re still here. Des-
tiny has played a few
tricks on us.”
And so, having
reached the brink,
Gusgus started to
gather their strength
once more, finding a
powerful new singer
in Urður Hákonardót-
tir (aka Earth). Urður
added a new voice and a grounding, femi-
nine stage presence. It was around this
time that another future member, Högni
Egilson, first became acquainted with
the band he’d later join.
“I’d heard of them in the ‘90s, as this
crazy art collective,” Högni says, “but
I only saw Gusgus for the first time in
2005, during the ‘Attention’ period. It
was a ‘Wow!’ moment. Earth was with
them, and Steppi Steph was at the front.
He was talking to a pineapple, and had
this long hair, and these funky clothes
with lots of neon, and they played “Da-
vid,” which was a big hit in Iceland. It was
played at our school ball and stuff. I liked
their presence, their characters—they
had this grandeur about them.”
Sustain
When Earth dipped out of the band in
2008, Biggi and President Bongo called
upon Daníel once again, asking him to
help develop a new direction influenced
by what was happening in German tech-
This Is Not The
First Time We’ve
Seen Change Gusgus on reaching the brink, and coming back stronger
Words by John Rogers
Photos by Brynjar Snær
“When Daníel quit in
2000, the album we
were planning ground
to a halt. So we decided
to release an album of
tracks from T-World, the
band Maggi Lego and I
had been in before. If we
hadn’t done that album,
there’d have been no
point in continuing.”