Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Qupperneq 54

T H E R E Y K J A V Í K G R A P E V I N E I C E L A N D A I R W A V E S S P E C I A L2
Amongst the Airwaves organisers, one
name will be particularly familiar to the
production staff, venue owners, techni-
cians and performers. Egill Tómasson is
the longest-serving member of the team
behind Iceland Airwaves, having started
as an intern at the second Airwaves ever
in the year 2000. Since then, his role has
grown alongside the festival to include
booking, Icelandic band relations and
production. An unassuming, amiable
guy peering from beneath the brim of a
sports cap, Egill is an ever-present figure
who helps turn the gears of the Airwaves
machine.
The way it was
“When I started, Airwaves was in a big
sports hall, with The Flaming Lips, Suede
and some other big bands,” Egill says.
“We had Faktorý [then known as Grand
Rokk] and Gaukurinn and a few other
venues. It was pretty much set up around
that. But many of the venues we used
back then no longer exist. That’s a big
part of the Airwaves story—the venues
that have come and gone.”
Several of Reykjavík’s most-loved
music venues have controversially closed
down in recent years, mostly to make way
for new ventures that capitalise on Reyk-
javík’s well-documented tourism boom.
But whilst these new business opportu-
nities might be good news for Iceland’s
economy, the closed venues leave gaping
holes in the cultural fabric of the city.
“The loss of NASA was a big blow,”
Egill laments. “It is a very, very sad loss in
general for Reykjavík, and for the whole
scene. Nothing is happening in that
building now. They haven’t knocked it
down, or managed to get anything done
there. It’s been serving as a pop-up book
market or something. It’s really weird,
the state of that great space.”
One of the ever-present fixtures of
the festival is the cavernous event hall of
Hafnarhusið, the city centre art museum.
But using that space doesn’t come with-
out challenges. “Hafnarhúsið used to be
our main stage, since 2001,” Egill says.
“It was the biggest hall we had available.
And while it’s a great venue, it’s very nar-
row, so the technical limitations affect
who can be booked there—a lot of bands
have minimum stage dimensions, and
stuff like that.”
Enter Harpa
With these concerns in mind, the appear-
ance of Harpa, with its modern, adapt-
able performance spaces, solved a lot of
problems for the Airwaves team. “One
of the great things about Harpa is that
everything is up to international stan-
dards,” Egill says. “It’s super good for us
in that respect.”
Using Harpa has opened up other
new possibilities for the festival. One
example is the eye-catching inclusion of
Iceland’s Symphony Orchestra (see our
feature on page 16) in the grand Eldborg
Hall. “We feel like the Symphony Or-
chestra collaboration is a really nice ad-
dition to the festival,” Egill says. “We’ve
always booked progressive composers at
Airwaves, so it’s a great fit. Last year we
had Ólafur Arnalds, this year we have
Jóhann Jóhannsson—and we’re already
talking about ideas for next year. The
people managing the orchestra are very
open-minded and open for suggestions.”
Down into the roots of Harpa, Kal-
dalón hall is also playing host to some
interesting events in the Airwaves sched-
ule, including the Airwords poetry event.
“We thought the poetry connection
was great,” Egill says. “It didn’t take too
long for us to make the decision to collab-
orate with those guys. If you think about
these poets and writers we are work-
ing with, it’s sometimes not until they
get nominated for international awards
that they get recognition outside of the
left-wing literary circle in Iceland. They
kind of stay super underground. The gen-
eral Icelandic public didn’t care too much
about people like Sjón until they got inter-
national recognition. So for us to some-
how participate in that, it’s an interesting
step for us. I think it helps to give people
a good insight into what’s happening in
Icelandic literature.”
Despite the use of the grand, glittering
Harpa building, one of the best aspects of
Airwaves will always be the experience
of running around between the atmo-
spheric bars, shabby hole-in-the-wall
music venues and creaky concert halls of
Reykjavík’s downtown area.
At the heart of it
“We are always very focused on keeping
Gaukurinn and Húrra and those places
heavily involved,” Egill says, “which can
get us in trouble. When we put in bands
who require big set-ups, we’re asking the
bands to down-scale their production to
fit in those circumstances. But for me,
that sometimes brings out the best per-
formances. With the Icelandic bands,
when you put someone who hasn’t
played Gaukurinn for a long time on that
tight stage, there’s something dynamic
about that.”
And whilst other countries are in-
vesting in their cultural spaces from the
public purse, small venues in Reykjavík
receive no help from the city, despite
facing high taxes and red tape. But with
no help from the city, Egill worries that
prized downtown venues will continue
to disappear.
“It’s a struggle for some of them,
staying open,” he says. “In many coun-
tries around us, culture venues are sup-
ported by a government system, to help
keep those art houses up and running.
Here, these people have to find it from
the scraps. Let’s face it, nobody is mak-
ing tons of money and living carefree
lives when you’re running those venues.
You have to be full on—dedication to
the music scene. So, I take my hat off to
those people.”
Egill thinks more should be done. “It’s
really essential that both the City and
the government start looking into what
they’re doing in Denmark and places like
that. The way things are developing here
in Reykjavik, it’s often coming down to a
battle between idealism and money—and
money usually wins. Faktorý, NASA, and
all those closed places... they’re gone or
standing empty. They’re going to be fuck-
ing malls or hotels. None of the ideas on
the table are geared towards sustaining
the city’s culture, or fresh ideas. It’s all
about the tourist development in Reyk-
javík and the concern for maximum
growth per square metre and all that shit.
Which is sad.”
It’s a far cry from the effective work
being carried out in other areas of Ice-
land’s music culture, where government-
funded organisations like Kraumur and
Iceland Music Export offer support and
development to Iceland’s musicians, with
visible results.
“That side of things is very healthy,”
says Egill. “Just look at the scene. This
year, we have 40-something Icelandic
bands playing their first Airwaves. We
have 151 Icelandic bands on the bill and
we had to say no to around 200, which is
a hell of a number for a city of this size.
In an average year we say no to around
100 bands. And for me, the quality of the
applications is sky high—at least half of
those bands could easily be on the bill,
quality-wise. The grassroots music in-
dustry is getting significant support, and
I think we can see it is paying off.”
A full, foldable Iceland Airwaves schedule
(great for your pocket!) will be distributed
with the expanded version of this special
that will be distributed around Reykjavík
and 101's bars and venues by the end of Oc-
tober.
WORDS BY JOHN ROGERS
PHOTO BY HÖRÐUR SVEINSSON
As the carnival of new music that is Iceland Airwaves approach-
es, the anticipation in the air is becoming palpable in Reykjavík.
The festival pre-game is in full swing: there are posters all over
town, the schedule and accompanying app have been launched,
and the annual scramble for tickets that follows the inevitable
“sold out!” announcement has begun. There’s a huge amount of
behind-the-scenes work taking place in the final weeks before
the festival kicks off.
Egill Tómasson, On The
Evolution Of The Festival
Making

Flow
Airwaves