Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.06.2015, Qupperneq 14

14 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 7 — 2015
Yamaho, aka Natalie Gunnarsdóttir, is
a familiar face on the downtown scene,
with a distinctive shock of black hair
sticking up above her headphones. Start-
ing out at the defunct legendary party
bar Sirkus around the turn of the mil-
lennium, she’s now one of the main DJ
faces of Reykjavík’s thriving nightlife.
From Sónar and Secret Solstice to Dolly,
Palóma or the evergreen Kaffibarinn: Ya-
maho is everywhere.
We meet in the dark, wooden, ma-
roon-painted back room of Kaffibarinn.
“This bar is kind of my home,” says Ya-
maho. “I started working here when I
was 18, and I’ve been coming here ever
since.”
Yamaho’s generation has seen the
landscape of Reykjavík nightlife change
dramatically. Over the last decade, the
tourist influx has brought a vast wave
of human traffic to the city’s downtown
area; at the same time, a seismic shift
away from the guitar music of the early
noughties has re-tuned the city’s wave-
length.
“When I started out, the climate was
like rock ‘n’ roll, 70s, 80s, pop and disco,”
Yamaho recalls. “When Sirkus appeared,
I was just starting to DJ—I’ve always
been into dance music, so I’d try to sneak
a few in. But if I didn’t think about the
crowd, people would go and whisper
to Sigga, the owner of the bar: ‘She was
playing dance music again, I just thought
you should know…’” Yamaho laughs
loudly at the memory of the DJ snitches.
“I guess that helped me to develop my
style, though—to get a range of sounds
into a set.”
Like many DJs at the time, Yamaho
started out playing on vinyl. “I loved go-
ing to record stores and crate digging,”
she recalls. “That aspect has completely
changed now. We go online now to dis-
cover new stuff. Before, it was a whole
room full of music. You could look at in-
teresting sleeves and different genres,
and it would move you on musically.”
Her love of vinyl stems from her in-
terest in the history of house and techno,
and the roots of DJing. “People listen to
dance music today and don’t know where
it came from,” she says. “But I guess it’s a
taste thing. Some people don’t care about
vinyl and all that stuff I’m talking about—
it’s more about just liking what they’re
doing, right now. And I don’t judge that.”
Our house
Another DJ that started on vinyl is Addi,
aka Introbeats, also a Kaffibarinn regu-
lar. He started out playing in the city’s
main hip-hop bar, Prikið. “I was playing
vinyl then,” says Addi, “but I’ve made the
change over to digital. I still use my Tech-
nics decks, spinning with timecode vinyl
and the computer.”
Addi plays all over town, but he likes
that Kaffibarinn has a wide range of
high-quality DJ equipment on hand.
“They have both turntables and Pioneer
CDJs,” says Addi. “You can just show up
with headphones and some USB sticks.
That’s a real luxury when you’ve been
dragging your decks around with you for
years.”
In fact, many of Reykjavík’s favourite
venues are cafés by day, and morph into a
bar/club environment after dark—multi-
purpose spaces in which playing vinyl
can present a logistical challenge. “You
often need pillows or some homemade
stuff so the needle doesn’t shake,” Addi
says. “There’s a great scene here, but
the clubs are lacking that standard a bit.
But I mean, places like Kaffibarinn—it’s
a house music institution, anyway. I’ve
known visiting DJs to walk in and see
how small the space is, and think it’ll be
a smooth disco set... but by the end of the
night, they’ll play out the same set they
would in Berghain, or maybe even harder
stuff. The crowd is right on your back in
those small bars. It’s a good vibe. It’s per-
sonal.”
Late nights & bright lights
Katla Ásgeirsson is a prolific Reykjavík
DJ who started almost coincidentally.
In 2012, she was working the bar at Bak-
kus—the oft-rebranded building current-
ly known as Húrra—when she hit upon
a winning formula. “It was kind of ran-
dom,” she smiles. “We’d be two bar staff,
working these empty Tuesday nights. It
was boring. I had this idea that we should
do a theme night—just something funny.
So we did a Swedish night—we wore only
Swedish clothes, and I put together an
all-Swedish playlist. It was really fun—a
good group came, and they danced until
closing time. Palli, the owner, told me to
go and play from DJ booth. And that was
it.”
Asked to continue with a new idea
each week, suddenly Katla was running
around Reykjavík to find records that
fit the next theme. “I would contact my
friends who were into each genre, and
run all over town borrowing their re-
cords,” she recalls. “They were big nights
in the end. We were doing very well on
Tuesdays! After Bakkus closed, I just
kept playing. DJing became how I paid
rent. And if you care about your work,
you just evolve. It happens naturally.”
For a young parent, the nocturnal DJ
life is not without challenges. “I’d stay
at my mom’s place on work nights,” says
Katla, “and put my kid to bed, then go
out. I’d get home at five in the morning
and he’d wake me up early, then my mom
would take him and I’d sleep through till
twelve. It’s hard work! You’re making
this noise, relentlessly, for five, six, seven
hours straight. You always have to be on
your toes. When I’m playing, I have fun,
sure—but I’m constantly working. People
don’t see that.”
There’s a certain absurdity to the job
that isn’t lost on Katla. “I’ll sometimes
catch myself in the moment, standing in
front of a lot of people, dancing and play-
ing music,” she smiles, her eyes opening
wide. “It’s so weird! I mean, I’m not some
showy dude trying to get broads by be-
ing a DJ. I’m a mom! I’m a mom playing
music in the middle of the night in some
dark basement. I’ve had moments where
I burst out laughing. But I just really love
doing it.”
Internet generation
Óli Dóri is a DJ who feels most at home in
the building Bakkus eventually became,
the much-loved concert venue and night-
club Húrra. “I like the vibe there,” he
says, over a glitchy Facetime connection,
from the Primavera festival. “It always
feels like it has the potential to turn into
a party.”
An open-minded music aficionado
who combs the internet in search of new
sounds for his radio show, Straumur, Óli’s
interest in mixing came early. “I’ve made
playlists since I was like ten years old,”
he says. “I would listen carefully, and ar-
range the songs by their sound, always
thinking of what fit together in different
ways, whether by tempo or just feel. Over
time I started to overlap them, and plug
different stuff together. At first I used
CDs and vinyl. Now, it’s a computer and
a controller. It’s so convenient not to have
to carry around hundreds of CDs.”
For the millennial generation who’ve
grown up in the age of CDs and internet,
turntablism doesn’t exude the same mag-
netic draw. One of the younger DJs on the
scene is Logi Pedro, also known from his
work with the band Retro Stefson.
“Vinyl is so fragile,” Logi says, “and
so are the decks. Maybe the needle gets
fucked up, or the tone arm… you never
know what it’ll be. But then, comput-
ers are fragile too—they might crash or
whatever. CDJs are the most stable, but
it’s still two decks and a mixer, so it feels
natural.”
Logi started DJing at 13 years old,
when he played at a school dance. “I
played with a pair of big old school iPods
the first time,” he smiles. “That was my
first concept and experience of DJing.
But the first time I did a paid gig, I was
maybe 16 or 17. I got paid in a six-pack and
10,000 kronur. Then in the summer of
2009-10 I had access to some CDJs. That
was the first time I really got into the
equipment.”
There’s a certain time of night in Reykjavík’s bars when
the atmosphere starts to change. The blinds come down,
the lights are dimmed, and the volume of the music creeps
up as daytime playlists give way to something more pro-
pulsive. The after-work drinkers thin out, and a different,
hungrier crowd starts to appear from the woodwork. As
Icelanders get dressed up and have a few drinks at home,
and curious tourists emerge for their big night on the
town, Reykjavík’s DJs are beginning their shift.
Words by John Rogers
Photos by Art Bicnick & Brynjar Snær
After Dark
Meet the DJs who make
Reykjavík’s nightlife hum
1 2
Continues on P. 16