Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.10.2015, Síða 72

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 L20
But Úlfur is actually about to embark on a
journey of another kind. He’s arriving for
the final rehearsal—and imminent pre-
miere—of his newest musical work, 'The
Aristókrasía Project’, an ambitious piece
that blends together synths, vocoder and
string arrangements, covering themes
including utopia, AI, futuristic societies
and space travel.
“We’ll be playing tonight in front of a
space movie called ‘First Orbit’,” says Úl-
fur. "It was shot by an astronaut, in space.
It’s a remake of the original trip that Yuri
Gagarin went on—the same orbit—but a
modern-day version, with an HD cam-
era. I’ll perform the whole record and
show the film. It should feel like a real
journey.”
Space is lonely and scary
“One of the songs is actually about Yuri
Gagarin,” he continues, “and his expe-
rience of being the first person to enter
space and see the Earth from above.
Yuri has a vision—he sees how beautiful
the Earth is, and it’s amazing. But at the
same time—you can’t really get any more
lonely than that. So on one level he’s ex-
periencing what he’s saying—he’s on this
incredible trip. But on another level, he
must have felt really lonely. And scared,
maybe.”
It was a journey in itself for Úlfur to
create 'The Aristókrasía Project’, which
brings together many of his interests
from within and outside of the musical
sphere. "The songs and the ideas have
been floating around each other for some
time,” he explains. "It’s not so much a
story—it’s more fragmented than that—
but it has an aesthetic. It’s a collection of
interrelated things—space travel, utopian
visions of the future, and some nostalgia
and regret. There’s a melancholic under-
tone. 'Victory of the human spirit’ stories
always carry a certain melancholy. Just
like every technological breakthrough
has unforeseen side effects.”
The future ain’t what it
used to be
Úlfur has long been interested in old sci-
ence fiction—prior generations’ articula-
tions of what the future might be like. I
wonder if, as we slowly pass iconic sci-fi
dates—1984, 2001, and now the October
2015 of ‘Back To The Future II’—retrofu-
turism becomes melancholic by nature.
These famous utopias, odysseys and dys-
topias are not how our world turned out.
We still have no flying cars.
“We’re now experiencing a complete-
ly technological society, but it works in
a completely different way than anyone
imagined,” agrees Úlfur. “When you’re
imagining some future terror or enter-
taining idealistic ideas about a future so-
ciety, you can never imagine how random
it will be, and how it will feed into a mass
culture. Think about all the amazing
computers we have that are working on
such small and silly little things… that’s
actually something else I’m interested in.
The emotions of machines. We already
have a very complicated emotional rela-
tionship with the gadgets and technolo-
gies and algorithms around us. The ques-
tion I have, although we tell ourselves it’s
silly, is: What are the machines experi-
encing? Do they have emotions? Are they
being done justice, terminally relegated
to the giving end of the relationship?”
Metal machine music
With this in mind, Úlfur has been work-
ing on giving computers a more fulfilling
role. His “Infinite String Quartet”—un-
veiled during DesignMarch earlier in
2015—allowed users to spontaneously
compose music by moving different co-
loured blobs around a 3D grid.
“I wanted to make avant-garde com-
position an experience for anyone, using
this interface,” he says. “People from any
musical background could really get into
some of those elements without even
thinking about it. They got to experience
this music without the framework of go-
ing to a serious classical music concert.
With ‘The Aristókrasía Project’ I’m prob-
ably doing it the other way around. The
music is fairly accessible, and I allowed
myself to become emotional—even tacky,
at times. I tried to do it with my heart,
and with honesty. By doing that, I crossed
some boundaries. I decided not to think
about if I was making pop, or classical, or
avant-garde, or a film score.”
The results became all of those
things, and more. “There’s a whole wave
of these crossover projects happening
now,” enthuses Úlfur. “The string quartet
that plays with me work on such a diverse
range of projects—they’re busy classical
musicians, but they’re also working with
everything from Ben Frost noise pieces to
complete pop music, and they’re leading
players in scholarly avant-garde music.
In this project, I mix bold synth sound-
scapes with that world. Some of these
songs are completely over the top—even
I think that. And because they are, I feel
a certain kind of freedom. I don’t have
to worry about being cool, or being cor-
rect. It’s serious work… but it also comes
across as a little naive maybe. In a good
way.”

KÓP-PNX
Like everything else, punk came late to
Iceland. In the very late ‘70s, a small scene
had formed in Kópavogur, converging
around a band called Fræbbblarnir (still
going strong!). As legend has it, Iceland’s
very first punk was one Eimear Ron
Benediktsson, later of the Sugarcubes.
The famous Björk was also around at
the time, along with a young mayor-to-
be called Jón Gnarr. As the Smekkleysa
crew were busy forming their plans for
eventual world domination, Bubbi spent
most of the preceding decade as an er-
rant worker. As the punks inflated their
bubble, Bubbi worked at a Reykjavík fish-
ery called Ísbjörninn (“The Polar Bear”),
where he laboured alongside the Ameri-
can-born Pollock Brothers.
Bubbi decided to put his savings to-
wards recording an album, and he draft-
ed in the Pollocks to play guitar for the
band that would promote it. This gave
us the seminal album ‘Ísbjarnarblús’, the
legendary band Utangarðsmenn (“The
Outsiders”) and an entire sub-genre
called “Gúanó-rokk” (unlike most of the
rest of the world, people in the Westfjords
use “gúanó” to refer to fish innards rather
than bird shit). Despite being almost a
decade older than the upcoming genera-
tion of punks, and playing a loud form of
blues-rock rather than pure punk, Utan-
garðsmenn’s proletarian authenticity
quickly conquered the punk scene and
turned it into a national phenomenon.
From addict to acoustic
Utangarðsmenn’s first album, ‘Geislav-
irkir’, did equally well, spawning a Bubbi-
mania across the country. High on their
success, Utangarðsmenn made a failed
attempt to conquer Scandinavia before
promptly breaking up. By the time direc-
tor Friðrik Þór Friðriksson had started
filming his legendary documentary on
Iceland’s punk scene, ‘Rokk í Reykjavik’,
Bubbi had formed a new group, Ego. Ice-
land’s #1 star wound up hogged the lion’s
share of the screentime, despite being up-
staged by a teenaged Björk on the poster.
Ego eventually dissolved, but Bubbi’s
success-train kept-a-rolling. So he Bubbi
formed a new rock band, Das Kapital,
did mountains of cocaine, tried his luck
in Hollywood, did lots more cocaine.
Things turned bad, and when simply
applying more cocaine didn’t make any-
thing better, Bubbi headed home for the
mandatory rehab stint. Through it all,
he remained insanely popular. Indeed,
his first post-rehab album, the acoustic
‘Kona’ (“Woman”) from 1985, became his
biggest selling work to date.
Bubbi’s long reign
For the rest of the ‘80s, Bubbi was the
undisputed king of Icelandic rock ‘n’ roll.
His albums were the biggest sellers every
Christmas, the go-to gift for folks who
didn’t know what to get someone. He
mostly abandoned his wild man image,
slowly assuming the role of “thoughtful
troubadour,” tirelessly touring the coun-
try, singing sad songs about the common
man’s plight. In 1990, his biography was
Iceland’s best selling book, while his al-
bum ‘Sögur af landi’ (“Stories From The
Countryside”) was the island’s best sell-
ing album.
Bubbi reigned supreme.
He retained his remarkable hold
on the spotlight, always managing to
refresh the public’s interest by doing
stuff like “travelling to Cuba to record a
Latin-infused album” and “assembling
a supergroup of old Icelandic pop stars.”
The old fox. Fearing hip hop would in-
vade Iceland and knock him down, Bubbi
even took to donning an “X” inscribed
baseball cap and recording a hip hop in-
fluenced album (seriously).
It kept working, too.
Since the ‘90s, Bubbi has lived quite
the life. He’s been a reality TV show pan-
ellist. He had his own reality TV show.
He married a beauty queen. Released a
bunch of albums. Fished. Wrote songs.
Changed his mind, frequently and loudly.
Forever reinventing himself, forever
keeping Icelanders engaged, and enter-
tained. Forever mirroring the national
consciousness, for good and bad.
Bubbi is playing Airwaves this year,
offering yet another iteration of him-
self. He is now Metal Bubbi, who per-
forms metal versions of his hits backed
by a tough looking bunch of metalheads
(they’re called Dimma, and they’re one of
Iceland’s most popular rock bands at the
moment).
Go check him out. He is, at the very
least, guaranteed to entertain.
Smartly dressed, long-bearded, bespectacled Icelandic com-
poser Úlfur Eldjarn bustles into Harpa’s cafe, dodging cus-
tomers and pushing a trolley piled high with flight cases and
topped with a glittering silver snare drum. He’s in a rush, and
stops to catch his breath, grinning mischievously as he notices
the easy-listening muzak playing over the sound system. “I feel
like I’m in an airport,” he smiles.
If tasked with introducing foreigners to Bubbi Morthens, your
average rockist Icelander might attempt to describe him as
“the Bruce Springsteen of Iceland” That, however, would be a
gross understatement. If you wanted to somewhat accurately
relate Bubbi’s stature in Icelandic culture to an outsider, you’d
have to throw both Johnny Rotten and Simon Cowell into the
mix—you should probably add a dash of Gene Simmons and a
sprinkling of Burt Reynolds for good measure. And it all started
with punk rock.
W O R D S BY J O H N R O G ER S
W O R D S BY VA LU R G U N N A R S S O NÚlfur
Eldjárn
Plays Gamla Bíó On Friday
November 6th at 22:30
Meet Bubbi, Iceland’s
Chameleon King Of
Rock’n’Roll
“I allowed myself to become
emotional in this project—
even tacky, at times. I tried
to do it with my heart, and
with honesty. And by doing
that, I crossed some bound-
aries.”