Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2016, Qupperneq 32

Samaris - 'Black Lights'
Words JOHN ROGERS Photo COLM O HERLIHY
LET’S
TACO
‘BOUT IT
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Certificate of Excellence
——— 2015 ———
Samaris are one of the bright
lights of the Reykjavík music
scene. Famed for 90s-inflected
breaks, sonorous clarinet and
the intimate, breathy vocals of
singer Jófríður Ákadóttir, their
third (and best) album, ‘Black
Lights’, sees them picking up the
BPM and transitioning from the
Icelandic language into English.
Here are Jófríður’s thoughts on
the new LP.
Wanted 2 Say
Oh, what a tune! I remember the
day Doddi sent this one to me. I
immediately recorded demo vocals
and kept humming the “wanted to
say” line… when it came to writing
the lyrics, I couldn’t get it out of my
head, so we decided to stick with it.
It’s a mixture of wanting to protect,
preserve and appreciate nature,
and joking about singing in Eng-
lish, and singing like Björk.
Black Lights
The working title for this one was
“Nofríður” for a long time, because
I wasn’t in the studio when the
beat and chords were laid down,
and the guys replaced vocals with
Doddi singing into a vocoder. We
were so obsessed with the chords
we would listen to it on a loop for
hours. That’s why it’s still six min-
utes… the first version was actually
about twenty.
Gradient Sky
This is the most sensual track of
the album. It’s an unusual man-
tra—it’s structured as if you’re des-
perately holding onto something
you can’t stop repeating. But all
things change, like a gradient sky.
T3MPO
This is one of those remix back-
and-forth songs. We’d made some-
thing, recorded something, and the
next thing you know, Doddi had
completely changed it! I think, for
me, "T3MPO" is our ultimate 90s
anthem… a tribute to a musical era
we more or less missed.
I Will
When we started making this al-
bum we went to Berlin, rented an
Airbnb flat and borrowed some
speakers from a friend. We wrote
a bunch of songs there, none of
which made it to the album—ex-
cept for a high-pitched sample of
my voice crying “I WILL” in a very
dramatic way. That became the
core element of this song.
R4VIN
This is one of my favourites from
the album. I’m a sucker for long,
slightly complicated and busy
melodies. I had to fight, and com-
promise a bit, to keep it in the track
list. The lyrics are this beautiful
and pointless high—like, you can
just listen and decide for yourself,
but it’s inspired by how I felt living
in Reykjavík that summer. Every-
one was so high up in the sky.
3y3
This one was mostly composed by
Doddi. He did such a beautiful job.
When he showed us the demo, we
loved it, but we had a hard time fig-
uring out how we could add some-
thing to it. In the end, it was more
or less some whispering, written
and recorded in the last recording
session with Oculus in December.
T4ngled
This is one for the girls! We had
been listening to so much RnB in
the car when we were touring the
year before, we had to have a go at
making our own tribute. The melo-
dies were all played live in Hljódriti
and we got some help from the su-
per-talented producer Andri Dagur
from Gervisykur.
In Deep
This is one of Doddi’s remixes. I
think we’re just gonna make tracks
like this in the future. Dancefloor
stuff! All the clarinets were record-
ed in the staircase. It just sounded
better somehow. Don’t listen to
what people tell you about the
best mic in the room or preamp or
whatever. They create a system to
rely on so they don’t have to be cre-
ative and spontaneous. Have fun,
and trust your guts! Cool is only
ever what you say it is!
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