Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.01.2017, Blaðsíða 20

WHY AYIA WON
We’re in the SoundCloud days. An “up-
load” gets your music out there and a
“share” starts to spread the word. It can
be tedious but worthwhile, chipping
away at the music industry like sculp-
tor on a blank block until something
starts to show its form. But that’s not
what happened with aYia.
“aYia came out fully realised,”
one panellist notes. “They came out
and they’ve got tracks, they’ve got
music to talk about, they’ve got a live
show setup. They come out ready to
go, and it’s kind of refreshing.”
aYia released their first single
“Water Plant” through Bedroom
Community, the record label and
collective formed by Valgeir Sig-
urðsson, and the comfy home of
Nico Muhly, Ben Frost and Dan-
iel Bjarnason. The group toured
around Ireland before landing
home for their first Icelandic gig at
the moderately well-known music
festival Iceland Airwaves. Though
sparse (so far they’ve only released
two singles and played a handful of
shows), their music is charged with
a lasting quality that signals
their potential in the
coming year.
point of being intoxicating, inviting
the listener to “sink through a hole,
into a liquid wasteland.” The rhythm
stutters along at a relaxed, languid
pace, punctuated by synth stabs and
soft washes of sound, circled gently by
Ásta’s voice. It’s a pleasingly sparing
arrangement of sound.
“We agreed about making a space
that didn’t exist, but that we wanted
to exist,” explains Ásta. “A place you
can go to, and forget, and just be there
without having to do anything else.
Like that feeling when you are in a
dream, when you lose the sense of
space and time—but it doesn’t feel un-
comfortable to you, because that’s the
reality of that moment. That’s some-
times what I feel like aYia is. You can’t
really grasp it—you have to dive into it
to understand it.” A broad smile steals
over her face. “Yes—like a pool in a
strange dream.”
No words
For all the careful sculpting and in-
stinct that went into creating aYia, its
form is still developing. It’s an inten-
tionally flowing, dynamic, open-end-
ed process, and one that Ásta clearly
enjoys.
“When we were talking about
aYia, we asked: ‘What is aYia? What’s
it about? What is it doing?’” she re-
calls. “And we realised we didn’t really
know—we had to find it ourselves. But
we had a feeling about it. Sometimes
you have a feeling but you don’t have
a word for it yet—but you still feel it.
Then you give it a name, like ‘aYia.’
And then aYia becomes something
that you feel but can’t explain, but it’s
there, in your mouth, on your tongue…
and we’re still trying to find ways to
communicate it.”
“Water Plant,” which came out on
the Bedroom Community sublabel
HVALREKI, already has over 100,000
plays on Spotify, and after a successful
run at the 2016 Iceland Airwaves festi-
val, they’ve already got some exciting
offers in the pipeline. In the mean-
time, aYia continues to slowly find its
form.
“There is a simplicity to it,” fin-
ishes Ásta. “But some might say it’s
more complex to strip layers away and
use just a few elements, and do it really
well, and make it really fragile. When
you put in a lot of elements, you can
hide the actual intention. Sometimes,
simplicity is best. If you want to say
something, you should say it simply
and clearly. Easy does it—the water
ripples if you stir it.”
Handful Of Wind
aYia breeze
into town
Words JOHN ROGERS
In UK English, bands are usually re-
ferred to in the plural, as “they.” But
when it comes to aYia, “it” feels more
appropriate. The band’s sudden ap-
pearance in October 2016 felt like the
arrival of a new entity—or the dis-
covery of a new place—more than the
launch of a project by three individu-
als. It materialised quietly, as if out
of nowhere, the faces of the people
behind the music shrouded beneath
hoods and hidden in shadows. The
presentation felt purposeful, and it
was immediately apparent that aYia
was something with a personality all
of its own.
For Ásta, the individual behind
aYia’s breathy, sibilant vocals, this was
a method of “allowing the sound to be
the thing that’s gathering people.” She
speaks slowly and haltingly at first,
her words gathering momentum as
the ideas form. “It’s not like we didn’t
want people to know who we are, or to
be theatrical and play a role—it’s more
that without our faces and identities at
the front of the stage, it creates space
for something else to come through.
Something that lies behind that.”
Dive into it
Stepping into this new place is an in-
triguing experience. aYia’s debut sin-
gle “Water Plant” is atmospheric to the
A Different Kind
Remembering
Biogen, 1976-2011
Words JÓNAS GUÐMUNDSSON
Five years have passed since Biogen
left us, but his influence is still keenly
felt among Icelandic electronic mu-
sicians. In the early ‘90s, Sigurbjörn
Þorgrímsson was one of the pioneers
of the modern electronic scene as a
member of the old skool hardcore band
Ajax, whose tracks can be heard today
in DJ sets by the IDM king himself,
Aphex Twin. Under his Biogen pseud-
onym he further cemented his repu-
tation as an artist who continuously
pushed the limits.
Biogen was a different kind of mu-
sician, in many ways. He always trav-
elled the road less taken. He’d start his
live sets with fragile and melancholic
ambient to lure people in, then add on
extreme glitches and noises in order
to sift out the ones that came for an
easy fix. It was supposed to be a chal-
lenge—and the audience would be re-
warded in the end. His releases were
not easy to come by. Often he’d sell his
music on Laugavegur—sometimes to
unsuspecting tourists who were in-
trigued by his Viking-like appearance,
or mesmerized by his big blue eyes.
One famous Icelandic music critic
once described one of his albums as
an anti-LP. All laws were broken. There
were no chords, no build-ups and no
Biogen Essential
Tracks
Ajax – “Ruffige”
A monument for the Icelandic rave
era. When released in 1992, it became
an anthem for Icelandic clubgoers.
The music was raw, fast and aggres-
sive—in the spirit of the rave scene
that had recently conquered Britain
and mainland Europe. This track was
a starting point not only for Ajax, but
also for the drum & bass legend Goldie,
who provided the vocals (except for
the gorgeous Lesley Gore sample). IDM
kings Aphex Twin and Squarepusher
have both expressed their love for this
tune—and it still warms the heart of
those who manned the dancefloors in
Tunglið in 1992-1993.
Biogen – “Afloat”
Simple, fragile and beautiful. This track
came out on a 12” in 1998 and showed
how expert a craftsman Biogen re-
ally was. It’s repetitive, yet manages
to evoke emotions that few artists
can pull off. Often this track would
serve as a soundtrack on the German
late-night chill-out television program
‘Space Night’.
Sigur rós
– “Syndir Guðs (Biogen Remix)”
Two musical titans meet. What more
can we say? Jónsi whispers to his lis-
teners to create while Biogen provides
the hypnotic beat. You never knew what
to expect from Biogen and this is a fine
example of his diversity as an artist.
Biogen - “Thanatazone”
Many of us have memories of Bio-
gen doing his “biodance” (trademark
pending) during concerts as his er-
ratic beats and twisted basslines pos-
sessed him onstage. It’s something
different. He called it weirdcore!
Biogen
aYia
20 The Reykjavik Grapevine Music Awards 2016