Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.10.2017, Side 25

I felt bad while making it. And it
came out cool, but I got sick of being
serious.”
She says that like many, she’s
faced depression, searching for
something to live for. For her, the
meaning of life turned out to be
counterintuitive. “I just think the
world is a bit silly,” she explains. “It’s
horrible, and if you think about all
the bad stuff, you can just curl up in
the fetal position. There’s a sentence
I live by, something my dad told me:
‘Steinunn, everything’s good and
nothing matters!’ I’ve come to learn
that nothing matters. The world
could explode and nobody would no-
tice. Some may think this is a nega-
tive perspective, but it was incred-
ibly freeing for me to realize this.
These are all meaningless things,
and the most meaningless is art.”
Beautiful, expensive
shoes
This attitude, which would at one
point in history have been described
as nihilistic, is life-affirming to
Steinunn. And one can understand
where she’s coming from. On social
media, the constant
reminders of the
world’s ills can take
their toll on a person.
“You can think
that humanity is horrible; we’re de-
stroying the earth and we should
die,” Steinunn says. “Humanity
is a cancer on the planet. But just
imagine, without humanity, there
would be no one to watch the sun
rise and think ‘Wow, beautiful sun-
rise.’ Humans will pick up rocks and
bang them together to make music
and love it. We do pointless and de-
structive things to the world. But
we also enjoy it and experience it.
It’s like buying beautiful, expensive
shoes, but not wanting to use them
and dance in them. Put-
ting them in a shoebox,
on top of the wardrobe,
covered by a blanket.
But then there’s no one
to appreciate them. Just
like the Earth without
humanity!”
A whole world
to explore
Steinunn’s new album,
‘Atlantis,’ is being final-
ized, to be released in
the new year. During a
terrible bout of pneu-
monia, which kept her
indoors for more than
two months, she had
nothing to do but study
up on sound design. “I
can tell you one secret,” Steinunn
whispers. “The whole album is
made from something silly. Every
sound is goofy, funny or silly. Some
of the drums are just
a sample of a barking
dog. The lyrics have
ridiculous things, a
golden boar living
in a puddle of mud, a drunk dog in
a garbage can. Everything sounds
stupid on its own. But when it comes
together, it just sounds like a regular
song.”
Accompanying the album will be
a video game, which, like everything
else, is designed by Steinunn her-
self, albeit with help from friend and
programmer Þórður Hermannsson.
“The game is like a music video that
you control,” she explains. “Ever
since I was little I wanted to cre-
ate a whole world that you can ex-
plore. Each level is
one song. You’re
walking through
the song, which
is spread out over
the level and you
assemble it in
your own way. At
Iceland Airwaves,
you can get to
know three songs
from my album by
playing the game
at Mengi or at Bíó
Paradís on a big
movie screen.”
Her live shows
are what forge the
strongest connec-
tion Steinunn has
with her audience.
“With videos, you
don’t connect with the response,
whether it’s good or bad,” she says.
“I’ve had terrible YouTube com-
ments, such as ‘you’re the worst DJ
in the world’ and ‘you need to kill
yourself,’—stuff like that. But it
doesn’t fully reach you because it’s
just on the internet. Whereas at a
concert, you’re with everyone, feel-
ing how they look at you. You can
talk to the audience between songs.
All of a sudden, somebody’s danc-
ing and you think ‘yeah, this beat,
it works!’ You have a conversation
with the room, a fun living relation-
ship. At the concert, nobody’s saying
directly ‘you’re good’ or “‘you suck,’
but you feel the waves.”
25The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 19 — 2017
gpv.is/culture
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