Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.11.2018, Blaðsíða 20

20 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 20— 2018
Five years ago, Kælan Mikla were
playing twenty minute sets of furi-
ous poetry-punk in the attic at Dillon.
Five months ago, they were jetting
off to London to open for Placebo, at
the request of iconic Cure frontman
Robert Smith. In the years between,
Laufey Soffía (vocals), Margrét Rósa
Dóru-Harrýsdóttir (bass) and Sólveig
Matthildur Kristjánsdóttir (synthe-
sisers) have genuinely grown up in
tandem with their band, evolving
from angst-filled teenagers with a
need to scream, to ambitious and
hard-working musicians. In the last
year, they have exploded into the
worldwide coldwave and goth music
scene, and their dark star is poised to
keep burning.
SHAPING POETICS
Kælan Mikla began around six years
ago, when the girls met in high
school at Reykjavík’s Menntaskóli
við Hamrahlíð college. Sólveig and
Margrét had recently become friends,
when saw a poster announcing a
poetry competition. They decided
to combine Sólveig’s poetic prow-
ess with Margrét’s burgeoning bass
playing abilities and asked Laufey to
join them to enter the contest as a
performance piece. “We went to my
father’s practice studio and we were
just hanging there the whole night
trying out different instruments,”
says Margrét. “Laufey started like
scream-singing. She had never sung
before. I had only played bass alone
in my bedroom when I was totally
emo. Sólveig was a classical flute
player and she just started to play the
drums. It was just all very random. It
was just supposed to be for this one
competition. But then we won the
competition.”
“Then some other people were
interested in hearing more,” Sólveig
continues. “They were asking if we
were a band, asking if we had more
music. And we were like, ‘Sure, let’s
just make some more music. Why
not? It’s fun.’ So we did.”
The three quickly wrote a hand-
ful of songs that they performed
at a performance art event called
Vinnslan, where they decorated an
entire basement with ocean junk they
salvaged from the harbour, dressed
as creepy mermaids, and sold a
dead fish as merch for five hundred
kronur. “Some old ladies came in
when we were playing and they were
like, ‘Ew, what is that? This stinks!’”
Margrét says, as the band laughs. “It
smelled disgusting.”
MYSTICAL POWERS
By this point, they were already
known as Kælan Mikla, the name
they’d chosen to enter the poetry
competition. “Sólveig and I were
sitting at the bar and we were like, ‘It
would be funny to name a band after
a Moomin!’” says Laufey. They opted
for Kælan Mikla—the Icelandic name
for The Lady of the Cold—and it just
stuck. “It was just a joke,” smiles
Laufey. “Sometimes I look at our
name on posters and I laugh.”
The joke somehow took on its own
life force, however, being both a
source of inspiration and a harbin-
ger of their future sound. “She’s so
fierce and such a dreamy character,
with the star shoes and the flying
ice horse, and she’s still so evil,” says
Margrét. “If you look into her eyes,
you freeze. She is this super feminine
cold, kind of evil, mystical power. We
always say that when the three of us
are together, we create Kælan Mikla
as a character.” They channel this
combined feeling of mystical ferocity
into their performances—a feeling,
they say, that they don’t get in day-to-
day life.
RITUAL SPELLS
The three can only describe this
conjoined character as some power-
ful force; a feeling, a connection, or a
sense of telepathic interaction. “It’s
kind of like having a conversation,
or going through feelings that are
only in your mind, and you don’t have
to say anything,” says Margrét. “It’s
like having a conversation with both
Sólveig and Laufey for the hour we play
our set. It sounds really lame, but it’s
like our soul.”
“Sometimes I don’t even remem-
ber playing a set because I’m so deep
in Kælan Mikla,” says Laufey. “I think
we sometimes fall out of reality
completely. I just forget where I am,
and I’m just putting spells on the audi-
ence.”
Their live performances feature
ritualistic, slightly improvised intros
and outros that incorporate dron-
ing bass, vocalized wails and screams,
incense and glitter, and physical move-
ment. The intros allow them to sink
into character, setting the scene and
welcoming the audience, while the
outro (always playing the song “Glim-
mer og Aska,” or “Glitter and Ashes”)
allows them to fully exorcise the feel-
ings of the performance, thank the
audience, and leave Kælan Mikla in the
ether.
GOING SYNTHETIC
“I think the name worked out really
well, because now we’re suddenly in
this coldwave genre,” says Sólveig,
segueing towards the band’s shift
from performance art poetry-punk
to sleek synth-driven dark wave. “It’s
accidental. It really started when my
ex-boyfriend gave me a synthesiser,
like a crappy synth that he wasn’t
using. Then I got a drum machine and
learned how to make just super basic
beats. Later on, I started studying elec-
tronic music and started incorporating
computer production.”
Like many of the original goth
stars—like Siouxsie Sioux, Christian
Death, and Joy Division—Kælan Mikla’s
sound and style wasn’t a calculated
choice, but rather the natural outcome
of their genuine artistic labour. “The
music we started making was never
planned, it happened on its own,” says
Margrét. “It’s just what happened when
we suddenly got a synthesiser.”
This shift in sound was quickly
noticed in the local music scene, pull-
ing in larger crowds to their entranc-
ing ritualistic performances. “I think
we just got so good at playing,” says
Laufey. “We didn’t know what we were
doing at first, but we always know
better and better how to make music.”
RANKING UP
With the addition of synths to their
roster, they wrote the songs “Kalt,”
“Sýnir” and “Óráð,” the first of which
they released a video for made by
Berlin-based videographers Orange
‘Ear.
The video, released in 2015, opened
a floodgate of good fortune. “Suddenly,
Fabrika Records found the song and
asked if they could have it on their vinyl
compilation,” says Sólveig. “We had
been listening to the bands on their
label—Lebanon Hanover, She Past
Away and Selofan—so we just freaked
out. I was always playing them when I
was working at Bravó. Then, a month
later, we asked if they would be inter-
ested in releasing our album.”
The label liked the songs and imme-
diately said yes. The band, however,
delayed the recording process quite
a bit. “We did it super Kælan Mikla-
style and recorded everything in one
month,” Sólveig laughs. “They were
like, ‘We need the material’ and we were
like, ‘Oh, fuck we need to record the
songs!’” They recorded the self-titled
debut album in the garage Sólveig was
living in at the time, behind the shop
Mótorsmiðjan. Finally complete, the
album came out in 2016.
VOYAGE VOYAGE
Around the same time that the band
were contacted by Fabrika Records,
Sólveig realised she had a knack for
booking shows abroad, and the band
started to tour. “We just rented cars
from somewhere and got a friend to
drive, and we did it super DIY,” says
Sólveig. “I think we got a lot of atten-
tion by travelling, because it’s maybe
not usual that small Icelandic bands go
on tours. I think that really helped us.”
Over the course of two years, she
organised three self-managed tours.
They took a toll on the band, and taught
them some valuable lessons, moving
them ever closer to the ultimate goal of
growing through performance. “Those
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