Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.08.2019, Side 40

Queen, Bach,
Zen And Metal
A few of Skaði Þórðardóttir’s favourite things
Words: Andie Fontaine Photo: Art Bicnick
Musician
Follow Skaði at skadi.bandcamp.
com, and hear her debut EP at
falkworld.bandcamp.com
Skaði Þórðardóttir is a musician
and visual artist who has been
making serious waves in Iceland’s
alternative music scene and gain-
ing growing positive attention
abroad. She is also trans, unabash-
edly queer, and continues to wow
crowds with her explosively ener-
getic performance style. We spoke a
bit with her about what has helped
make her the artist she is today.
Bulldozer flowers
and Duran Duran
One of my first memories is of
being drawn into a painting. My
mother tells me there was this
painting of some flowers, and one
of those flowers looked like a bull-
dozer to me, so I was always point-
ing it out and saying, "That's not
a flower; it's a bulldozer." I think
in many ways how I view cre-
ativity is seeing something that
is, but also seeing the possibility
of it being something else. You
can arrange the cutlery on your
table into a fortress, making the
forks charge the knives, or may-
be the dishes are going to go for
a dance. Later, this included get-
ting together with friends, pick-
ing up some pieces of wood and
pretending they were instruments
and we were Duran Duran. It's
seeing everything as something
and creating what I wanted to be.
From Queen to Bach
Rock and metal was always very
appealing to me. My first favourite
artist, possibly influenced by my
older brother, was Queen, which
will always be one of my favourite
bands. Then came The Clash, Deep
Purple, Uriah Heep. I also picked
up classical music early on. My
parents had a Best
Of classical com-
posers album, and
from that I start-
ed listening to a
lot of Beethoven,
Wagner, Handel
a n d B a c h .
Death metal, the
gateway to dance
Then came death
metal—bands like
Obituary, Sepul-
tura—which I still listen to a lot at
the gym. My gym playlist usually
has one or two Sepultura songs.
Through death metal, I came into
the industrial scene; KMFDM,
Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Skin-
ny Puppy, Front 242, and all that
kind of metal merged with elec-
tronica. That opened up a whole
pathway into electronic and dance
music, especially with The Prod-
igy merging dance music with
rock. That was like heroin for me.
Balkan magic
There was one movie that opened
me up to one of my favourite music
styles, Balkan folk. “Underground”
is still one of my favourite mov-
ies of all time, because you laugh,
you cry, it's a very dramatic story
placed within the horrors of war,
but still there's humour. It's such
a wonderful movie. I like all the
work of Emir Kusturica, and Go-
ran Bregović remains
one of my favourite
composers. I really
enjoy the energy of
Balkan music, even if
I'm not sure it makes
its way into my music.
Z en a nd t he
art of being yourself
W hen I went into
recovery, I became
very spiritual, and
starting reading a lot
about Taoism and Zen. There was
one story from Zen, that concludes,
“instead of looking at the finger of
the master, looking at where they
are pointing.” I take this to mean
work from your passion rather
than copy what you like. Allow
art and what you like to influence
you, but then go on and create.
40The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13— 2019Making Of An Artist
How does one become a Skaði? Read on, dear reader, read on....
“Instead of
looking at the
finger of the
master, looking
at where they
are pointing.”