Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.11.2019, Side 17

Sigfússon, Iceland’s indie stal-
wart who’s bands Seabear and Sin
Fang are both releasing albums
this fall, followed. His set was on
the ambient side, computer based,
flowing, beautiful, trippy.
Jófrí!ur’s, (a.k.a. JFDR) set was
the last one I caught before de-
camping to bed. Starting at mid-
night, the polymath wunderkind
of Icelandic music and chronic
bandstarter whose output belies
her age, took to the stage with her
boyfriend providing accompani-
ment. She served a chilled, more
acoustic take on some of her most
placid music.
Finally a doze
I woke up just before 6:00. Ólöf
was finishing her third set; her
voice had taken on Billie Holiday-
esque qualities. Next up was an
impromptu set by Dísa. I took a
yoga mat and a pillow, placed my-
self directly in front of the biggest
of the gongs that she was playing,
and dozed off again.
I came to in the midst of the
morning yoga session—a musical
collaboration between Ingibjörg
Stefánsdóttir, the organizer of the
yoga portion of the festivities, and
Bar!i. Ingibjörg was a dance-pop
singer in the 90s before she found-
ed a yoga studio. Her vocal perfor-
mance was an entrancing spiri-
tual chant of some sort. I must
say I’ve woken up in worse places.
Drone-created
dimensions
It then came time to journey out
of our drone-cave, onto a sailing
trip around the bay courtesy of
North Sailing. The wind and the
waves offered a contrast to the
womb-like qualities of the festi-
val. The weekend was capped at
the spectacular Geosea Baths in
Húsavík. There, warm and hot
seawater infinity pools lie on the
edge of a small cliff, with a light-
house on one side and surrounded
by mountains. I floated around
in a dizzy state, trying my best to
converse with my fellow travellers,
but mostly residing in the drone-
created adjacent dimension I had
departed only hours ago.
While the festival often felt like
a dry-run of sorts, it was a suc-
cessful one and a welcome addi-
tion to the North’s (and Iceland’s)
annual calendar. The genre of
drone might be difficult to define,
but the Arctic Drone festival man-
aged to distill it into 24-hours—
not through words, or course, but
through differing varieties of no-
rules, no-bounds, no-parameters
ongoing tones.
17The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 20— 2019
JFDR
Melissa auf der Maur
Ingibjörg Stefánsdóttir and cohorts singing into the gong for reverb
Br!kfast
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Bar!i & Nathan
The drone gang, photographed by a drone
A moment of zen