Reykjavík Grapevine - ágú. 2020, Blaðsíða 13

13 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 06— 2020
These years saw Biggi and Legó
journey in different musical direc-
tions. Legó wanted to move closer to
his disco and soul roots, while Biggi,
in his own words, wanted to explore
Depeche Mode-influenced ambient
breaks.
Nonetheless, ‘This Is Normal’ was
released in April 1999. “Ladyshave” was
supposed to be the breakthrough hit,
but due to an error in the 4AD label
offices, not enough copies were sent
out of the single to stores, so it was
sold out early in the week. Due to this,
the track only hit number 42 on the
U.K. charts so they missed Top Of The
Pops and BBC Radio 1 playlisting.
It was the band’s first disappoint-
ment. While the track did have some
success in ads among other things,
the cost had been high—jobs had been
quit, and sacrifices made for some-
thing that never panned out. Magnús
Jónsson and Hafdís Huld left the band
completely and Legó briefly stepped
back from the project. Matters were
coming to a head.
IV. Gus Gus
vs T-World
The band was in disarray. 4AD went
bankrupt, and was subsequently taken
over by Beggars Banquet. Reorgansing,
GusGus' advance payments were cut,
so the band left the label. In April
2000, just before leaving, they released
another very different album.
‘Gus Gus vs T-World’ was a compi-
lation of early T-World tracks, written
and produced by Legó and Biggi before
the formation of GusGus. The album
was pushed by Daníel, who felt that it
was a shame not to release these clas-
sics. He helped select the tracks for the
album, even naming some previously
untitled numbers (since the band was
called T-World, the blank tracks were
named after teas, i.e. “Earl Gray”).
But with crisis came opportunity.
Palm Pictures, a company formed by
Island Records founder Chris Black-
well, offered the band, as the duo
puts it, a “Million Dollar Deal.” The
caveat? Daníel could not do any other
work except GusGus. Daníel promptly
refused.
Now, the band was in serious debt by
this point—in fact, Daníel only made
the final payment for the 4AD-era
debts last year—so his refusal was not
popular with his bandmates. The final
straw came when Daníel was putting
together a soundtrack for a perfor-
mance by the Iceland Dance Company.
Biggi Veira, who was producing the
project, lost interest and so Daníel had
to call in another one to help.
In response, Daníel quit GusGus.
Biggi, sitting here in 2020, is remark-
ably honest about his role in the situ-
ation and his difficulty working with
others at that time. He uses harsh
language to describe how stubborn he
had been in situations, such as this,
where diplomacy would have been
more appropriate.
The future of Gusgus was once more
up-in-the-air.
Following the ‘Gus Gus vs. T-World’
album, an offer came in to do an
instrumental tour. Biggi and Stephan
Stephensen, by now the only remain-
ing GusGus members, accepted and
played a number of French festivals. On
the final night of the tour, all the bands
joined GusGus on stage for an impro-
visational session featuring French
rappers and even a horn section. This
glorious cacophony rejuvenated the
duo. Once again they saw a future for
GusGus.
Inspired, they came home and
asked Maggi Legó to rejoin. The search
was on for a new singer. At the time,
Stephan and Legó had been perform-
ing as a DJ duo. At a gig in Kaffibarinn,
a girl came over and asked if she could
MC with them. They said yes. She tore
the roof off the house. Her name was
Ur#ur Hákonardóttir.
V. Attention
While working on their next album,
‘Attention’, Stephan stepped up as the
driving force behind the band. In fact,
Biggi gives most of the credit for this
release to him. Alone at the studio,
Stephan would make beats, with Biggi
dropping in to add synths, hooks, and
shaping up the mix. The stakes were
lower and thus, things were fun again.
Around half the tracks on the album
would be initiated by Stephan.
Stephen had previously been DJ-ing
under the moniker Alfred More, or
A.More, but around this time, he
adopted a new name, President Bongo.
With this new identity, he began to
move from behind the machines to the
front of the stage, acting as hype man
and singer alongside Ur#ur.
Biggi, meanwhile, was still burned
out after the excesses of the 4AD era,
and was happy to let Stephan take
the reins for a bit. Biggi directed the
recordings, Stephan had the run of the
band outside the studio. “Steph held
the act together, he made it happen,”
Biggi admits. Daníel goes even further
with his praise. “For a period, he kept
the band alive,” he says. In a surprise
twist, A track from an older session
with Daníel also went on the album.
Returning to the Underwater label,
the group released ‘Attention’ in 2002.
The main single, “David,” became a
club hit across Europe, hitting #1 in
Germany. GusGus was back.
VI. Forever.
Underwater established Germany as
the band’s new base of popularity. But
the office enthusiasm for cocaine that
had thwarted T-World’s relationship
with the label was still present, and so
the band promptly left the label after
‘Attention’ came out.
It was during this era that GusGus
grew as a live act, becoming the most
popular band in Iceland and headlining
the Iceland Airwaves festival year after
year.
During this period, Biggi essentially
dropped out of the group and started
working as a programmer at a bank.
Focused on his job, he put off work-
ing on the next GusGus album, much
to the dismay of Stephan and Ur#ur.
Relations between Stephan and Biggi
were beginning to deteriorate, and
while Daníel describes the duo’s rela-
tionship in the studio as, “all love and
lotion,” outside it, and especially on
tour, territorial tensions were rife. The
two would get into heated arguments
on the tour bus, usually ending with
them hugging and crying.
They could never settle the disputes
though. As Biggi had trained Stephan,
he struggled to view him as an equal.
Daníel refers to this as an “Obi Wan
Kenobi situation.” Biggi describes
having trouble accepting Stephan’s
suggestions to change things that
Biggi had created. “Biggi’s not an alpha
dog, he’s a tyrant,” Daníel jokes. Biggi
laughs. “I compromise, but really
unwillingly, and people never hear the
end of it”. That said, throughout the
interview, you can sense that Biggi
has been looking inward and coming
to grips with this difficult history. He
seems to be growing.
Ur#ur, meanwhile, kept getting
stuck in the middle of this tense
dynamic and at the start of 2008, she
left the band. That said, her voice
dominated the album ‘Forever,’ which
was released in the midst of all the
drama.
VII. 24/7
Daníel re-entered the picture post-
’Forever’, which had featured a remix
of “Moss,” from his solo album. He
started appearing with them onstage
again—to uproarious applause from
the audience—and eventually decided
to rejoin GusGus.
They planned to showcase new
tracks on tour during the summer of
2008, with Ásta Sveinsdóttir in place
of Ur#ur, but the deadline came and
went and the tracks were nowhere near
finished. Without a plan, they decided
to work out the album live on stage.
Both Daníel and Biggi remember
the terror they felt going onstage for
the first time without any map. “It
was also thrilling though,” Daníel says.
“Doing a great show even though we
never knew where the night was going
to take us.”
Slowly, the album started taking
shape, and by their Airwaves gig in
October, the tracks had some form.
Daníel recalls Florence from Florence
& The Machine throwing herself on her
knees after their show in admiration.
“We realised when we walked off that
stage that we were going to do things
differently,” Biggi says. “We were going
to record this album in the same way as
we did it live”.
The reunited trio—Biggi, Stephan
and Daníel—set up a studio in Flat-
eyri for two weeks. They stayed in a
summer cabin and spent more time
on meal preparations and dressing up
than on music. Seriously, every day
they would put on suits.
They rented a giant, if somewhat
vintage sound system and recreated
the show in its entirety four times
during in just one week, afterwards
editing the recordings together into
the album ‘24/7.’
The album, which was released
by Kompakt in September, 2009, was
John Grant’s favorite. He later got in
touch with Biggi, and this relationship
snowballed into Biggi producing John’s
second album ‘Pale Green Ghosts.’ And
just like that—big things were once
again on the horizon for GusGus.
VII. Arabian Horse
The ball that started with ‘24/7’, contin-
ued rolling into ‘Arabian Horse.’ The
band started recording in a country-
side cottage. After that, they once
again geographically split into two,
divided between Biggi’s studio and
Stephan’s new studio in Grandi.
Stephan brought in Högni Egilsson,
the Hjaltalín composer and singer, as
a band member and also a roster of
rotating live musicians—one of the
main reasons behind the richness of
the album.
‘Arabian Horse’ came out in 2011
and is by far their most critically
acclaimed release. Biggi was sad that
Kompakt only released two singles off
the album—”Over” and “Deep Inside.”
In Iceland, “Within You” became
a surprise hit, and the title track,
“Arabian Horse” was a underground
sensation in Eastern Europe. The
album found success in new places.
When they toured Russia for the first
time, they were surprised to find that
the whole crowd knew the lyrics to
most of the songs on the album.
In comparison to their last few
albums, it was a relatively drama-free
period for the band.
IX. Mexico
But the peace didn’t last long. Stephan,
now in his solo studio, began veering
off in his own direction. In the middle
of making GusGus’s next effort ‘Mexico,’
he decamped for a three-month sail-
ing trip around the Caribbean. When
he came back, much of the album was
close to finished by Biggi, Högni and
Daníel. It was instantly clear that a rift
had formed between Stephan and Biggi
regarding the sound of the album, and
it ran so deep that the fight ended in
Stephan’s departure. Biggi speaks of
the split in a sombre tone.
Högni, meanwhile, also departed
the group in the midst of the Mexico
tour, citing health reasons.
X. Lies Are
More Flexible
Daníel likens himself at the end of the
Stephan era to the child of divorcing
parents. Starting a new album as a duo
with Biggi was sort of a relief for him—
it seemed simple even.
That said, the album took a long
time. “There was a big gap after
Stephan left,” Daníel explains. “And
maybe there still is.” Musically, the
album dove deeper into Biggi’s new-
wave influences—a journey that had
started with ‘Mexico’’s “Sustain,” a
track which had been one of the final
points of contention between Stephan
and Biggi.
‘Lies Are More Flexible,’ released in
2018, was the result of this new lineup,
and while the duo does admit it was a
strange, short effort, the album was
coherent, featuring strong tracks and
an even stronger sonic direction—a
melange of new-wave and italo disco.
And so, the GusGus—stripped back
to its initial duo line-up—was back in
business.
The future
Upon first listen, there’s no doubt that
the forthcoming album exists in the
same sonic universe as the last one.
That said, it’s clearly the climax of the
story, to which ‘Lies Are More Flexible’
was merely the crescendo. The as-of-
yet-unnamed album is full of hits, joy,
and inventive ideas. For GusGus it’s a
return to form.
Biggi describes their new sound
as being, in part, electronic country.
Daníel objects, suggesting that it’s
more like electronic suburbia. Perhaps
it’s in between, they posit. An indus-
trial area surrounded by cows? A big
factory with grass on one end and meat
on the other? Is it a distant town like
Skagafjör#ur or Raufarhöfn? What
kind of country is it?
They end up agreeing that perhaps
Sau#arkrókur is the best choice. This
devolves into a quibble about the
merits of the proposed final track on
the album. Daníel wants it gone. Biggi
is having none of it so Daníel suggests
naming it “Sau#árkrókur.” Biggi coun-
ters with “Grass In Meat Out.”
Apart from the album, the duo is
also excited about their upcoming 25th
anniversary photo book, compiled by
Réza Kalfane and Dominique Lameule,
which is currently being crowdfunded
on Karolina Fund.
And so you’ve made it to the end of
the GusGus Saga. Of course, there’s no
way to do everyone justice in a mere
two pages and many important people
could not be included. All we can say is
congrats to what is perhaps the most
dramatic band in Iceland for surviving
a quarter of a century. Let’s hope for
another 25 years of good stories.
Maggi Legó
Raxel
Maggi Jóns
Stefán Árni
Ur#ur / Earth
Páll Gar#ars
Photographers:
Sveinn Hei"ar
Alexander Elizarov
Brian Liu
Gassi
Réza Kalfane
Polly Homjakina
Íris Dögg Einarsdóttir
Jónatan Grétarsson
Ari Magg
Nadine Windberg
Brynjar Snær
Dominique Lameule