Reykjavík Grapevine - Feb 2022, Page 18

The Quiet Men
Hu!ar unassumin!ly assume the title of “Iceland’s Most Unassumin! Band”
Musical duo Hugar have been a creative
partnership for 10 years now, a fact that
seems to take both individuals in ques-
tion—Bergur !órisson and Pétur Jóns-
son—by surprise.
“Time flies! I’m quite shocked,” says
Pétur, when reminded. “Should we start
to plan an anniversary party or some-
thing?”
Other artists might have already
booked the venue, ordered a three-tier
cake and hit Vínbú"in for a few cases
of Moët. But that’s not the style of
Iceland’s most unassuming band
Looking back
Bergur and Pétur go back much further
than those 10 years. Their musical
education started at school in their
hometown of Seltjarnarnes, where
Bergur took up the trombone and Pétur
picked up a guitar. This brought them
into contact with renowned musician
Helgi Jónsson, who became trombone
and guitar teacher to the two of them.
Back in 2014, as Hugar started to
evolve into a pair of talented multi-
instrumentalists, Helgi entrusted
them with his studio while he went on
holiday. They called their friend Ólafur
Arnalds, (who was drumming in hard-
core bands at the time), and seized the
opportunity to lay down their burgeon-
ing musical ideas. But having eventu-
ally recorded enough for an album, the
question was: “Erm… now what?”
“We didn’t plan to make an album
or anything, but it seemed OK so we
gave it away for free online,” says Pétur.
“We had a download counter on the
website,” Bergur adds, “and we made
a goal. If 10 people that we didn’t know
downloaded it, we’d be super happy. It
went into the hundreds of thousands.”
Eight years on, the tracks compris-
ing Hugar’s eponymously titled debut
album have now received more than 48
million plays between them on Spotify
alone.
Venturing forth
Hugar’s first tentative forays into the
live arena took a while, and were few
and far between. “When the album was
a year old, we played our first show,”
Pétur recalls. “It was
at Kex. We had never
thought of the album
being performed live,
but we got our friends
to play; string quartet,
full band with a drum-
mer and everything. It
was a really fun expe-
rience, but that was
our only show until we
played another, two
years later, in Poland.”
When it came to
recording their second
album, Bergur and Pétur
also chose their own relaxed timeframe
and ‘Var"a’ eventually emerged in 2019,
five years after its predecessor. But at
least this time the album was planned;
they even made it possible for people
to pay for it, by signing to Sony Music
Masterworks. That same year Hugar
scored a film—'The Vasulka Effect’—
then two years later released a record
inspired by Icelandic folk songs that
had been rescued from obscurity.
Looking out for the old folk
That release—a five-track EP called
‘!jó"lög / Folk Songs‘—was inspired by
‘Íslenzk !jó"lög‘, an early 20th-century
compendium of Icelandic folk music
apparently financed by Danish brewer
Carlsberg. “This guy just went to every
farm and collected the songs for his
book, and now you can find all these
gems which are a part of our culture,“
explains Pétur. “Everything was just
there for someone to
find, and it has now
been passed on to later
generations.”
“The book is
basically just melo-
dies with lyrics,” adds
Bergur. “So we made
our own versions. You
know, some people have
the misconception that
there was no music
here in Iceland because
they didn't have a lot of
instruments. But there
was definitely a lot of
music happening; you can just feel it in
this book.”
“We tried to encapsulate the spirit of
the lyrics sonically,” Pétur says, “and we
found that translated really well to what
we do. So we are hoping to do more,
because there are a lot of those songs.”
North Atlantic Rift
But before turning their attention to
any further cultural preservation proj-
ects, there was a new Hugar album to
coax into existence. ‘Rift’, which came
out in January 2022, is a remarkable
work of fluid musicality: expansive,
lush and mesmerising.
The title refers broadly to the
concept of division, as Bergur explains:
“In Iceland, you are on the meeting of
these two tectonic plates which are
growing apart. And you can definitely
feel it in the volcanoes and the geysirs,
and the greenhouses where they can
grow bananas. Basically, the whole
island comes from that motion; those
eruptions that made a country. So the
creation of a rift gives the opportunity
for something new.”
Although Hugar decided on the
album’s title and concept before the
coronavirus arrived, ‘Rift’ unsurpris-
ingly reflects pandemic times. Pétur
wonders where the chasms that have
recently opened up in our social fabric
will lead: “In terms of society, doesn’t
every change follow a big disaster, or a
big rift?”
Let’s hope that society holds together
long enough for Hugar to continue—
unassumingly—through at least one
more decade. Then perhaps we can have
another catch-up to see what they’ve
been up to, and possibly even have that
anniversary party. We’ll bring the cake.
You can buy a vinyl copy of albums by
Hugar at shop.grapevine.is
18The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02— 2022
gpv.is/music
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Music
Words:
John Pearson
Photo:
Anna Magg!
“We didn’t
plan to make
an album or
anything, but
it seemed OK
so we gave it
away for free”