Reykjavík Grapevine - Jun 2023, Page 27

27 Music
Filthy Interview Knife Play
And DIY
Meet the Esoteric Queens from Svartþoka
Track By Track It’s Always Nice
To Be Wanted
Sara Flindt searches for home
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WORDS Francesca Stoppani
IMAGE Einar Jarl Björgvinsson
For the third edition of the
Filthy Interview series, we are joined
by two members of occult-inspired
metal band Svartþoka: Ólöf, who
supplies the band with vocals,
theremin and synths; and Dia, who
serves as the Svartþoka’s screaming
guitarist and has fun using objects
– like knives – to hit the strings.
FS How did Svartþoka come
to be?
Ó The band was born out of
a drunken conversation in 2020
in the Hard Rock Café basement
here in Reykjavík, where we decided
that it was time to start this journey
through darkness. It took us a year
to get our act together, but once
we did, things took off quickly. We
are very DIY and do everything our-
selves, from recording and mixing
our music to making our own mer-
chandise.
D Svartþoka has basically
become an entity in and of itself,
a triple-headed beast that works
through us.
FS What is the inspiration behind
your music?
D Svartþoka – the densest,
blackest fog – represents the con-
cept of complete darkness and al-
most sticky obscurity. We draw inspi-
ration from occultism and esoteric
practices and incorporate rituals and
folk beliefs into our performances.
Ó We draw heavily from
Icelandic folk tales, particularly
those that deal with darkness and
the unknown. We seek to embody
these themes through our per-
formances and create a mood that
transports the audience.
FS You conduct rituals during
your performances; can you
tell us more about that?
D The rituals on stage are about
particular events and our inner voice.
We feel that going on stage and
expressing ourselves in front of
people is a ritual in itself. We let out
the ghosts from the past and em-
body their memory.
FS How does DIY and art factor
into your process?
Ó We’re both visual artists and
we incorporate that into our perfor-
mances and merchandise. We’ve
been hand-painting our merch and
Dia designed the band’s logo.
D Art is an important part of
the process for us. We’re planning
to make costumes for the shows.
I am also a tattoo artist, so perhaps
a matching tattoo soon?
FS You’re playing the Ascension
festival soon; who are you
looking forward to seeing?
Ó I’m really excited to see Hekla,
Kælan Mikla, Múr and Misþyrming.
Our performance at Ascension festi-
val will be very special as well. We will
perform a new song that we’ve never
played before. It will be a lot more
dramatic than the previous ones.
Catch Svartþoka’s performance at
the Ascension festival taking place
at Gaukurinn on May 21, and a Sum-
mer Solstice show at Gaukurinn on
June 21. Post-performance crawling
fog assured!
WORDS Sara Flindt
IMAGE Janosch Bela Kratz
Danish-born, Iceland-
based artist Sara Flindt takes
us through her most recent EP.
Having previously worked under the
moniker ZAAR, Sara joined fellow
musicians Salóme Katrín and Rakel
Sigurðardóttir to produce the 2022
split album While We Wait. The
album received a 2023 Iceland
Music Awards nomination.
Sara released her debut album
under her given name, It’s Always
Nice To Be Wanted, on May 5.
A cross two countries, four
years, six living arrangements and
nine hairstyles, I’ve been trying to
figure out what it means to belong
somewhere. Each track of It’s
Always Nice To Be Wanted is made
in a place that I called home at
some point, re corded with only the
objects and instruments from that
space.
DON’T LOOK BACK,
CARRY ON
Sound artist Francisco López talks
about field recordings as “a creative
way of interacting with reality, rather
than representing reality.” In this
way, they’re not so different from
memories. Remembered conver-
sations melt into the cello and
the flute, fragile and intimate. The
voices of this track grew and di-
vided like little microbes as I clipped
and nudged them into place – the
small est changes in timing changed
meaning. In the demo, the rain
was recorded from my bedroom
in Vestur bær. But over time, the
memory outgrew that recording.
I had to find a new one.
BLUE MOUNTAIN
Coming back from the Westfjords,
stopping for burgers in Hólmavík,
my friends taught me an Icelandic
proverb: “Fjarlægðin gerir fjöllin blá.”
Proverbs are the sound of thoughts
echoing through time. Here I’m
singing to the mountains across
a valley; the echo is a shepherd’s
song, a call back to safety.
IS IT TOO LATE TO
COME HOME
I was complaining one day to my
friend Áslaug Magnúsdóttir, who
also produced this track, about how
I couldn’t fully express my heart
through my vocals. She advised
me to just record directly into the
computer mic. I did. I was pretty
vulnerable, on a couch in Nuuk,
feeling far away from home. My dear
friends Salóme Katrín, RAKEL and
Sandrayati sing back to me through
the computer.
IN BETWEEN THE CRACKS
Early in the project, I began re-
cording people to discover how
they understood home. Eventually
the talks felt less like one-on-one
interactions and more like a larger
conversation happening around me,
the voices speaking directly to each
other. But they spoke in the logic
of dreams.
ORGANIZE
(IANTBW VERSION)
This track feels like the kind of
practical advice you might get from
a mother. But organising isn’t about
order, it’s about creating and for-
getting. This track exists in many
versions: I began shaping this
version in 2019 with my dear friends
and co-producers Jonathan Jull
Ludvigsen and Bjarke Amdrup.
Another version lives on last year’s
split album While We Wait with
RAKEL and Salóme Katrín.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE
TO BE WANTED
This song came to me when I was
at a residency in 2019 alone. The
chorus is recorded on an electric
organ in the living room of one of
the six places I called home during
the development of the EP. I couldn’t
afford a string orchestra, so I used
my pedalboard and my voice
to create vocal-strings – the sort
of transformation that happens at
dawn, suspended between dreams
and actions.