Tag Archives: Iceland

Iceland Airwaves 2022 – Day 3

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We were still fighting off colds, so that forced us into a more chill mindset going into the last day of Airwaves. I made a trip down to Lucky Records around lunchtime to grab all the stuff they were holding for me and spent an hour or so back at hour place removing price stickers and getting all my purchases boxed and arranged for the trip home the following day. Man, this is a lot of stuff! But more on that in the next post.

We were back at Lucky later in the afternoon to see hip hop artist Cell7. This was our third time seeing her, and by far the best. She gave off a relaxed vibe and had some fun with the crowd, who had fun in return. If you haven’t checked out her 2019 release Is Anybody Listening? you need to track it down and give it a go. Her soul-infused style is exactly what we needed on a cold afternoon. In talking about the show later my buddy Ingvar, who has seen her perform way more times than me, he also noted it was the best he’d heard her.

There were some last-minute additions announced to the schedule at the Iceland Airwaves Center and one looked intriguing. PPBB describe themselves as “electro-funk”, and their debut track was titled “Shitballs”. Seemingly in contrast, however, their full name is the Post Performance Blues Band. So what to expect? Who knows, so I’m in!

And… I certainly didn’t expect this. It’s hard to explain the PPBB set. It was a blend of electro beats and performance art and avant garde and lyrics about the sensation of drinking and screaming about loving sorbet and a gold lame outfit and a member zipping herself up in a black bodysuit which included a full face mask then crawling on the floor through the crowd… So in other words, epic. I have no idea how the music comes across without the performance, but they have a few tracks on Spotify and you can be damn sure I will be checking them out.

After a quite home-cooked dinner in our rental apartment, we mustered enough energy for one more foray, walking down to Sirkus to see our friends from Revenge of Calculon play an off-off-venue set. Strolling into the joint it was looking very, very dead, with the band and their friend DJ Sue comprising about half the people in the room. But a few more folks made it down by showtime, including a pair of very well-dressed and very drunk 60+ year old local ladies who seemed to take a particular shine to bassist JC9000, and the guys played as if it was a packed house.

Iceland Airwaves 2022 – Day 2

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After a delicious breakfast of ham and cheese on some amazing rolls from Brauð & Co it was time to hit the mean streets of Reykjavik to do my part in contributing to the local economy by buying as much music as possible. I spent a good 90 minutes flipping through Icelandic titles at Lucky Records, coming away with a substantial stack to be put aside so I can true-up with them at the end of the festival. From there I popped over to Reykjavik Record Shop, where my man Reynir was holding an Icelandic pressing of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy for me, and I also grabbed some electronic weirdness by Pang, the vinyl version of Egill S’ Tonk of the Lawn, and a late 70s rocker by H.L.H. Flokkurinn that I bought exclusively for the motorcycle greaser cover.

My last stop of the afternoon was Pan Thorarensen’s label/store/venue Space Odyssey. Pan is best known for his electronic work as Stereo Hypnosis and as part of Beatmakin Troopa. With Space Odyssey he gives his fellow travellers in the realm of electro-weirdness a place to perform, and also records their live in-stores for super limited edition cassette releases. I picked up the first six in the series last year and since then he’s added another 20 or so titles. I grabbed another seven on this visit, as well as three new 7” lathe cut records and three Stereo Hypnosis CDs. Any time I can support the small label and independent artist, I’m in!

Our first show of the night was the dub reggae set of Omnipus over at Lucky Records. I have a copy of their new record in my stack of stuff to buy over there and I’m looking forward to giving it a listen when we get back home. Per one of the band members they only pressed 200 copies of this, so get it while you can.

Next up was the mighty Revenge of Calculon, the luchadors of electro-sleeze-funk, and I came prepared with my luchador mask and my custom lucha libre track jacket courtesy of Mrs. Life in the Vinyl Lane (see below, with me to the left giving Ingvar a fist bump while the band plays).

I also made my filmmaking debut, as lead luchador Rob asked me to shoot random footage of the show using his fisheye lens GoPro for use in a future music video. I’m confident there will be a Grammy in my future for this! As for the show, it was off the hook as one would expect.

After enjoying a well-earned pizza we headed out into the night, catching russian.girls over at Hurra. The last time we saw a russian.girls performance it was a solo gig at the Mengi art space, restrained and experimental. This time around it was a three-piece with more beats than you can shake a drum machine at. A top-notch show in front of a packed crowd.

The next two artists we saw shall, well, remain nameless. At a festival like Airwaves you often find yourself going into shows blind, and more often than not you see something cool. This time… not so much. So I’m not going to talk crap about performances I didn’t enjoy, because these folks clearly have talent (the were selected to play) and just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

We had a few bands we wanted to see late in the evening, but unfortunately both of us have been hobbled by colds and we simply ran out of steam around 11PM and called it an early night, returning to our apartment to eat the last of the pizza and hang out for a bit. We gotta be rested up for the festival’s final day tomorrow!

Iceland Airwaves 2022 – Day 1

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Has it really been three years since our last trip to Reykjavik for Iceland Airwaves? COVID turned everything into a blur, the last 2.5 years seeming both impossibly long and short at the same time, the weeks, then the seasons, then the years moving along like a smear across the table of life. After returning home from Airwaves in November 2019 I didn’t step on an airplane again for over two years, which is certainly the longest flying drought I’ve had as an adult. So stepping aboard the Icelandair flight from Seattle to Reykjavik the other day was a little strange, but also incredibly comforting, as if a little bit of my life was coming back to me. As an added bonus we get a beautiful display of the northern lights as we passed over Canada, setting the mood and getting us into the right frame of mind.

After checking into our apartment we hit the streets, grabbing coffee and pastries at Reykjavik Roasters as we watched the light of day begin to touch the highest parts of the city, the sun sneaking its way up over the horizon. It was as if we’d never been gone. I was thinking about this the other day – excluding cities I’ve actually lived in, I’m confident I’ve spent more nights in Reykjavik than any other city in the world except Los Angeles, and that’s only because I used to travel to LA so much for business (one year I made 24 separate trips from Seattle to LA).

We caught up with our friend Rob of Revenge of Calculon fame and grabbed lunch, along with a handful of the band’s new 7” Battle-Atomic Disco-Wow! / L.S.P., then opened our festival at my favorite record store in the world, Lucky Records. There we caught up with our friends Oscar and Sarah and were treated to a bump-bump-bumping techno set by Andartak. So good! While there we got the hot tip that our friend and KEXP DJ Kevin Cole was spinning at set over at Smekkleysa, aka Bad Taste Records, serving at the opening for a surprise, intimate show by Apparat Organ Quartet in celebration of their 20-year-old self-titled debut receiving its first ever vinyl release.

We hustled across town to secure our spots. The show was set up in a relatively small room, and as we got closer to AOQ’s set it became clear that this was going to be another of those classic Airwaves Deathtrap™ scenarios – a tiny room packed to the gills, people filling both stairwells completely to the point where the one door that led outside could barely be opened due to the crush. But we’ve seen this movie before and the crowd was well behaved… and besides, we probably couldn’t have gotten out of there without actually climbing onto the table where all the keyboards were set up and using it as a platform from which to leap and grab the landing railing to climb our way to freedom. Which seemed a bit excessive, so I grabbed a can of beer from the table and rode with it. Regardless, the show was a blast.

Originally we planned on hitting our favorite pizza joint for dinner, but the AOQ show threw a wrench into our plans so we grabbed a street hot dog and high-tailed it over to Gaukurinn for a couple of shows. The opener was the Icelandic band Sameheads (below), who brought a youthful energy to a strong set of post-punk indie-rockers. Man I have missed seeing and hearing live shows in small venues! These guys were a lot of fun. Next up was the man we’d specifically come to Gaukurinn tonight to see, Janus Rasmussen. Probably best known for his work with Bloodgroup and, more recently, the ambient house duo Kiasmos, I was excited to see what the Faroe Islander had in store for us.

I knew we wanted to get to the Art Museum in time to see Amyl and the Sniffers, so I fully planned on leaving Janus’ set a little early. That is until it started. And I saw God.

For 40 minutes Janus, accompanied by a violin player, poured warm beats upon the crowd. Synaptic connections in my brain that had shrivelled away from disuse during the COVID malaise sparked with interest. The crowd moved. Heads and bodies bobbed as Janus held us in the palm of his hand like a caring and knowing father, leading us out of the darkness and into the light. I felt a connection to the entire crowd, our experience at the same time anonymous and shared, and gave up on any thoughts of leaving early. I’d stay in this room forever. Call my work, tell them I quit, and have my last paycheck sent to Gaukurinn. I’ll still be here dancing with my people.

Despite the near-religious experience of Janus’ show, there was no time to stop and reflect. We had more shows to catch! We popped across the street and were surprised to see no line at the Art Museum, so in we went. We caught the last half of Júníus Meyvant’s set and moved forward into the spaces left behind by his fans during the set change. Amyl did not disappoint, the Aussie punks blowing up the joint with their fast-paced blend of punk and garage rock. Amy Taylor dominated the stage, prancing, stomping, and strutting as if challenging anyone, and I do mean anyone, to try to come up there and just try to take that mic from her. No one dared take her up on it.

We had potential plans to see a few more bands to close out the evening, but with only two hours of sleep over the last 30+ hours, we decided to call it a night so we could be up-and-at-‘em for Day 2.

Icelandic Release #1,000

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It’s hard to believe that Life in the Vinyl Lane will have its ninth birthday in September. Despite a few close calls that almost caused it to shut down with a total loss of all content, content that I never bothered to back up because I figured there was no chance of me sticking with blogging for more than a few months, it’s still hanging in there.

Of course, one could argue that with only two posts in 2021, and a meagre eight posts over the last eight months, that LITVL is on life support. Which is fair. Honestly, with the COVID debacle I figured I’d increase my output, but for a variety of reasons that didn’t happen. In an odd way I feel both guilty and disappointed about this. The guilt part is, frankly, pretty stupid. One shouldn’t feel bad about not pursuing a hobby when you simply don’t feel like doing it. The disappointment is more due to the fact that now I don’t have an easy reference source to remind myself what I thought of a given release. For most of the LITVL run I’d guess 98% of all the records that came into our house made an appearance on the blog. So if I pull something from the shelf that I don’t remember, I can easily look it up and get my impressions from months or years prior, which is both handy and pretty cool. And trust me, the paucity of posts this year isn’t because I haven’t been buying and listening to music – a ton of stuff was added to the shelves this year, and since we’re both working from home we’re streaming constantly throughout the day. But whereas in the past I’d have a way to differentiate all the cassettes I picked up from the new Negativ Notion label, today I can’t. Which one was the ambient one? The more industrial one? The one the dog really, really hated? I can’t remember, and I don’t have the blog to help me out.

So what got me out of semi-retirement for this post? Well, I use Discogs to inventory most of my stuff and I have the releases by Icelandic artists and on Icelandic labels kept in separate folders. Why? Because I’m weird like that. In fact there are three separate Icelandic folders – one for vinyl, one for cassettes, and one for CDs. A few weeks ago as I was adding some new items I realized that I was really, really close to having 1,000 Icelandic releases. I have to admit, this surprised me. I only recently added the CDs, and while I figured I had a hundred or so, the number was in fact just north of 300. When I added up the three folders I discovered I had 993 Icelandic releases. What??? How was this even possible? A quick look at the list of items I had on order made it clear that #1,000 was likely already bought and paid for, just not yet delivered. So which one would it be? And just as importantly to my neurotic mind, what would I do if I was at say 999 and a package arrived with three items? Which one would be #1,000???

Two packages in quick succession from Negativ Notion quickly got me to 999. There were still a few items on my list of expected deliveries, but they were all pre-orders, so no telling when they might arrive. And I certainly wouldn’t expect to pick up something locally. Or…

I was planning a visit to Seattle’s best electronica store, Selector Seattle, last weekend, so I checked their Discogs store for anything I might want to grab. On a whim I searched for “Iceland”. And… there it was. A 12″ techno record from 1998 by Vector called B. Q. Wave. The rest of the week was delivery-free, so when we walked into Selector and I gave my man Sherman the list of Discogs items I wanted, I must confess I was a little anxious to see if he still had the Vector record. And he did. I even made a point of taking a pic with us and the record to celebrate #1,000.

So how the hell did it get to this point?

I feel I can safely say, without fear of contradiction, that if in 2009 I was asked to name musical artists from Iceland I would have come up with no more than:

  • The Sugarcubes
  • Björk
  • and maybe (but probably not) Sigur Rós

Yet here I sit, not quite a dozen years later, with exactly 1,000 Icelandic releases. I’m not a math major, but that has required a pace of just over 83 releases purchased per year. PHYSICAL RELEASES! Of Icelandic artists and labels. How is this even remotely possible?? (As I look back over might right shoulder and see the six Ikea Kallax cubes and one Flipbin filled with 12″ vinyl, which does not include 7″ and 10″, it seems a bit more possible…)

I feel fairly confident in saying it started with the purchase of Retrön’ Swordplay & Guitarslay at the NASA merch table the opening night of Iceland Airwaves 2009.(1) We hung out at NASA all night and they were my favorite of the six bands, a card that included Me the Slumbering Napoleon (seriously, that was their name), Morðingjarnir, Reykjavík!, Juvelen, and Kimono (we didn’t stick around for Sudden Weather Change… sorry guys). That being said, I can’t 100% recall if I bought the disc at the venue or the next day. Truth be told, that might have been the only CD I bought on that trip – at that point Mrs. Life in the Vinyl Lane was buying most of the music.

I know for a fact we didn’t buy a record for the first time until 2011… which means I’m averaging about 55 Icelandic records per year. Wha…? Holly was doing a travel blog at the time, and amazingly enough we have a photo of the first batch of eight records I bought from Lucky Records, back when they were at their old location. I’ve told that story many times, but the important thing to know is that we’re still friends with Ingvar and Gestur (and Bob, and Jóhannes, and Þórir…) all these years later. Looking at those first records it’s clear the emphasis was on punk, and I know the top one on the below list was the first I put aside for purchase.

  • Purrkur Pillnikk – EhgjI En:
  • Grýlurnar – Mávastellið
  • Jonee Jonee – Svonatorrek
  • Big Nós Band – Tvöfalt Siðgæði
  • Egó – Egó
  • Utangarðsmenn – Í Upphafi Skyldi Endinn Skoða
  • Okkar Á Milli Í Hita Og Þunga Dagsins Compilation
  • SATT 3 Compilation

That’s a pretty good haul, if I do say so myself. How did I learn about these records, you ask? Well, there was almost nothing about early Icelandic punk and new wave on the internet back in 2011, so I looked at eBay listings. And it turned out that all those eBay listings were, unbeknownst to me at the time, by Lucky Records. Go figure.

If we simply round up and assume I’ve been at this Icelandic thing for 12 years now, I’ve been averaging better than one new purchase every five days. Which is absurd. I know I’ve come home from Airwaves with over 50 titles in my bag before, but that means I’d still be buying another 30 or so elsewhere over the course of the year! I could probably do some rough calculations on the cost of all this music, or the weight of these shelves, but I’d rather not.

There are, of course, some titles that I include in my Icelandic category that others may disagree with. Does Dream Wife qualify? Their lead singer is from Iceland but the other three members are not. Farmacia is from Argentina, but their Suero album was put out by Reykjavik’s Lady Boy Records, so I count that one too. You could certainly slice and dice it differently if you chose, but I count it if either the artist or label is from Iceland.

Will the next 12 years bring another 1,000 Icelandic items? Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised, not one bit. In case you’re curious about the breakdown:

  • Vinyl – 549
  • CD – 307
  • Cassettes – 144

The labels FALK (25), Lady Boy (22), and Vánagandr (16), make up an impressive chunk of the collection. And let’s not forget another 10 from Lucky Records, 11 each from BÓNUS PLÖTUR and Paradísarborgarplötur and 12 Tónar, and 15 from Reykjavik Record. But none of them compare to the 53 titles on the mighty Smekkleysa. It’s cray.

I could probably write another few thousand words about this, but at the end of the day it’s the music that is important, not the stuff. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pour a cocktail and listen to the new one from Ægir. Takk vinir!

(1) I was going to link this to the review I wrote about the album. Except… I NEVER WROTE ABOUT THIS ALBUM! How is this possible???

“Healthy Experience” Compilation Cassette (2021)

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It’s hard to believe this is only my second post on Life in the Vinyl Lane so far in 2021. You’d think with COVID continuing to keep us all in various states of lockdown that I’d have done way more writing here, but clearly that’s not what happened. I’m not entirely sure why – I’ve definitely continued picking up new stuff at a brisk pace, though mostly by mail given the lack of travel and limitations on in-person shopping. But such is life. Truth be told I just haven’t really felt like it.

That is, of course, until this little gem arrived in the mail yesterday from Reykjavik. I’m not sure who is behind this brand new Healthy Boy Records label (though I have my suspicions), but as soon as I found out about the debut release I ordered one of the super limited (individually numbered edition of 50) cassettes. With artists like Kuldaboli and ThizOne and Volruptus contributing, I knew it was going to be good, and in fact it’s better than that, it’s great. There’s a sort of creepy, dark edge the the eight tracks, an unsettling undercurrent of anxiety that stops just short of fear, leaving the listener on edge and agitated.

I for one will be keeping an eye on the Healthy Boy Bandcamp page for future releases. You can stream the release there, as well as purchase digitally. It looks like the cassettes are still in stock for now, but I wouldn’t wait if I were you. These suckers won’t last.