Icelandic Music
How a volcanic island of 300,000 became one of the world's most distinctive musical ecosystems
- The Swimming Pool Studio
- The Day Everything Changed
- Free Concerts in Abandoned Bunkers
In this issue
- 01Chapter 1The Scene2 min
- 02Chapter 2Key PlayersMembers
- 03Chapter 3Defining the SoundMembers
- 04Chapter 4StoriesMembers
- 05Chapter 5Legacy and InfluenceMembers
- 06The castWho was thereMembers
- 07Family treeWho played with whomMembers
- 08In their own wordsHear them tell itMembers
- 09Essential recordsThe records that made itMembers
- 10The labelsWho put it on recordMembers
- 11The gearWhat made the soundMembers
- 12Chronology1977 to 2016Members
- 13StoriesThe stories behind itMembers
- 14PlacesWhere it happenedMembers
- 15ConnectionsWhere it ledMembers
- 16Go furtherRead and watch nextMembers
The Scene
The genesis predates the international breakthrough by decades. In 1977, an 11-year-old girl named Björk Guðmundsdóttir recorded a children's album after her school sent a tape of her singing Tina Charles's “I Love to Love” to RÚV, Iceland's only radio station. That juvenilia set a template: Icelandic music would be unabashedly experimental, indifferent to convention, and rooted in a culture where making music was as natural as breathing.
By 1980, punk had blown through Reykjavík like a North Atlantic gale. Björk formed the all-girl band Spit and Snot. A year later came the jazz fusion outfit Exodus, then the post-punk group Tappi Tíkarrass. The 1982 documentary Rokk í Reykjavík captured this ferment—a tangle of bands cross-pollinating in converted garages and community spaces, everyone in everyone else's projects. Sigtryggur Baldursson was in the new wave band Þeyr before joining Kukl in 1983 with Björk and Einar Örn from punk outfit Purrkur Pillnikk.
Read the rest of this issue, and every other one.
The full essay, the cast (Björk, Sigur Rós, The Sugarcubes and more), the records, the chronology and the stories. About 15 minutes of reading, with the music a click away.
Start your 7-day free trialThen $5 a month. Cancel any time.10 albums, and the stories behind them
- 1Life's Too Good
Iceland's first internationally successful rock album, proof a joke fundraising band could compete with London or New York.
- 2Debut
One of the first albums to smuggle electronic music into mainstream pop, launching Björk's solo career on her own terms.
- 3Ágætis byrjun
Sigur Rós's breakthrough with no hit single, spreading by word of mouth and setting the band's signature sound.
- Debut
- Post
- Homogenic
- Ágætis byrjun
- Vespertine
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