polaroids of androids

Foreign Correspondant

As part of plans to travel and live/work abroad towards the end of the year, I've recently taken up an extensive search to gain a little bit of musical knowledge about some of the places I plan to visit. My first point of call will be the city of Reykjavik in October, for the quickly becoming legendary music festival: Iceland Airwaves, so one of my major focuses of late has been the bands and music of Iceland.

You probably already know about Bjork, Sigur Ros and Emiliana Torrini, however on digging deeper the music output per capita from a city like Reykjavik with a population of only 120000 is astonishing. The lineup for the Airwaves festival is only at the first announcement stage, yet already lists around 30 Icelandic artists on it's bill.

One band I've really enjoyed has been Skatar from Reykjavik. They play a punk infused brand of experimental and progressive rock, and for a garage band are quite frankly streets ahead of a lot of other bands in terms of originality and imagination. They somewhat remind me of a mix between Black Sabbath and the Tucker B's.

Another band called Reykjavik! (funnily enough, hailing from Reykjavik) play music of a similar ilk to Skatar, although they are slightly more slanted toward heavier more technical compositions.

Finally, Mugison is a solo artist from the mountainous Westfjords region of Iceland, and makes humour laced intelligent pop music. His slightly twisted approach to his music makes for an intruiging listening experience, as his songs offer something the average listener might not be used to but can still find accessible.

Iceland certainly has a lot to offer, and I'm looking forward to discovering more as I get closer to visiting.