In 2017 Sóley, Sin Fang, & Örvar Smárason got together and decided to release one song a month for the entire year. They ended the year with the vinyl, “Team Dreams,” which you can listen to here, and a performance at Sigur Rós’s Norður og Niður festival in Reykjavik. Us that were not able attend were treated with a great New Year’s gift, as they announced they would be touring around Europe. I was lucky enough to photograph the concert at Bush Hall in Shepard’s Bush London.
Combining three brilliant musicians can go all sorts of ways, but in typical Iceland fashion their uniqueness blended well, with obvious positive chemistry between all three. They were slightly nervous as this was the first concert of the tour and only the second time they had played together, and while they kept mentioning this nervousness, it really didn’t show.
If you don’t want to read my babble you can click here to just go to the pics.
I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite characteristics of Iceland musicians are their ability to remove the 4th wall. And these three lived up to and surpassed that theory from the absolute beginning charming the audience with jokes, ambitions, and conversation.
They supported themselves, each artists doing a 20 minute solo set before all joining on stage for the main event. I had not seen Smárason’s solo material so I was pleased with this surprise. After briefly chatting with the crowd as he set up apologized as he wasn’t going to chat through his set of ecclectic beats, and creative use of microphones. He then performed 20 minutes of his new material giving us a preview of his first solo album, “light is liquid” which will be released via Morr Music on May 18th, check out his Facebook page for more details.
Sin Fang was next, starting off with piano and eventually moving over to guitar a broad span of his catalog. I’ve been watching Sin Fang since the days of duct taped microphone nests, and he never disappoints. He even covered “teenage Spaceship” by Smog, which while the audience didn’t seem to know who Smog is, made me really happy.
After a brief intermission, Sóley came to the stage and proceeded to sing a good amount of material. She told us stories of chocolate spoons being used to stir things, and mentioned that she would be the queen of the Theremin by next year, I’m holding her to that.
When the trio came on stage they were accompanied by Gylfi Sigurðsson of Retro Stefson fame. I unfortunately didn’t get a good shot of him, but you can kind of see him in the photo below:
There is still time to catch them on tour with 5 shows remaining, and I suggest you do, I certainly wasn’t disappointed and doubt you will be either. You can find out more about the tour dates, by following them on their individual Facebook pages and Instagram.
Ragnaar's Icelandic Music Blog 