Oyama was everywhere at Airwaves 2012, I believe they gigged every day. Very hard workers especially when you consider the band members are from a lot of other Icelandic bands. Úlfur Alexander from Fist Fokkers, Swords of Chaos, and Útidúr. Kári Einarsson from Fist Fokkers. Rúnar Örn Marinósson from Me, the Slumbering Napoleon.  Júlia Hermannsdóttir from We Painted the Walls, and Berger Anderson from Just another Snake Cult and Sudden Weather Change.  (You can go here for my post on Sudden Weather Change.) For as calm and soothing as Oyama’s music is, the members themselves are a tornado of musical activity.

I’ve never gotten used to the term shoe-gaze pop. As this type of music makes me feel more like watching a kaleidoscope projector on my ceiling nestled in my over-sized beanbag than staring at my shoes.  Either way Oyama’s album, “I wanna” makes you just want to kick back and float away while gazing at ceilings, shoes, or just into space.  Great beats that keep your attention from straying while vocals float over the top grabbing you and bringing you up there with them.  One of my favorite tracks on the album is Sometimes:

A lot of the album reminds me of a very young Spaceman 3/Spiritualized, especially the track Sometimes.  Oyama is excellent at producing harmonized vocals that drift over a very spacey set of instruments without sounding too washed out.  They have a great way of crossing over and mixing their male and female vocal set to create not so much a duet, but a singular stream of interchangeable notes, most noticed on Wasted (Dinosaur).

Oyama will be at Airwaves again in 2013.  I suggest you check them out.  To keep up to date with the band, their tumblr is here, their Facebook here, and of course you can find them on Gogoyoko.  Júlía and Berger were extremely kind and went to great detail in their answers to my four questions, and here they are:

1. What is your favorite off-venue Airwaves, or Icelandic  joint to jam at?

Júlía: Kex hostel and Stúdentakjallarinn fed us good food, plus they are out-of-control trendy places that make anyone who enters (= me) seem hip just by existing within that context (Stúdentakjallarinn has an entire wall of live vegetation).

Bergur: The whole atmosphere surrounding the off-venue program of Iceland Airwaves is fascinating. I love how unformal they all are, really nice plug and play concerts, preferably at venues like Bíó Paradís, Bar 11 or Kex Hostel. Stúdentakjallarinn is also very good, a new venue that actually feeds bands that perform there!

2. If you combine all of your favorite colors what do you get?

Júlía: I keep a running list of all my favorite colors with me (on my phone) at all times. I wish I were making this up. The list goes: eggplant, egg yolk, duck egg, neon green, hunter green, salmon, light pink, lilac, peridot, pale blue, royal blue, navy, mauve, cream, oatmeal, light grey, bright yellow, true red, red orange, burgundy, gold, silver

Bergur: I like most colors that relate to autumn; brown, mustard-brown, moss-green, and then some black and white… They all look good together in layers, but super-mundane if you’d mix them together.

3. What are 3 of your favorite little known bands of Icelandic origin?

Júlía: I’m gonna say The Heavy Experience, Nolo and Samaris. Samaris are pretty well known already but fuck it, I just wanna namedrop all my biggest favesies.

4. If you could be any creature playing your favorite song, what would the creature be? And what is the song?

Júlía: I’m a lemur playing Krawtwerk’s Computer Love
Bergur: A Koalabear playing bass on Darondo´s “Didnt I”

So, give them a listen and some attention.  They are another example of great Icelandic musicians coming together to create their own type of music.  Also, You can also see my other posts on Icelandic bands that will be at Airwaves ’13 here.