wed 09/07/2025

Iceland

theartsdesk Q&A: Björk

When an artist calls the people of their hometown their family, it's usually a metaphor. In the case of Björk Guðmundsdóttir it’s actually true. Reykjavik has a population of only 200,000 and everyone is somehow related. But she's more than just the...

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theartsdesk at the Berlin Festival and Music Week

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you are. You might be a charismatic performer, or the most energetic band in the world. But some settings can’t be outperformed. Holding Berlin Festival at the city’s astonishing out-of-commission Tempelhof airport...

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theartsdesk in The Faroe Islands: G! Festival

Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an...

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Sigur Rós lose core member before album release and world tour

Sigur Rós, whose new album Valtari is issued on 28 May, have announced the departure of core member Kjartan Sveinsson (keyboards/piano), who had been with the band since 1998. This also comes before the start of their world tour, which commences on...

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CD: Sigur Rós - Valtari

The use of Sigur Rós’s aural drama for the soundtracks of Life on Earth, Vanilla Sky and its subsequent sound bed ubiquity has meant their music has become divorced from who they are. The enthralling Valtari emphasises that these four Icelanders are...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Ilan Volkov

Relentlessly energetic, opinionated, and never less than passionate about music-making, Ilan Volkov is a close as you get to a prodigy in the world of conducting. Appointed as Young Conductor in association with the Northern Sinfonia at just 19, at...

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theartsdesk in Reykjavik: A New Musical Landscape for Iceland

It’s 11pm on a Thursday night. The kind of weather that makes balloon animals of umbrellas, that raises a tsunami in a bird-bath, is raging outside. Inside the Harpa concert hall some 300 people are gathered in attentive silence while five musicians...

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theartsdesk in Oslo: by:Larm Festival 2012 and the Nordic Music Prize

Although the four days of Norway’s 15th by:Larm Festival were dominated by the presentation of the second annual Nordic Music Prize, there were plenty of other distractions: a sobering tour of Norwegian black metal’s infamous sites, a talk by...

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2011: Tintin, Tallinn and a Year of Surprises

The surprises linger longest. The things you’re not prepared for, the things of which you’ve got little foreknowledge. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes was amazing, and she was equally astonishing live, too. Fleet Foxes's Helplessness Blues was more than a...

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theartsdesk in Reykjavík: Iceland Airwaves 2011

Iceland is remote. Strategic too. Vikings stopped off there on the way to North America. It hosted the Reagan-Gorbachev summit 25 years ago. On the anniversary, visitors from America, Canada and across continental Europe are in Reykjavík for the...

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CD: Björk - Biophilia

An album that encompasses pan-global collaborations, iPad/Phone apps, internet jiggery-pokery, art installations, live multimedia shows and even a tuning system, with the “Ultimate Edition” of the album coming complete with a set of tuning forks to...

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Björk, Harpa, Reykjavík

Björk’s Biophilia is a five-headed organism: the album (itself issued in five different editions), the app, the documentary, the live show and the website. Here in Harpa, Reykjavík’s spanking-new concert hall, Björk is in her home town, delivering...

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