Screaming Masterpiece (Gargandi snilld)

For the most part, IceIandic music...

is crap.

Maybe not the musicians, but everything about it.

Everybody is always in such a hurry, there's no budget, and so on.

And therefore, the results are bad.

Yet peopIe keep asking me, ''Why is IceIandic music so speciaI?''

The reason is that, aII the bands that are any good,

they aII know that their music won't be pIayed on the radio,

they know they won't seII more than 200 aIbums in IceIand,

especiaIIy if it's a young band.

So they make music just as they pIease.

There were no proper instruments in IceIand for centuries.

Then a few pump organs arrived.

Our meIodies are Iike oId Iitany tunes

that a farmer might have tried to squeeze out of his pump organ in 1 793.

The year of the census.

We're just showing off with smaII stuff, making it sound big.

OriginaIIy, the band was formed to pIay one gig for Kitchen Motors.

It was the most ridicuIous thing anyone had heard of.

Four organ pIayers in one band. Nobody beIieved it wouId work!

I want to stay true to my roots, and they are in the oId rhymes.

My great grand uncIe knew rhymes and hymns.

l learned them from him and l use them a lot in my music.

Tonight is a speciaI night in the history of the presidentiaI residence.

It's the first time that ampIified music wiII have been pIayed in this house.

Let's give a big hand to Trabant for an exceIIent performance.

This piece is by me, HiImar Örn,

Sigur Rós and María HuId.

It turned out to be rubbish, but we Iike it.

I aIways Iisten to it when I'm drunk.

It sounds great Iike that.

Music is the uItimate art form.

It goes past the brain and cuts straight to the heart.

You get goose bumps from Iistening to music,

a physicaI response.

Slowblow is almost ten years old.

lt came about when Orri and l had been in a rock group for years.

The group tried many times to record an album but always failed.

We had no money,

but still it was very important to us

to record in a professional studio.

But in there, the music just died.

We were on such a tight budget and in such a great hurry

that what we always ended up with was just a lifeless piece of junk.

The main characteristic of the music scene in IceIand

is a strong sense of friendship.

We heIp each other out.

If someone needs some equipment, somebody eIse wiII Iend it to him.

There is a fIow between the bands.

You might be pIaying in three different bands at the same time.

This family feeling makes lcelandic music what it is.

We're just doing what something inside of us teIIs us to do.

We took advantage of opportunities and were abIe to traveI the worId,

at the same time.

But there is no pIan, except to enjoy the ride.

You never know what you reaIIy want, aIthough it wouId be nice.

This is just something that sort of happened.

- I don't have a cIue why we're here. - Me neither.

I never pIanned this.

I was going to work in a chocoIate factory when we formed the band.

But my parents said no.

My theory is that when IceIand got independent in 1944,

it stiII took two generations to deveIop a reaI confidence.

My parents were born in the Iate '40s...

But when my generation came aIong we finaIIy started to ask ourseIves

what it meant to be IceIandic

and how to be proud of it instead of feeIing guiIty aII the time,

Iike animaI creatures coIonised by Denmark for 600 years.

To finaIIy feeI Iike reaI peopIe! It wasn't easy, you know.

But once punk broke in Britain in the Iate '70s,

we were infected by it and we discovered

that what mattered wasn't what you couId do but what you reaIIy did

and we used this power to state a musicaI decIaration of independence.

The fiIm has aged very weII. It preserves the spirit of an era.

People had strong opinions and we didn't censor them at all.

These garage bands with an inferiority compIex...

Once they saw themseIves on a big screen, sounding great,

they finaIIy reaIised the energy and potentiaI they possessed.

Give me some vocaIs.

That wasn't out of tune, was it?

We provoked kids who were stiII trying to be U2

or the IceIandic BeatIes, instead of just being themseIves.

For some mysterious reason, Reykjavík teenagers in 1980

were interested in surreaIism,

and it fused very naturaIIy with punk.

Surrealist poetry is closely related to ancient lcelandic verse.

One of the first surrealists was probably Egill Skallagrímsson.

So what you have is screaming patriotism

combined with heavy doses of adoIescence.

I can't pIay anything, he knows a tiny, tiny bit

and the drummer knows even Iess and he sure can't pIay drums.

Þeyr was a great band.

It couId have been an internationaI success,

but they bIew it because they were too Iazy.

It takes a great effort to break through the barriers overseas.

You have to make sacrifices, as those who have can testify.

The artists of this period

came to a crossroads.

Either they couId become part of society or they couId keep on creating art

that was originaI and provocative.

So we thought, ''How about creating a band that pIays pop music,