- On the first night of Sónar Reykjavík, Good Moon Dear, a local experimental artist, swayed his hair to the slippery beats he was producing from a laptop. Next to him, a girl dressed in black placed a potted plant at the front of the stage, as a figure emerged with a giant white globe for a head. They were part of a dance group choreographed by Saga Sigurðardóttir, who had presumably instructed them to "get weird." They hugged, they pranced, they played catch with a plastic deer. The music, meanwhile, mirrored the absurdity. Beats collided—bits felt like a bad DJ mix that actually sounded great—and ravey vocal stabs dotted the stereo field (Mark Fell's Sensate Focus project came to mind). For me, the set summed up plenty about coming to Iceland for this festival: it was weird, disorientating and sometimes extreme.
As a foreigner at Sónar Reykjavík, it's impossible to separate the festival from the country it takes place in. Tourism in Iceland is currently increasing 20% per year (in 2015, well over a million people made the trip) and Icelandair, the country's main airline, offers transatlantic customers a free stopover in the country. In short, Iceland takes tourism very seriously—which, when you consider the country's incredible natural beauty, makes sense. The festival seems to factor in all of this. It's compact, taking place over three evenings at Harpa, an impressive concert hall and conference centre in downtown Reykjavík's harbour, and has a 3 AM curfew. (If you're being mildly sensible, getting up the next day to, you know, bath in a geothermic pool, drive through a lava field or watch an erupting geyser is a breeze.) The stages, which range from standard halls to an auditorium to an underground car park, are clustered together, and most people stay within walking distance of the venue. Overall, the convenience-factor is through the roof.
Good Moon Dear were one of a healthy number of Icelandic acts on the bill, most of whom were in some way distinctive. Milkywhale, a pop-dance duo, stood out for their saccharine earnestness and white outfits. They closed with "Birds Of Paradise," a track I've since become strangely fascinated by. Vaginaboys, a sad-rap crew in the vein of Sad Boys, also wore white, and they took the idea of amateur as an aesthetic to the max. A member of the masked group performed on a laptop as though for the first time; his cohorts chatted next to him, as the young guy on the mic laid down rudimentary raps. For better or worse, everything about Páll Óskar was memorable. He's been one of Iceland's biggest popstars since the mid-'90s, and his high-octane, impossibly polished, blindingly shiny set felt like a mini-Eurovision. On a completely different tip, Bjarki, who is putting Icelandic techno on the map through his releases on Nina Kraviz's трип label, played a subtly rich set in the car park, getting people going with a range of angles and moods. The next night, DJ Margeir, who is something of a local hero, closed the festival (as apparently he always does) with suitably big bangers like DJ HMC's "6 AM" and Audion's "Mouth To Mouth."
The international acts were booked in the tradition of Sónar Barcelona, forming an on-point blend of experimental electronics and stuff for the dance floor. Holly Herndon, who was the standout from this first group, is for me among the most compelling live acts working today, which has to do with her highly distinctive sound and Mat Dryhurst's overwhelmingly absorbing visuals. The set, dedicated to Chelsea Manning, was politically charged both sonically and visually, which only added to its pointed immediacy. Oneohtrix Point Never, who followed Herndon, also laid on a visual feast, deploying images across two panels and a video screen. The set largely drew from Garden Of Delete, his latest album, and matched its alluring and inventive strangeness. Next to these two, Floating Points' live show, which here featured three other musicians, felt like switching from broadband to dial-up. It worked in spells, but other stretches, in which the crowd became noticeably chatty, felt overly proggy and lacked the arresting musicality of his best records.
As for the club beats, Ben UFO, Rødhåd and The Black Madonna each played with skill and assuredness, showing why they're seemingly booked for every major dance festival in 2016. Lone and Squarepusher closed adjacent halls on the Friday. They approached the task of getting people moving in very different ways, but both ended up with the desired result. In this regard, sets in the Red Bull Music Academy-hosted auditorium threw up some interesting situations. For some, the audience was fully seated and silently observing; for others, like the wildly entertaining show from Zebra Katz, people were dancing on stage and causing chaos (the set culminated with Zebra Katz stage diving). The scene for Mumdance's set wasn't quite as rowdy, but the local audience responded noisily to his punchy grime selections, and he managed to incorporate improvised passages on a modular setup without breaking stride.
On the final night, I chatted to a young guy who'd been to all four Sónars in Reykjavík, and he said that for him, a lack of a true headliner was a sour note of this year's edition. Hudson Mohawke, who was second-billed after Boys Noize, did a solid job of injecting a sense of scale and theatricality during his DJ set, but it was true that the festival had few especially rousing moments where a large number of people fully cohered. Put another way, Sónar Reykjavík didn't really pop off. But for me the fluidity of the overall experience was an OK form of compensation—that and the fact that you're spending time in a country of impossible beauty.
Photo credit: Florian Trykowski