Just Out: Lab of Love

Not to be dismissed as cute. Skakkamanage just released their first cd entitled the Lab of Love. Skakkamanage is, according to the band, A triangle that goes from Africa to Eastern Europe to the highlands of Iceland, and The Lab of Love is... well, it must have something to do with being in love and making music together. Yes, for the band is comprised of husband-and-wife, Svavar Pétur Eysteinsson and Berglind Häsler.

Svavar was, however, solo in the beginning, but after meeting Berglind he wrote the song Lets get married, and she said yes. There is lot of love at rehearsal and lot of music at home they say. Ain"t that beautiful? Yes it is. And I guess if you"re in a band with your wife, you really must have to get along pretty much all of the time. Some couples fight all the time, but still love each other deeply. It's the ninth mistery of the world. The eight being: The Velvet Underground... how in the world were they making that sound? Hmmm... Maybe it had something to do with the way they wrote the music, played it and recorded it. The whole process, so to speak. How is it for Skakkamanage?

"We love every part of the process. You write a song, you go practise and orchestrate it and when you are ready to play live you do it. After writing a couple of songs you record it and in that process a lot of new ideas come up and the song becomes totally different from how it started out in the beginning. Then you have a record out and that makes you proud. After a while you get tired of it all playing the same songs again and again. It is the tiredness of every aspect of it that keeps you going it goes in circles like this. Now we cant wait to start writing an again."

That"s a good thing, for their record ain"t no piece of crap. It"s sweet and lo-fi lo-fi, catchy and clever, care-free and funny, has the occasional rock-out and is obviously made with LOVE.

Some people, though, might dismiss it as krútt (loosely translated sweet or cute), which is a label that"s been put on a certain generation (krúttkynslóðin) here in Iceland that"s making music and other kinds of art. People who, perhaps, share and portray a certain kind of innocence and friendliness. Or not. Its always a bit weird to label music like that. Many people label our music as Krútt but no one really knows what that means. We think that our music appeals to a large group of people them being hip hoppers or death rockers. Labelling music like that can be repellent to other people and thats a shame. But we definitely called this definition upon ourselves when we held a music festival last year that was called Krútt. The aim with that festival was really to kill that definition that was made up by the media but the media just did not get the joke so it used now more than ever.

Well, if everybody get"s the joke you must be doing something wrong. Or at least if you CARE if people get it . Fucking people ain"t no good...

Anyway, like all the bands getting coverage in this issue, Skakkamanage will be playing the Iceland Airwaves festival this week, a fine and grand festival that has helped young Icelandic bands in getting recognition among a larger and more foreign audience, and is getting bigger by the year. But is it getting bigger than Christmas? Its definitely getting bigger than Easter the same way the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

Is there life after Iceland Airwaves? After Airwaves it"s Christmas. We have a Christmas song called Costa del Jól (Yule) and a couple of others that need mixing and live orchestration. We are going to work on them and have a grand Christmas concert in December.

Besides our lovely married couple, Skakkamanage is also comprised of drummer Þormóður Dagsson and multi-instrumentalists Örvar and Borkó. They will play at Gaukurinn this Thursay at 20:45. The Lab of Love is released by Smekkleysa/Bad Taste and is available now.

Henrik Björnsson