Well now this is a first, in the almost five years since this website has been open. We’re featuring a band from that other Nordic region – The Faroe Islands.
It’s BYRTA. Consisting of Guðrið Hansdóttir and Janus Rasmussen, who met while they were both living in Reykjavík, Iceland. They started making music together – and finally this week they’ve released their self titled debut album.
Now then. The music.
Debut single ‘Loyndarmál’ is the most striking of them all, released in February this year. Bizarrely, but yet quite brilliantly, it sounds (to us at least) like if a cool electropop act were to attempt to write an Ace of Base song. It’s that chorus! A tortured pop melody that’s being accompanied by a synth that thinks it’s a reggae beat! It’s a triumph in unashamed pop disguised as something a lot more acceptable to the image conscious masses.
New single (their third) ‘Andvekur’ dabbles in more of the same. It’s an elsewhere sparse number, that all seems to come together and make sense of itself just in time for the chorus. BYRTA quite enjoy writing an amazing chorus and then throwing it out into a treacherous sonic landscape, hoping that it can fend for itself amongst the dark noises and sad cries.
‘Eydnan’ was the second single, and bucks the trend slightly in that it’s got a production that ties in with a lot of other electropop out there, and is a little bit more uniform in sound. You’ve heard it all before, but it’s been good and so that’s why you’re hearing it again.
Listen to the three singles below, and here’s the album on iTunes (released worldwide);
