How three musicians in Reykjavík found freedom - and a brand new sound - in collaboration

They each released a debut solo EP between autumn 2019 and spring 2021. Zaar led the way with the cold and glitchy Lost My Sense of Humour. Salóme Katrín followed shortly after with Water, a collection of grandiose piano led ballads and Rakel crashed onto the scene in 2021 with the ambitious Nothing Ever Changes.

The trio live in Reykjavik and that’s where I meet them, at Rakel’s flat in the dead centre of town on an uncharacteristically still February night. None of the trio are originally from Reykjavík; they came to the city to escape their respective small towns. Rakel and Salóme are Icelandic but Zaar is from Denmark. Confusingly Rakel relocated to Reykjavik to get closer to her goal of going to music college in Arhus, Denmark. At the very same time, Zaar was leaving Arhus to fulfill her dream of going to Iceland. Rakel got caught up in life in Reykjavík and never made it to Arhus and the three of them serendipitously met in music college in Reykjavík and have been inseparable ever since. “We are a cult of three,” Rakel explains.

As the title suggests While We Wait comes as a result of their solo careers being put on hold by the pandemic. “We found ourselves stranded in the same place for a long period of time and we all felt the need to get out and make some music happen,” Salóme tells me. “Sara (Flindt aka Zaar) had the idea of us all throwing a concert at [legendary artist-run experimental venue] Mengi and something happened there.” The three of them had collaborated in various forms prior to that – and had performed with each other – but never as a trio. As Zaar adds, “The idea was that we’d be the only people on stage and we’d help perform each others’ music. The concert was our little project. Creating a platform for us.”

The concert - actually a livestream - was a success and the idea grew from there. The three friends set out to make an album in a week and get it out there as quick as possible. “You know, we weren’t going to get together a big group of people,” Salóme tells me. “and we did our part! We did it in a week and only with our closest friends and family and we were just going to throw it out and then things happened. You know how it is.”

Due to the radically different sonic characteristics of their debut EPs it comes as no surprise that While We Wait is an eclectic collection of songs - but none of them sound anything like their previous output. “We’d each our own EPs where we’d each created our own universes. An EP – especially a debut EP – is such a strange universe to create. They’re the first sounds you make,” Rakel tells me. Salóme adds: “This idea, of doing it together, gave us such freedom. We all wanted to release more and we all wanted to create more but the idea of doing it all alone again, the hell of self releasing as a solo artist, was too daunting. And the fact that we didn’t have to make a whole universe, a whole EP or LP gave us so much freedom and safety.”

Sara tells me that the DIY scene in Iceland as a whole offers artists more freedom than what she’s used to back home: “It’s very unique for someone coming from Denmark where things are more formal, in boxes, scheduled et cetera, a great example is Mengi. The place’s whole reason for being is to allow artists to come and do whatever they want. There are no expectations. There is way more freedom here to do whatever you want. There’s less pressure and expectation here. Maybe because the scene is just so small and supportive.”

“We just go out and play.” Salóme adds. “Maybe it’s also because we don’t have an infrastructure around music. We just have some people that may or may not come listen. The performances are not necessarily make or break. That’s probably why we felt so secure within our ‘genre bending’.”

Their collaboration is a result of having found themselves with freer schedules than expected. What other positive effects has pandemic has had on the DIY scene in Iceland? Salóme - who experienced the Icelandic music scene through her brother (guitarist for the legendary post-core band Reykjavík!) from a very young age - quickly jumps on the opportunity to answer: "It always felt really independent and DIY, with crazy genre free-flowing concerts happening everywhere. People were excited and happy to be doing the things they were doing. But around the time I moved to Reykjavík in 2015 something happened. Something commercial struck the Icelandic music scene in a way that was surprising at least to myself as a music enthusiast and probably alot of other people.

"So when I started working with the local DIY scene we were so excited and enthusiastic about music, but wherever we went we were just hitting walls, getting no gigs et cetera. With Covid, even though it had probably been happening a little bit prior to Covid, came a stop to the commercial arm of the music scene, the big festivals disappeared and we couldn’t have those big commercial events and all of a sudden it felt like people’s ears started opening a little more. So maybe this strandedness has opened the music scene up again to a more DIY aesthetic. It’s also just changed the architecture of music. You know, a song is written into a space. We’re not having those big euphoric collective experiences jumping around in Gamla Bio but listening to music at home on our little radios. So maybe that’s allowed people to open up their ears and listen a little more."

Does she think it’s changed who we write music for? "Definitely! For example artists like us, we thrive on intimacy. In our creations and performances we thrive on closeness. And when you’re writing your music you’re visualising yourself performing it and with Covid the smaller venue has become the only real option and this is something that I think will bode well for us. The three of us. Maybe we’ll get the chance to play in small venues."

Like so many other young artists they have spent their entire careers so far in a pandemic: "It’s been weird, but it’s also been our reality," Rakel tells me. "You just release and there’s nothingness."

"Yeah, the scene is just based on friendship now," Salóme adds. "That’s all you have these days. You don’t show up to a venue in a cool outfit and listen to the hottest bands. What’s left is just your friends."