MENTAL NOTE

Words by Gréta Sigríður Einarsdóttir Photography by Golli

Spaced Out

It turns out Unnsteinn has been asking himself the same question. While working on his latest music, the tunes he was playing at the Airwaves gig, he released a podcast, one episode per song. Here’s how he introduces himself:

Dear listener, […] It’s been six years since Retro Stefson’s last gig. So much has happened in my life in these past six years. I had a kid and bought an apartment, built a studio, did a year at Iceland University of the Arts, and another year in a film school in Germany, started a company, a radio station, and yadda yadda yadda. I’m trying to make this list sound like the waves of status updates flowing across Facebook on New Year’s, where people list their accomplishments of the past year. And I’m also using it to flatter my ego and the fact that while I owned and ran a studio that acted as a factory for some of the country’s most popular music, I could barely finish a single song myself. I could help everyone else to write, play, and feel reassured, but getting anywhere with my own compositions, that stayed on the back burner. I’m really good at procrastinating and putting other stuff ahead of my own. And, what might be my greatest talent and biggest flaw, is how great I am at ruminating on things. Thinking. The problem, as those of you who are great at thinking know, is that we’re not as good at doing.

My Generation

It’s not as if Unnsteinn has been in hiding. He’s been on TV and the radio, modelling in advertisements, repping and producing young musicians, running a radio station, and he even appeared as a judge on Iceland’s iteration of The Voice. To the casual onlooker, it seemed like he’d given up on the performing side of music and was settling in comfortably as a mogul in the making. At thirty years and change, he even sounds a bit like a wizened mentor to the young kids. “I’ve been making music professionally for about half my life now,” Unnsteinn tells me. “I communicate with young people a lot in our studios and I work with young people. I think it’s so important.” He doesn’t like to teach though, preferring to act as a sort of guide. “I remember vividly when I was in school, and grownups would tell me how you were supposed to make music and how not to. I thought that was so unhealthy.”

Unnsteinn explains how he was writing music for a play in the Reykjavík City Theatre when he got to know a young audio tech. It turned out he was in a band called Inspector Spacetime and invited Unnsteinn to come check out their studio. That’s how Unnsteinn found himself with a couple of 20-year-olds, in a studio matching their age, doing music ‘wrong.’ “You don’t really record stuff like that, or so people have always told me. But I visited their studio and they just had a mic that was falling apart somewhere in the corner and we were singing directly into autotune, and it was such a great vibe. It changes your performance. We made a great song and it works perfectly.” He found it liberating.

CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

Being open to new developments is what keeps music alive. “In the history of recorded music, there’s always some new technology that changes everything: autotune, the metronome, drum machines. It’s such an unhealthy perspective to look at a new technology that’s set to change music and simply dismiss it with an ‘ugh, Spotify,’ or whatever.” Unnsteinn’s interests include not only how technology changes music, but also the influence of space, the outside world, and culture. He’s fascinated by how organ music written for Catholics sounds different than what’s written for Protestants, as the size of the churches affects the reverberation. Speaking of cultural impact, there’s the global pandemic. For the older guard of Icelandic musicians, the hardships of COVID-19 led many to rethink their music, and even retire. The younger generation, however, is now entering the industry having only made music on their own, never having played a show in front of people. “They’re making music to dance to, music that’s about being together,” Unnsteinn notes. “It’s music that’s made to be heard in a space, by the people gathered in that space.”

I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE

During his career, Unnsteinn has tried out several different ways of existing within the music industry. “In 2011, when touring with Retro Stefson, we had a manager, sometimes two, sometimes three. And after I moved on to TV, I started a record label working with younger artists. I went into the big productions and finally, got completely fed up with that side of the music industry.” In his podcast, as well as his music, Unnsteinn honestly describes his experience of suffering burnout in the work he loves so much. “Now, instead of me releasing music for others, I prefer to teach them how the software works so they can do it themselves. In our studio, we completely switched gears. We were releasing Flóni, Birnir, Young Karin, GDRN - some of the country’s biggest artists. But we switched it up and now we have courses where we teach people how to make music with software.”

Unnsteinn’s studio had built up quite a roster of some of the country’s most popular artists, but when they started the courses, they focused on the least-represented demographic in their circle.

“The courses are just for girls,” Unnsteinn explains. “They had never been a big part of our releases. Some girls would come in and maybe not feel entirely comfortable in our space, it was a ‘boy’ studio. So now, we’ve taught around 60 girls to do it themselves and they’re releasing their own music.” Amongst the alumnae is a newcomer calling herself Lúpína, and up and coming pop artist Una Torfa (though she had recorded music previously).

Unnsteinn explains how they found themselves in a male-dominated environment before course correcting. “With all the guys on our roster, it wasn’t because we heard their music somewhere and thought: hey, let’s go sign this guy. Take Flóni for instance: he was only at our studio to paint our floors. He played us some of his music and after that, he kept showing up. But it’s a much bigger step for a teenage girl to enter a space like that. So that’s why we started the course.”

Speak My Language

Unnsteinn really is good at thinking about things. When I ask him about returning to live music, he launches into a breakdown of the status and history of the Icelandic music industry. The truth is that his ability to work as a creative musician is directly tied to popular trends – and the economy. “With pop music, each genre would usually get like five years at a time,” Unnsteinn muses. “When I was in school, it was indie rock. Then dance music dominated for a while. By the time I was graduating around 2010, 2011, rap was everywhere. And it’s still going.” Unnsteinn puts the longevity of rap music popularity down to streaming services. “I know they say you don’t get much money from Spotify, but if you reach a lot of plays, it’s enough. To build a market, people start making music in their own languages.”

The number of emerging artists focusing on the Icelandic market is best visible in the lack of fresh musical exports from Iceland. “Think about the bands being exported from Iceland right now: it’s the same ones that we were exporting ten years ago. Kaleo and Of Monsters and Men. There haven’t been many new ones since. Laufey, maybe, she’s breaking through. But with rap, the thing that happens is that the market becomes hyper-localised. It’s like a washing machine, the rap songs coming round and round again, one after the other. If you want to make a new song, it can’t be too far away from the song that you did before that one and it creates a saturation. That keeps rap so popular.”

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

The trouble with making experimental music is that Iceland’s population, although growing, doesn’t support a touring musician. “If I had stayed in Berlin, I could have done an Unnsteinn tour of Germany, playing for a few hundred people in each venue. When I moved home, we played Arnarhóll on Reykjavík Culture Night, and a similar festival in Akureyri, a few school dances and office parties, you know, the gigs that are available here. And they’re good gigs, fun to play. But then I played during Airwaves and that was the first time this winter that I felt I had like a real concert.”

Doing it for the art is all well and good, but there are practical questions to consider. “I was talking finances with a girl who wants to get into music recently. “I told her there were two questions she needed to ask herself. Are you going to be making Top 40 music that will get played on the biggest radio stations or are you going to be doing something a little more artsy or experimental? The next thing you need to consider is: will you make music in Icelandic or English? Because if you want to sing in Icelandic, you’re not going to be able to live off making experimental music. It’s possible to make a living in music in Iceland, but you need a solid listener base. You need to appeal to a lot of people.”

Let Me Entertain You

In order to have a career in Iceland, to be able to live off making music, one has to embrace the world of entertainment. Unnsteinn sets a high standard for himself and his music, and for a long time, he wrestled with the idea to become an entertainer. “I used to find the idea difficult,” Unnsteinn tells me, before adding, somewhat selfdeprecatingly: “That was an issue because it’s no fun to hire a selfinvolved artiste from 101 to sing a song at an office party and they’re about to have a nervous breakdown over the possibility of saying or doing something stupid.” Getting over himself was one step to clearing his mental block from making music. But for Unnsteinn, performing live is still stressful. “I get awful stage fright. There’s a difference between playing cover songs and my own music. I do Er þetta ást [by beloved Icelandic pop legend Páll Óskar] pretty often and that’s completely nerve-wracking.”

While he can manipulate his own songs in the moment, “if that’s the way the song wants to be,” he feels the pressure to do someone else’s songs justice the way they were written. In the end, Unnsteinn doesn’t have a problem with the struggle. “Maybe making art should be stressful.” While popularity helps with paying the bills, ultimately, Unnsteinn has found chasing it unhelpful in the creative process. “I’ve tried to appeal to a lot of people, and at other times, I’ve tried not to do that. The music I’m making now is completely the kind of music I want to listen to myself. That’s the only thing you can rely on. If I’m going to be making music, this is the music I want to be doing. It’s a specific style and the soundscape is maybe a little aggressive. But I made the decision to spend my time doing exactly this because it gives me pleasure.”

There are all sorts of possibilities in the future but for now, Unnsteinn is living in the moment. “There’s the question if I should sing these songs in English, try for a bigger audience, but I’ve had the best time making and releasing these songs as they are.”

DU HAST (MICH GEFRAGT)

So how would he describe the type of music he’s now making, that he performed at that Airwaves gig? As is to be expected, Unnsteinn has thought a lot about his answer. “Consider Rammstein. If you were to ask what sort of music Rammstein made, your first thought might be metal, but really, they’re a pop group. If you look at the way they structure their songs, the songs are three minutes, there’s the exact structure of a pop song, including hooks and everything but the soundscape is metal. That’s what Hermigervill and I are doing with this album. We’re making pop music, but the soundscape is techno.”

Thank You For The Music

The talk turns to Hermigervill, Unnsteinn co-creator and veteran of the alternative music scene in Iceland. Unnsteinn has a clear admiration for the effort and ambition Hermigervill has for his craft. “The music we’re making, he’s getting all the sounds into the synths and playing everything live but if you’re not paying attention, you could just as well assume that he’s DJing. So you have to be a music lover and concertgoer to realise what he’s doing: that it’s a risk and that it’s a live performance.” In contrast, Unnsteinn mentions a recent gig where he and Hermigervill performed at the grand opening of a large company’s new cafeteria. “We were standing there in the corner, and people didn’t really realise what was going on. They just saw a redheaded guy and that guy from The Voice trying to keep the party going.” He chuckles. “We also went to London and did two gigs at an event promoting Icelandic tourism. We’ve done the weirdest gigs, where people aren’t expecting live music. Where music is like a commodity, not an art form.” For a young man with a family and a mortgage, these gigs pay the bills. But that Airwaves concert felt a little different. “It felt incredibly rewarding, artistically. I realised I have to think about making and playing the music that I want to create, instead of focusing on the bottom line. I have to think about the whole experience, what it’s like to show up to a concert.”

Since Unnsteinn has been working as a professional musician for more than half his life, I ask him: is it no big deal to eke out an existence in such a competitive industry? He laughs in tortured artist: “No, it’s a huge deal, actually. I was talking to a guy about my pension rights recently, and he was telling me all these things I apparently should have known. I just went: ‘Huh?’ The system isn’t really set up to make it easy for you.” But Unnsteinn didn’t get into this because of the money. “Music has given me so much. My son is starting to experience it, he loves singing. So we do that together every day these days. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.” In reality, Unnsteinn does do plenty of other things, amongst them, making TV. “Right now, I’m fiercely immersed in music because I just finished making a TV programme for the past four months. And after I’ll have spent four months making my record, maybe I’ll just want to make TV.”

Coming Up

Unnsteinn recently received an artists’ stipend to make music for a theatre adaptation of Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s novel Iceland’s Bell, directed by Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson and featuring a cast consisting entirely of people of colour. During that time, Unnsteinn plans to work on his solo music as well, finishing his album. “I want to get it out as soon as I can, so it doesn’t turn into a record that I just talk about.”