Chris Daly knows springtime means no more ice fishing.
It’s a given that everyone with the possible exception of Lars Von Trier loves Björk, but that’s hardly enough to consider yourself an expert in contemporary Icelandic music. You get bonus points for having heard of Sigur Ros and the Sugarcubes, but let’s face it, you still aren’t eligible for your musical doctorate with just that under your belt. Fortunately, DJ Platurn is here to help you ace the blue book test at the end of this review.
You’d be forgiven if you knew nothing more about Platurn than he created perhaps the greatest De La Soul mixtapes of all time with his “This Is De La Heaven” series. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll discover that he not only was born in Iceland, but his Pops, Magnus Thordarson, is a local music promoter and DJ who more or less ran Ríkisútvarpið, also known as the country’s National Broadcasting Service, for most of the ’70s and ’80s. Prior to his arrival, the station played mostly “traditional” music.
While wearing that hat, the elder Thordarson essentially introduced his native land and its then population of a modest 215,000 to more current sounds, ranging from soundtrack funk to glam and prog rock with stops in-between for jazz, soul, and disco, a lot of which had been reinterpreted in an Icelandic vein. Naturally, this music made its way into the Thordarson household and the impressionable ear holes of the young Platurn.
Armed with this arsenal of largely unheard sounds (assuming you weren’t tuned in back in the day), Platurn has dropped “Breaking the Ice,” essentially a music curator’s audio wet dream for the sounds that kept Icelanders grooving back in the day. Whether it’s original Icelandic disco or covers of Aretha Franklin’s “Think,” Platurn has done it again, preparing a smorgasbord of sounds that goes down smoother than a plate of Súrir hrútspungar (not that we have anything against sour ram’s testicles).
To prove our point, Passion of the Weiss is proud to premier Part II of Platurn’s magnum opus. Ideal for Blue Lagoon baths and/or Viking re-enactments.
Buy Breaking the Ice here, and check out our exclusive stream of “Part 2” below, and re-visit “Part One” as well.
