Allt er hljótt - Our own Christmas song

With on only one day to go until our annual Christmas Concert in Fríkirkjan we thought that we should share our Christmas song Allt er hljótt.



The song was written and recorded within a week in December of 2009. We did not have time to go to a professional studio, so we recorded every bit of the song within the premises of Ragnars bedroom using a single recording mic connected to a laptop. We gave the raw recording to our friend Ólafur Arnalds who then did wonders with the mix.

Christmas concert in Fríkirkjan, Reykjavík

Once again it's time four our annual Christmas concert in Fríkirkjan in Reykjavík.

It will take place on December 23rd at 10pm.

As well as our own compositions we will perform traditional Icelandic Christmas songs that are dear to us, some which are less often heard. All the songs will be re-arranged for the occasion to fit Árstíðirs unusual instrumentation and sound.

This is the third year in a row that we perform our Christmas concert Fríkirkjan. The first concert back in 2008 was recorded and a selection of the songs were released on our EP: Live in Fríkirkjan. It was mixed by our friend and genius Ólafur Arnalds.


Scarborough Fair, performed in Fríkirkjan in 2008.

Photo from our concert in Fríkirkjan in 2009.

Tickets are already on sale. Go get yours here! We look forward to see you, it's going to be a magical night.

Surprise gig at Norræna húsið in Reykjavík

On Saturday we performed a surprise concert at Norræna húsið, the Nordic House in Reykjavík. It was the first time we appeared publicly in Iceland since our return from Russia and Finland.

The gig was a part of a concert series called The Advent Calender of the Nordic House.

Everyday at 12.34 in the afternoon until Christmas there is an exciting Icelandic act playing there, and people don't know which one will be playing that day.

The Nordic House in Reykjavík was designed by the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and the only thing surpassing it's beauty are the acoustics in there. We played entirely acoustic, and were surprised ourselves by how good we sounded.

The poster for the concert series.

Moscow, last days

We spent our last two days in Moscow sightseeing and giving interviews.

We met journalist Roman Shevchenko who wrote an article about us in a newspaper in Sochi (the host of the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games), and with Dimitrij Urupin who did an interview with us for Russian radio.

The latter also invited us to his home and we showed our appreciation by singing for him in his livingroom.
By the end of the second day we said goodbye to our manager Masha and our dear friend Marjana. We took a night-train from Moscow to Helsinki where we caught our flight back home to Iceland the next day.

3 videos from Moscow

Here are three videos from our gig in Moscow. The videos are shot from different angles by people in the audience. We were told that Moscow would be the hardest city to play in because it is such a big one, with so much going on all the time that new bands often get lost in the media noise, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. We loved the way the people in the audience communicated with us towards the end of the set, calling out their favorite songs, and asking that we introduce each band member.

Ages


Síðasta Kveðjan


Til Hennar

Moscow

This being the last gig of the tour, and the biggest, we were very excited. The show went down in the Central House of Artists in central Moscow, which is an impressive building by any standard.
Backstage between sets we were interviewed by O2TB, a Russian TV channel that reaches 12 million viewers in 210 cities all across Russia. O2TB also filmed the whole concert.

We've received a lot of photos and videos from people in the audience, and we would be happy to hear from more people. If you have photos, please share them with us!

After the show we broke a personal record in cd sales and spent quite some time signing autographs and cd's, and talking to the crowd.

Hallgrímur and Karl went to the train station shortly afterwards because they had to catch a plane to New York to play with Bloodgroup. The rest of the band retired back to our hostel to get some rest.

(Photos (©) by Linda Iliste)

Dubna

(Photo (©) by Sergey Kolier)

We got of the train early in the morning in a town called Tver. The train stopped for less than a minute, so we literally had to throw our bags out of the train.

We were picked up by our contact Iouri, who drove us to Dubna where we spent the day prior to soundcheck with our hosts who treated us to generous amounts of delicious Russian cuisine.

(Photo (©) by Sergey Kolier)

More than 300 people attended our show in the Hall of City Administration, where we played two long sets (nearly two hours). After the show we spent a long time talking to the audience, signing CD's and t-shirts. We nearly sold out or merchandise.

(Photos (©) by Sergey Kolier)

The night ended with a big feast together with our hosts, with music and lots of food. We're really looking forward to returning to Dubna next year.

(Photo (©) by Linda Iliste)