You may have seen the videos of Björk spinning reggaeton behind a CDJ at some point in your doomscrolling and felt jealousy for everyone witnessing it. The Mánakvöld (literally “moon night”) parties are a normal occurrence in the basement venue at Smekkleysa, the brick and mortar incarnation of the legendary Icelandic label Björk founded with her old band the Sugarcubes. Smekkleysa, Icelandic for “bad taste,” need not match the highly curated selection the store holds, a mix of rock, pop, experimental, and electronic records with a healthy injection of new pressings out of the contemporary Icelandic music scene.
Smekkleysa’s 40th anniversary coincided with Echolalia, the total eclipse rave that elevates the moon night concept to a one-day festival. Helmed by Björk and Venezuelan experimental icon Arca, as well as the crème of Reykjavík’s rich electronic scene, including ballerina-turned-ravemaker Knackered and Spanish-Icelandic duo LOCCABALLOS, the event had attendees dancing, turning looks, and experiencing the eclipse together despite the rain. Arca ushered us into the darkness with a set that included traditional Afro-Venezuelan drum rhythms. As quickly as the light left, it was ushered back to the day in the hands of Björk rocking a custom Robert Wun balloon dress.
The label’s longevity is separate from the store, which just four years ago found its footing in the current space. Siggi Baldursson—former drummer of the Sugarcubes, Smekkleysa label co-founder, and an integral piece of the Icelandic scene—told SPIN about the numerous physical location changes, the space almost shuttering before an investor came in, and the punk spirit that persists despite the economic realities of running a space. It all boils down to the way the community moves in Reykjavík.
“Part of it is a slightly anarchic approach, because there’s a lot of interplay between artists. People from black metal bands are playing in jazz bands, they’re playing in pop stuff as well. It all gets a bit mixed in,” says Baldursson of the scene in Reykjavík that Smekkleysa has helped foster. “There’s a very healthy, collaborative aspect to the whole music community here. I like to talk about the music community rather than the music business, because there is a lack of major label music business here. Instead, there’s a very healthy sense of DIY and sort of punk ethics, which is more ‘DIT’—do it together.”
SPIN sat down with Baldursson over espresso at Smekkleysa’s upstairs café to talk about the label’s history, how it became a brick and mortar space, and the rich community of experimental musicians bubbling in Reykjavík.
The label came before the space, no?
Yes. We didn’t really have a record store until the late 1980s when Ásmundur Jónsson, a legend of the Icelandic music scene, was our label manager. Ási is still a good friend to all of us. He had his own label called Gramm, and he worked closely with Einar Örn back in 1982. In ’81 they actually opened a record store called Gramm in Reykjavík, which was one of the first alternative record stores here, and they ran that store until about 1987. After Gramm folded, Ási started working for another record store for a couple of years, and then in the late ’90s, Ási and Einar opened up a Smekkleysa record store. Smekkleysa had been a label, and it started as an artist collective. We still release books on the Smekkleysa label…there’s a guy called Sjón who has worked closely with Björk and is a very prominent figure in this group of writers. So was Þór Eldon, who was the guitarist in the Sugarcubes. Him and Björk were married for a few years. We got our first international recording contract in ’87, and they were splitting up at the time, but they decided to work together in the band.
Fleetwood Mac vibes.
Oh yeah. And then the keyboard player became Þór’s next girlfriend. We had kids traveling with us on tour. Me and the bass player were married to twin sisters. It was a fun sort of in-house family. It was like a big family. After the band reaches its conclusion, everyone goes their separate ways. I formed a little fun mambo band, and moved away from Iceland in ’93 and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where there was a wonderful studio called Smart Studios. Founded by a guy called Butch Vig. His biggest claim to fame is probably that he recorded Nevermind by Nirvana in that studio. I also aimed at forming another Smekkleysa record store again, just up the street from here.
There was another Smekkleysa store before this one?
Yeah. They formed and opened the record store—I think it was when I was moving back here in 2003 or so.
Smekkleysa moved to two different locations before it landed here?
Yes, it was just up the street, in the basement there. Then it moved to a house just around the corner from here, and then it moved again to another place across from a performance space called Mengi before it moved to this space in 2019 or ’20. It was really tough running a record store in Reykjavík. There were like five record stores in a town of 200,000 people; you don’t need to be a scientist to see that doesn’t really add up. Most of them were catering to the tourists. Of course we had all the potential to do that, but even though it’s this huge history of Icelandic music—a record store partially owned by the label Smekkleysa, Björk’s label affiliated with the Sugarcubes—that wasn’t being properly conveyed in the marketing. With some help we turned it into a café and bar upstairs with the record store and performance space downstairs. It’s a collaboration between several investments and our label history.
It was really sick to see. The first time that I learned about this was when I saw videos of the full moon parties. Does Björk still do them?
She started doing it just when it was here upstairs.
Behind the bar?
Yeah, just in the corner. People would just watch through the windows and crowd in here. It gets ridiculously packed. Those moon nights are fun. I actually once did a DJ set right after her, which was not so much fun.
What are your DJ sets like?
I mostly do DJ sets of oddball world music vinyls. I’ve been collecting since the ’80s.
And would you say, now that this place has started doing better, as you said, that it’s become kind of like a hub for a lot of the local arts?
Yes, and it warms my heart, because that’s where we started. We started as a grassroots collective. We were roughly 20 years old, in an anarcho-punk band called KUKL, and we wanted to change the art scene in Reykjavík. So we formed our own collective, and that’s what a lot of people are still doing today. They maybe don’t have quite the hopes that we had of changing the art scene. And yes, today, looking back, the formation of Smekkleysa as a label and art collective was a huge step for Icelandic music and Icelandic art in general. I think a very positive one in that sense. Part of what I consider our success in export of Icelandic music, because we have a very high ratio of internationally known artists coming from this very small place.
I feel like record stores are such a key kind of anchor to movements like that within a community. Where else are the punks gathering and the people gathering, or even just to go dig through the stacks or make new friends?
Yes. Record stores, cafes. That’s why most record stores today have a cafe. Like, they have to be multifaceted, multidisciplinary spaces if they want to survive and thrive. That’s what happened here as our little record store was basically being suffocated in its own little nerdism. We weren’t able to sort of open it up and sort of invest what we needed to invest in creating a bar and cafe and a performance space, so when that happened it was a very positive twist.
It really feels like there’s a comfortable future ahead for this place. You’re more involved on the label side rather than the space’s day-to-day, but what is your bigger picture for the future of the Smekkleysa brick and mortar?
I want to see this become a home for a lot of the grassroots operations in Iceland. They can use this as a space that they feel comfortable and safe in, which is what is happening now though it’s taken some time. It takes time for a performance space like this to become organically functional. It can be technically functional, but it doesn’t become organically functional until the people make it so. That’s where the community aspect of its function comes in. I see that now, only in the last year, it’s really been sort of shaping up more. It was very empty for the first half year, even though we were doing shows and Björk was doing the moon nights. People would come to the events and then they’d go. The cafe didn’t really become a communal space where people could meet and sort of create a community, and that’s what I’m sort of betting on and, yes, seeing it happen.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.