In the midst of all the terrible excuses for teen musicians that tend to pollute the airwaves nowadays, every now and then a young act with actual talent comes by and sucker-punches the music scene in the ears with how ridiculously awesome it is. Sykur is one of those bands.
Interestingly enough, I first discovered the band completely by accident – I was searching for music videos of Sigur Rós’s track Hijomalind and chanced upon a live performance of their track Lessupjetur instead. While it initially started off sounding like your typical uhn-tiss-uhn-tiss house beat, throughout the track the two introduced enough interesting riffs and aural flourishes to incite me to check out their other stuff on their MySpace page.
And ho-lee shiet, what a line-up. Even though I’ve only heard a grand total of 6 of their songs, the group is already one of my favorite artists to listen to on non-stop repeat. It should come no surprise that their name literally translates to mean Sugar, because their music’s totally sweet, 100% addictive, and will give you more of an energy rush than a whole bag of Smoked Smarties.
Still, it’s one thing to read my yammering on about their music, and yet another to actually hear it. With that said, let’s give one of their tracks a listen… make sure you have your headphones on!
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Sykur – “Naked Ape”
As you can tell, the style of the music is heart-thumpingly upbeat and perpetually busy, with a constant texture of new synths and rhythms to keep your ears occupied. And boy, do these guys know how to make a catchy riff – I’ve been humming the part that kicks in at 00:52 all day for the past week.
Still, the riff from Naked Ape pales in comparison to the epic-ness of the one in Swedish Snowboard Girl, destroying minds about 45 seconds in:
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Sykur – “Swedish Snowboard Girl”
Sadly, the band doesn’t have an official album out yet, so the only place to listen to all their music in high-quality is on their aforementioned Myspace page, which thankfully allows people outside of Iceland to gain access to their amazing work. Nonetheless, I know these guys are going to make it big someday, and the day their album comes out for pre-order I’ll be in front of my desktop, clicker-finger poised in preparation to buy.
Be sure to also check out Sykur’s official website and follow them on Twitter!
Nicely nice nice nice. Thanks for introducing me to these – I've got the first one stuck in my head too. Damn you, damn you all to hell! (Or in this case, damn you, damn you, and you only to hell).
But yeah. =D
Good stuff, Kev.
Hey kev,
Nice find! Naked ape is pretty sick, I'll be sure to keep on eye them.
You may or may not have heard of these (they're reasonably well known here in the UK but I don't know if they've jumped the pond yet), but they're worth a mention anyway….
Hadouken! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR-aSVdN5KM
if you don't mind a bit of Drum & Bass, The Qemist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiu2Kzd0KU
and finally my personal favourite, Late of the Pier (this has a pretty tasty vid which I'm sure you'll enjoy and a middle8 to end all middle8s) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKdbuNlQhtk
Llynus.
Hey Llynus,
Glad you liked Sykur! Anyways, I just checked out all the tracks you mentioned. Turns out I actually have Crank it Up in my iTunes library – picked up Music For An Accelerated Culture a while ago and that's one of the songs I kept from it.
Stompbox is a really badass track, and while I'm not too partial to that Late of Pier single (just a personal tendency), the video is definitely very eyegasmic, and trippy in all the right ways.
Thanks for all the recommendations, I appreciate it! It's why I do posts like these… hehe.
-Kev, The Virts