“I’m getting theatre masks! I’m getting it on my chest,” laughs Sturla Atlas. We’re in a tattoo studio in suburban Reykjavik and 21 Savage is playing as an artist sketches the masks on a sheet of paper. “My parents are theatre actors in Iceland and I grew up going to the theatre a lot. I just graduated from acting school last spring so this is like a part of me.”
Sigurbjatur Sturla Atlason has been making music for just under two years. He’s the frontman for Sturla Atlas, a hip-hop and pop group that went from being childhood friends growing up in downtown Reykjavik to opening for Justin Bieber at the biggest concert in their country’s history. Flanked by Logi Pedro and Johann Kristofer aka Joey Christ, they make up the core of a larger group of creatives hailing from Iceland’s city center called the 101 Boys. Whether it’s putting out zines or running a fashion line, the 101 Boys aren’t your typical music collective. “[People] can go online and see pictures from our daily lives, see what we represent, and buy clothing that we’ve made,” says Joey. “As an operation, we have the obligation to give people something.”
101 is the postal code in downtown Reykjavik, and Sturla Atlas feel like it’s their duty to rep the city centre. “The main emphasis of Iceland on an international basis is always the countryside and the landscapes,” says Sturla. “We grew up in the city, we didn’t grow up in the countryside… we have to rep the 101. What else could we be doing?” The matching 101 tattoos on their chests show you how seriously they take this. “Places we used to hang out at when we were kids are now hotels and AirBNBs and this tourism thing is taking over the city that we grew up in,” says Joey. “We also have the responsibility of saying this is our stuff here, and you can’t take it away from us.”
They started off as a hip-hop group but over the course of three mixtapes, they’ve morphed into more of an R&B act backed by some incredibly smooth production. “We found ourselves being in a position where we’re performing and we’re like ‘oh my god, we’re some kind of a boy band,’” says Sturla.
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The tattoo artist has fired up the gun and starts putting permanent theatre masks on Sturla’s chest. He insists that we carry on with the interview while this is happening. I figured this is the perfect time to bring up Justin Bieber. “Five minutes after Egil told me we were opening for him, I found this lying on the ground,” says Joey as he holds up a small card with Bieber’s face on it. “I felt like it was the universe talking to us.” The magnitude of a Bieber show happening in such a small country meant that six percent of the nation’s population was in attendance. That would amount to over 19 million people if it was happening in America. “To just go on stage, watch over the crowd, and see 19,000 people, you really realize in moments like this ‘Wow, this is definitely what I want to do,’” says Sturla. “This was the show that we wanted.”
While Bjork is the country’s most successful crossover star to date, there lies a formidable indie rock scene, with bands like Of Monsters and Men and Sigur Ros leading the way. Suffice to say, the music scene is slowly changing in the land of ice and fire, and Sturla Atlas is at the forefront of that change.
Opening for Bieber was quite the achievement for Sturla Atlas, and after hanging around the guys for a day, one gets the sense that it gave them some sort of vindication. “We’ve evolved when it comes to making a connection with an audience as well as making people go wild to the most unlikely tunes,” exclaims Sturla. Their background in performance arts has led to their live shows getting better and better. “A lot of our songs are really pop and really chill, and not songs you would hear at a club,” adds Sturla. “But still, we manage to make people go crazy when we play them.”
The theatre masks are just about done, and the artist is moving on to Joey, who has decided that he wants to get Jesus on his arm. “There are so many people, like us, who have never been into indie concerts and small clubs and seeing some band play,” says Joey. “The hip-hop wave that’s going on is a reaction to ten years of indie. People want to make the music that they want to listen to and I feel that’s what’s happening in Iceland right now.”
Iceland Airwaves, the country’s premier music festival, has also been emblematic of this change. “It’s always been the biggest indie festival full of bands from all over the world,” says Sturla. “Now, even that is evolving to become more of an R&B and hip-hop-ish festival.” That change also extends into confronting the growing number of sexual assaults at the Westman Islands Music Festival. Sturla Atlas have never been a group to shy away from speaking on bullshit, and you don’t need to look any further than their experience at this year’s edition to see that.
Between 2004 and 2014, 87 people sought counseling at Stígamót, a sexual assault crisis centre, after being assaulted at the festival. In 2015, the Westman Islands police chief requested that police, emergency workers, and hospital staff refuse to talk to journalists about any reported sexual assaults. Sturla Atlas was one of five bands to threaten to quit this year’s edition over these silencing tactics. “We made a statement and said that if the festival doesn’t do something to raise awareness about the situation, we won’t play,” says Joey. For what it’s worth, festival ended up issuing a statement, but this isn’t the only time the guys have used their platform to make a statement.
One of their latest singles, “Vino,” starts off with the following lyric repeated three times: “I’m sick and tired of these phony ass politicians flexing their phony ass powers.” Who could they possibly be talking about? “There’s an Icelandic politician called Bjarni Benediktsson, he’s part of the Icelandic Independent party,” says Joey. He’s currently Iceland’s Finance Minister and the Panama Papers leak showed that he used to have a stake in an offshore investment firm. “They are like a mafia,” adds Sturla. “There’s a huge Icelandic fish mafia and a huge Icelandic dairy mafia, it’s fucking gross.”
The tattoos are finished and the guys are getting ready to continue their day. Sturla has to go to The Icelandic Opera house soon, as he’ll be part of the night’s performance. We make plans to meet up later on in the night after leaving the studio.
Spend any amount of time around the 101 Boys and one thing becomes clear: these guys are always thinking big picture. While their peers have been recording in Icelandic, Sturla Atlas have been recording in English. The benefits are twofold—they become unique within the Icelandic music scene while simultaneously ensuring their ability to eventually take their project outside of the country.
“The music that inspired us to start this project is in English,” said Joey. “It was never an option to do it in Icelandic.” With a successful year behind them and tour dates lined up across Europe, the group is on the verge of breaking out of Iceland. “Doing it in English makes us even more unique domestically,” added Sturla.
It was just after 3 AM and with an early flight the next day, my time in Iceland was winding down. I was at Prikið, a popular bar in Reykjavik that’s known for playing hip-hop. I was about to order one last drink, when I felt an arm on my shoulder. “We’re heading out, man,” said Sturla. “See you in Toronto next year.”
Sasha Kalra is a writer based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter.
All photos by Kjartan Hreinsson