Today our wandering take us to the far north and the music of Iceland. Icelandic electronic act Vök was formed in January 2013 by singer Margrét Rán and saxophone player Andri Már Enoksson. After two years of working together they felt it was time to introduce themselves to the public ear – as VOK. The introduction was successful. The first concert ever was at the prestigious Icelandic music experiments which they even won. Since then Margrét Rán and Andri Már Enoksson played many of Icelands biggest festivals.
In summer 2013 they introduced guitarist Ólafur Aleksander to the fold. And so the duo grew to a trio. They were searching for a name and had many ideas, but all of them lacked character and/or didn’t speak to them. It was Andri who finally came up with the name “Vök” and it just stuck! Vök means “hole in ice” in Icelandic. In an interview, Andri Már, explained how the name fits their music. “Vök can mean this dark, dark thing, this hole in the ice,” Már said. “But vök can actually mean hole in clouds as well, so it can be this bright thing as well. It has this duality to it. I think we can have very dark, very melancholic music, but we also like to have bright and warm songs as well.”
Vok hail from Reykjavik where there is a flourishing music scene. Andri says “Many people you meet when you are out on the town are musicians or like to dabble in some kind of music, the rest are music lovers so the city and its culture is filled with music of all genres and it kind of lights a fire under your butt and you just want to participate in it. We really don’t know to which extent the city influences us (we probably stand to close to it to see it) but the countryside definitely does!”
They take a lot of 80’s and 90’s inspiration to their music-making and sometimes even some early 2000’s R&B vibes. “The 80’s produced some of the greatest and some of the worst sounds of music history. It was a very interesting time for music making and in particular for pop music. The shift that happen from the 70’s over to 80’s is unbelievable. So yes we do love 80’s analog synths and incorporate that in our songs a lot. But we like to mix it up. There’s a lot of combining contemporary sounds with more “traditional” ones. We do whatever feels good and feels appropriate for the song at that particular time.”
They write songs in both Icelandic and English. In a recent interview they suggested that “there is something charming about writing lyrics in English though. There’s a different approach to writing in another language that is not your mother-tongue. You can analyze themes from more of a distance. It can be quite liberating.”
In The Dark, draws a little inspiration from Margrét’s childhood fear of, well, the dark. She says of the opening title track: “This song is basically about getting over your fears. About stepping out of the dark. You tend to overthink things in your head, or I do anyway, and you get really scared of nothing. You just imagine things. I used being scared of the dark as a reference, as I was always afraid of the dark when I was younger. And a little bit now. (laughs) So it means ‘get your ass out there, there’s nothing to be afraid of’”.
