MIDNIGHT, LOW NIGHT

“I understand why Sugarcubes and Sigur Rós sounded so weird: it was the isolation. You’re influenced only by your friends.”

Isolation. It’s an emotion we’ve all become too familiar with in 2020, much more than we’d have ever liked. Thanks to lockdowns, curfews and social distancing, life has taken on an alien feeling that’s brought about the need for many adjustments.

For Sólstafir, however, isolation is the standard. For 25 years, the quartet have been creating dynamic post-metal from the beating heart of Iceland – a small island country in the North Atlantic, more than 700 miles away from neighbouring Greenland.

“It’s like creative inbreeding,” frontman Aðalbjörn ‘Addi’ Tryggvason says of sustaining a group in such a remote part of the world. “The Sugarcubes