Interview with Icelandic band Hatari for LAIF-magazine (as published on http://www.laif.pl)

We have been following Hatari for a couple of years now. The first concert we attended was in 2016 in Reykjavík. What happened since? Your stage appearance has obviously changed a lo since.

-> There has been a lot of development within the band. And then in December 2018 our company Svikamylla ehf. let us go for a while.  There had not been enough  growth inside the company at the time. But after seeing the enthusiasm that we were getting not much later they felt we could maybe continue with our anti capitalistic message and then sell a couple of T-shirts or merchandise along the way. It looked for some time we were out of a job but we are happy to be back working again for Svikamylla ehf. (Relentless Scam). Obviously we are only partly deploys, so we don’t have a steady pay check. Matthías is sort of unemployed at the moment.

But I read in the news Matthías recently got a job in the theater in Reykjavík?

-> euhm, yeah exactly.

You have been collaborating recently with Palestinian musician Bashar Murad. Have you been thinking about other dream collaborations?

-> Euhm, yes. Britney Spears, Noam Chomsky, Björk. We would be interested in doing a collaboration with Donald Trump and Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson, he is an icelandic director. Obviously we would love to collaborate with Greta Tunsberg. That would be awesome! Naomi Klein that would be great. Mark Fisher. Spice Girls. Laibach.

Mentioning Laibach. When hearing some of your new songs in the Secret Solstice 2019 live performance your music tends to be more into the direction of classic electronic body music. What is gonna be the next direction?

-> We are intending to perfect the art form of Icelandic dungeon inspired BDSM Techno political performative art. You know, incorporating various styles and of course with punk inspired choreography obviously and video-art as well.  That is where we are heading. We are more like a multi media platform but our main objective is now music.  We strive to investigate what it means to be a multimedia project within the confines of the music world.

We noticed you also have a lot of young fans in the audience. How does that coincide with your dungeon BDSM stage-act.

-> We love children! Youth seems to recognise what we speak about and they understand and feel that change is needed as we live in a dystopia. Of course we seek opportunities to invest in the younger generation.

However the stage-act tends to be quite sexual, do you think kids do understand this?

-> Yes, yes! I think it is very important to teach kids about sexuality. Being confident about what it is being an unconstrained human being with the confines of the human society today. But also, on  a different note that doesn’t mean that children have the same understanding as adults would. They have another understanding. A beautiful understanding.  And it is maybe not as sexual as adults would perceive it. So we think it is important to give children the space to understand it in their own way.

To round up a couple of short questions.

What is your current mood?

-> Dystopic

In what sense dystopic?

-> In the sense that the end is like the rise of populism is all surrounding. We live within a world that we feel like extremism is normalised.

Five years ago we were..?

-> Unemployed. Struggling to pay the rent.

But I guess you were still in school 5 years ago, right?

-> Euhm,.. yeah.. and we were naturally preparing for the apocalypse. And thinking about how we could earn a living.

The first track we fell in love with was?

-> Probably,.. ‘Head, shoulder, knees and toes’. That is such a classic.  And the icelandic lullaby ‘Meet my young love’. It is a song about a mother who lost her young child. It was sung to us when we were children. The father was outlawed. It was a sad story. That is what we grew up hearing.

Our first performance was..

-> at Gaukurinn. It was with icelandic artist Solveig Matthildur and her band Kælan Mikla. Some members of that band with Solveig leading the way were organising a grassroots alternative music event in Reykjavik.  Our first performance was at one of these events.  At that time we still had long hair!

Things we always do before the show

-> Well, there are a couple of things on our rider. We obviously want to have a nebuliser machine to make the vocalcords clean. We want to have 80 minutes of clear meditation time during which we cannot be disturbed. So our dressingroom needs to be well insulated so we cannot hear the surroundings during a festival. That is very important.  Obviously there is the ritual of getting into the costumes. We have Karl, he is our shoeshiner. He closes our shoes and during this we give him moral support. Our newest member in the entourage Greta Arosborg has a PhD in engineering and as such is in charge of harness-logistics. She has been very professional in handling our harnesses and our costumes. So having her on board is excellent. Putting on the harness takes about 9 and a half minutes on each person. Which is a recordtime. Unbelievable!

And if there are any emotional issues we will just talk them through. Keep each other consent. Acceptance.

Things we would never do before a concert..

-> Promote branded merchandise from retailers other than Relentless Scam Incorporated (Svikamylla ehf.).  That would be a breach on our contract.

Music we recently discovered..

-> The fifth symphony of Mahler. The Fifth, that is my new favourite.

Women that inspire us..

-> Greta Tunsberg, Björk, Naomie Klein, Pussy Riots, Britney Spears, Beyonce,.. and of course Daughters of Reykjavik and Cyber. That is one of our collaborators.  And also Erlen, a performance artist who is based here in Iceland and gave a speech before our gig tonight. She had some inspiring words to say.

Where is Hatari gonna be in 5 years?

-> Well, there are 2 options here. Capitalism is destroyed and then we are of course rebuilding the social economic system that suits all human beings. If not, then we are still striving to achieve that goal: Dismantling the capitalist world order.

Takk fyrir!