Hey everyone, just wanted to tell you about the delightful fact that our song Astarsaga ur Fjöllunum was played on RadioNY.org's show The Independent Sound this week. We hope the listeners liked it... :D


You can listen to the broadcast here... :D http://radiony.org/

Ciao babies!

svavar Knútur

Hey hey!

Just wanted to let you guys know that we've had a couple of nice reviews for Silent Treatment. Not all splendiferous, but more or less nice :D

Grapevine: Maybe Hraun, a band who can be genuinely good when seen live, are the Brennivin of music. (Ben Murray) Best song: Silent Treatment. Worst song: Happy Song

Radio RUV: Good album, really good lyrics. Drummer is absolutely wonderful. Album misfits: Thunderball and So let us drink. Album highlights, the rest! Verdict: First album was slightly better, but that's just my taste. This one is awesome nonetheless. (Andrea Jónsdóttir)

Morgunblaðið: 3,5 stars out of 5: Hot Lava! Really good album, reflecting well Hrauns signature modest approach to life and music. Songs might be a little stronger, but the lyrics are wonderful and the songs are very good, they just could be fantastic... ;-) ( Jóhann Ágúst Jóhannsson)

Well... Keep them coming...

I personally give this album 4,5 stars!!! I love it! I can't wait to hear the band's next album, when they tackle redemption and love of life. (Svavar Knútur)

Hraun has just recently released it's second album, Silent Treatment, where the band continues it's three album journey from Misery to Redemption. The journey started with our beautiful but somber album I can't believe it's not happiness and will conclude with an opus of joy soon to come.

Silent Treatment continues where "Happiness" left off, travelling through the fens of hope, faith, anger and occasional pitfalls. It was recorded in an abandoned fishing plant in the eastern fjords of Iceland, surrounded by the sea on one side and a mountain full of waterfalls on the other.

We love our new album and it can be bought at Dimma.grapewire.net or in record and book stores in Iceland :D

Looking forward to hearing your comments.

Our fans in North Germany might want to be catching Singer Svavar Knutur going on tour alongside Hamburg Singer/songwriter Torben Stock around a couple of cities in North Germany.

Looking forward to seeing you folks :D

 

We made it throug to the top five so prepare thyself London because here we come. We would like to thank the revered panel of judges for letting us in to the competition, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir former president of Iceland and codmother, Guðrún Helgadóttir for a beautiful story, and last but not least Cod. oh and the bbc and our spouses and families and all that.

Hey Guys!
Just wanted to let you know that our beautiful song, Astarsaga ur fjöllunum (lovestory from the mountains) has been selected among 20 semi-finalists in BBC World service's Next Big Thing competition.

Please go and check it out at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/129_nbt07_rules/page2.shtml

I think they have a myspace profile here: http://www.myspace.com/bbcbigthing

Please if you can find the time, show up there and rate our song...

Best wishes,
Svavar Knútur and the men of Hraun

Rise and shine!!! It's acoustic guitar tine :)   I'm trying to make up for missing the feeling of being happy about waking up this morning. Having finished the guitar parts yesterday, we opened a couple of beers, so the head wasn't the least happy with waking upp this morning.

Anyway, having dragged our assess to the studio, we experimented with a few mike placements before finding the One... Svavar was amazing and I think he really got some good recording today.

And now, for the very first time, recording with Hraun, it was time for keyboards. It was time for Gunnar Ben. Poor Gunnar had been at Seyðisfjörður for 4 days, not recording anything. While waiting he had gotten ill and recovered, waited, read a book, waited, done nothing, waited, worked on his parts, waited.... you get the idea. But now it was time.

Again, we set up in the same hall as drums and guitar were redorded in. Instead of plugging the keybord straight into the equipment, we had brought amps, which we blasted the keyboard through, recording it thusly, with ambience and all. It was amazing.

This will be our last post from the Cod Sessions. It has been an amazing time, just the thing we needed to get the atmosphere we wanted. It has been cold to say the least, the giant house had very little heating so we had to resort a couple of  variously dubious methods to stay warm. The whole thing was cought on video tape which we will now proceed to edit and probably show to you soon enough.

But thanks for staying tuned,
until next time,

Hraun!

Guitar session today. Getting up bright and early, fully confident that we would get along fine without Jon Hallur, the sound engineer (who stayed up late with Loftur), we headed on to the studio and realized that we were a man short (namely the forementioned Jon Hallur). Connecting all that equipment was a bit to much, so we headed back on home and woke up poor Jon Hallur and Jon Geir, who stayed up late recording the bass with Loftur.

The bass recordings yesterday went great. I think we managed to achieve the best bass sound ever.

We decided to record the guitar in the same space as the drums, which in the aftermath proved to be a wise decision, because the guitar and drum sound clicked like a gun being cocked for the kill.

And now for something completely different. While one is recording, the rest don't have much to do. But it's fortunate that everybody is very interested in how the other is doing with his recordings, which is a confident booster. If you're not doing the right thing, the rest will tell you.

The guitar took all day to record, it was about 22:00 when we had finished. But that didn't stop us. We decided to setup for flute and a secret instument, which i think will come as a plesent surprice to all of you.

But now it's time for sleep. More tomorrow.

Todays goal was to finish both the rest of the drums and the bass. We went of to a good start and had finished the drum recordings at suppertime. The drums were recorded in a huge room which has a considerable amount of reverb so alot of time went into tuning the equipment and experimenting with mike placements to get the sound we we're after. And the result won't disappoint you.

After we had finished the drums, we ate a little food and got back to business.  It was time for our friendly neighbourhood bassplayer, Loftur, to show of his huge talent.
   We started with the same care in sound experimenting as we did with the drums, tuning the amp and all other equipment to our satisfaction.

Guitar takes are scheduled in the morning so we've split the team in two, one group is to go to sleep, while the other will stay up, trying to finish the bass.

More news tomorrow on how the bass session succeeded.

Nighty night from Hraun

We've been planning this for a few months now and it's surprising how few of the things that could possibly go wrong, are actually going wrong.

We started this day by sending Hjalti to Egilstadir at 9 am to pick up the rest of the band, plus our sound engineer, maestro Jón Hallur , Egilsstaðir being the next town with an airport (about one fjord away). This included picking up the recording equipment, weighing in at about a 150 kg which ment a huge shipping cost. but all went well and we have all the people we needed for today´s work. We finished setting up all the stuff and adjusting it around 5 pm.

We started recording everything together but put the emphasis on getting the drums sounding right and we are going to build it up from there. Have you ever heard of John Bonham and nerdism :-)

Todays work got us the drum tracks for 7 songs and the bass for... some,., of them :-s ? (ok... i wasn´t keeping track).

Tomorrows' work on the other hand starts in 7 hours.

Good night for now... don't let the Bed Bugs Bite....




really.... we're not joking with them bugs.....

The first wave of band members arrived at Seyðisfjördur today. We are all extactic about the whole thing. For you not in the inner circle, Hraun is starting to work on a new album tomorrow.

We are stationed at Seyðisfjordur, which is a small town in East Iceland and we have locked ourselves up in an old fish factory warehouse processing thingy... whatever.. you get the drift...

It has a number of nice ambient rooms in all shapes and sizes, which we hope will give us the soundscape we are looking for.

Anyway introductions aside, we will keep you posted at least once a day and hopefully get some demos (uyeahhh) up here soon.

Today: We drove for friggi$%$"$n hours today... and then we replaced about a billion (or so...) strings. That´s all... a productive day that is ... yeah...

Goodbye for now

Hraun