BANG GANG / BARDI JOHANNSSON
biography
Bardi Johannsson, tall and irregular stands as a man belonging to an Edward Gorey
novel casting his shadow far too wide to fit his angular form. Maybe it is so that he is
too foreign for even he himself to recognize that he just wasn’t made for these times.
However, the truth remains that he is nothing but a romantic disguised as a phantom
lurking in and out of space just as the dead do to simply convince us into believing
that sad songs could never feel so good. The love is in his voice and the innocent way
he sings his sad songs, oh so forlorn, for happy days.
Bang Gang’s album, ‘Something Wrong’ is haunting, in the most beautifully possible
way. The album is surrealistic and atmospheric with his use of pure instrumentation
to transcend electronic synthesis. Like an absurd French existential novel Bardi as the
orchestrated evil genius dares us to ‘Follow’ him through an oblivion of swirling
melody in a hypnotically enchanting fashion where upon he guides us up some lost
winding staircase to a place we fear. A place inside our every heartbeat. He makes
music to satisfy his own desire and resembles an Icelandic Philip Glass mixed with
Jarvis Cocker and Brian Wilson. He presents a pop sensibility juxtapose an avant-
guard compositional style tailor made to fit the rock n’ roll archetype and yet redefine
it. These may be reasons why television producers choose Bang Gang to set the
atmosphere in there shows like TV drama The O.C.
Bardi Johannsson defines psychedelic whimsy and evanescence in his side project the
soundtrack opus ‘Haxan’ where upon he performs with the National Symphony of
Bulgaria. Perhaps it’s the isolation of Iceland, alienated in the ocean like a lonely
child standing awaiting reformation that gives its inhabitants such a pride in its
individualism. Perhaps it’s the twenty hours a day of sunlight reciprocated against the
twenty hours a day of darkness that make up the years reprise that blurs the
conventions of dreaming and waking oh so unconvincingly that gives its musicians
such an instinctual vigor. The Icelandic landscape reverberates a sound much like
Bardi Johannsson’s music; beautifully severe and sublimely painful but nevertheless
majestic. Bardi Johannsson illustrates a passion for music like a minister of a
congregation yet where upon he baptizes his sound dirty with realism that helps
people feel less ashamed of their loneliness.
The French ingénue Keren Ann teams with Johannsson in Bang Gang and yet again to
create the dynamic duo known as Lady & Bird in the album Lady & Bird recently
released on Yellow Tangerine in the US and on Labels/EMI in Europe. The two
resemble a young Lou Reed and Nico and so it is only fitting that they would chose to
remake ‘Stephanie Says’ with the drifting innocence in a way that echoed their
predecessors.
He outfits as a producer, a fashion designer, director, musician, singer and composer.
In Milan he has a full size statue, in Iceland he is the dark prince who walks the
nights alone and in France he is hailed as the next Phil Spector. He depicts the
musical side of fashion house Emporio Armani, cosmetics brand Yves Rocher and
carmaker Lancia in their television ads. A renaissance man in the truest form he is
obsessive, narcissistic, hung-over, mad and romantic. Oceanic and limitless his songs
sound much too real and much too beautiful. Bardi Johannsson is an anomaly that
blends together Rock’n’Roll and sadness to create a sound that bellows through your
body like a misremembered dream and for that he makes us stop in the name of love.
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