8 Tracks: Of Being Stranded In An Icelandic Hurricane With Nanook Of The North

Music

Nanook of the North is a duo composed of two accomplished Polish musicians – Stefan Wesołowski and Piotr Kaliński (also known as Hatti Vatti). Following a stunning recent Boiler Room performance, their self-titled debut album is out 2nd March.

Inspired in part by their improvised score to a screening of the classic 1922 silent film Nanook of the North, the album was recorded in Iceland's capital of Reykjavík in order to maintain the film's ambient essence. Using this material as a jumping off point, the project expanded to encompass dystopian electronica, bass-heavy drone and horror movie soundtracks.

Stefan and Piotr have put together this ace 8 Tracks selection for us – from Björk and David Bowie to Ben Frost and Alva Noto, dive in below.

"The story behind this is that once the record was done we were about to leave Reykjavik in the afternoon, but at 2pm someone told us that the biggest hurricane of the last 25 years was coming. We couldn't believe that but in reality all the roads and airports had been closed. So we got stuck and Stefan had a show next day, so we can tell the story through that…"

Nanook of the North is out 2nd March on Denovali Records.

LISTEN

Björk - It's Not Up To You

STEFAN: Björk is the essence of northern spirit and we love her very much, she is a living legend. Funny thing – the first song we heard when we turned on the barely-catching-waves, noisy radio in our Reykjavik flat was this song. Couldn’t be more Icelandic.

Björk - It's Not Up To You

STEFAN: Björk is the essence of northern spirit and we love her very much, she is a living legend. Funny thing – the first song we heard when we turned on the barely-catching-waves, noisy radio in our Reykjavik flat was this song. Couldn’t be more Icelandic.
Alva Noto - Xerrox Monophaser 2

PIOTR: Stunning, emotional and beautiful. But kind of brutal too. For me it was always a vision or kind of imaginary soundtrack for freezing to death.
Listen To Me Marlon Ost

STEFAN: Some time before our Iceland trip and recording session, I composed the main theme to Stevan Riley’s masterpiece documentary “Listen To Me Marlon” and we watched it for the first time this night in Reykjavik. We were sitting there in our cozy flat in the middle of the biggest hurricane in years, watching this film about Marlon Brando, where the first music after exciting Universal Pictures opening is music composed by me, and there was also music credits including Jóhann Jóhannsson or Ólafur Arnalds, who let us use his studio while he was in Chile. Quite surreal.
Ben Frost - Theory Of Machines

PIOTR: Frost is a very interesting artist, now based in Reykjavík. I think that’s already enough. My favourite track from him.
David Bowie - Im Deranged

STEFAN: Getting stuck in Reykjavik would not be that bad, except for the fact that I had quite a big show the next day in Poland. While Piotr with our manager Tomek were drinking Koskenkorva in the other room, I was stuck in my bedroom with my headphones, tons of papers and pencils, trying to write all the music material and sending pics of it to my musicians, to let them play the concert the next day without me. Yeah, definitely I was deranged.
Glenn Gould - The Goldberg Variations

STEFAN: It was about 4 A.M. when Tomek came and said, “They opened one way to the airport. Let’s risk it and try to get there.” And we did it. Tomek was trying to buy new tickets via his phone, I was driving, snow was calmly snowing, and Bach was beautifully scoring it.
Scianka - Dni Wiatru

PIOTR: This tune is literally about weather. In Polish it means “Days Of Wind”. My favourite Polish band, actually they are from the same city as we are. Amazing album, great soundtrack for the winter season. Slow and very intense.
Angelo Badalamenti - Dark Space Low

PIOTR: During my second stay in Greenland I was watching the first episodes of Twin Peaks – The Return. Public and stable Wi-Fi is very rare, or at least very, very limited and expensive to watch a movie online. I remember watching the first episode on a tiny Arctic Umiaq Line ship from Sisimiut to Nuuk via Kangaamiut and Maniitsoq after desperately looking for some internet connection before being locked for two days on a ship somewhere on the Davis Strait / Baffin Sea. ‘Dark Space Low’ is my favourite track from the new soundtrack.