Apparat Organ Quartet
Apparat Organ Quartet

Do you remember the old electric organs?
What happened to the legendary Hammonds that in the 1930s replaced the massive pipe organs in churches and from there on ventured into every genre, from the jazz of Smith and Patton, to the hard rock of Deep Purple, passing by Pink Floyd and Santana...
Today, those organs have given way to modern synths and ended up in dusty corners, forgotten by the majority.

Not by the Apparat Organ Quartet, who have dusted off as many as four. Together with old tube amplifiers, vocoders, Russian synthesizers (!), and other vintage electronic gear gathered from who knows which attics and brought back to life.
All of this vintage equipment is used to recreate an old-school electro-pop sound that remains a constant in the work of these five Icelanders, now releasing their debut album after various collaborations with the likes of Mùm and Jonsi of Sigur Rós.

The inspiration from 1970s German electronic music (read Kraftwerk) is very clear, and there are more recent references to Stereolab and Mùm. They themselves claim influences taken even from the themes of old horror movies, and indeed, in some parts, it seems like you're listening to the legendary Goblins of Simonetti!
But there are also more enveloping and ethereal atmospheres, suspended between vintage sounds and voices passing through those vocoders that have become the hallmark of Air and Daft Punk, or sudden bursts where the guitar distortion is replaced by the sound of organs, aptly filtered by those old tube amps.

Unfortunately, for now, the album is only available online, but talent is not in short supply and the originality (paradoxically) retro could be the right key for a well-deserved landing on the continent. We wait; in the meantime, I'm dusting off my old Farfisa...

A couple of samples in .rm format
A couple of videoclips
A few news and other things