Just Another Snake Cult

I’ve been enjoying listening to Berndsen’s debut album, Lover in the Dark.  The album came out last year, a project of Davíð Berndsen.  Nine nuanced nuggets of Giorgio Moroder-style ’80s synthpop, maybe a little Duran Duran, a dash of Aha.  Dynamic arrangements. Sometimes bright, sometimes dreary, sometimes fantastical.  No aggressive pretention.  No over-the-top, self-reflective, sassy irony.  Just some sincere, competent synthpop worship of the type I described.

Berndsen photo by Wenjing

The first thing I noticed when seeing them play live is that what may have been expertly sequenced tracks on the album, there was no backing track — everything was played live.  Obviously the result was not as tight as their recorded output but nonetheless much more impressive to see — the intricate synth parts, saxophone solos, guitar and bass work, vocoder, and drums being performed.

I apologize that I messed up recording these tracks so they’re not as clear as they could have been.

Recorded at Sódóma in downtown Reykjavík on April 23, 2010.