One of the most promising acts in Iceland, having won the Iceland Music Awards, Hjaltalin purvey melodic indie rock with a conspicuous line up "[...] Allowing them to alternate between full bloodied rock basslines and the soaring appeal of Sufjan Steven's heraldic approach. Epic promise." Clash Mag
Having been nominated for five of March 2008's Icelandic Music Awards they went on to win Best Songwriter - Högni Egilsson - and The Brightest Hope.
Benni Hemm Hemm and Gunni Tynes of múm produced their debut album “Sleepdrunk Seasons”, released to great acclaim in Iceland last December. The album is due for imminent Scandinavian-wide release and will hit the UK in November and the rest of Europe in January.
The release will be followed by a Europe-wide tour in January, Scandinavian tour in February and another European tour in April. Hjaltalín currently have a new song, “Thu komst vid hjartad í mér”, now topping the charts in Iceland. It’s a cover of a song by Iceland Disco singer Paul Oscar and translates as “You Touched My Heart”.
Hjaltalín are from Reykjavik, a band as promising as any of the other beautiful and eclectic artists the country has thrown up. With eight members, it’s difficult to know whether to call them a small orchestra, a mutated and overgrown rock band or something else entirely. Besides the regular guitar, bass and drums, the band also comprises piano, accordion, bassoon, clarinet, cello and a violin, complimenting the exquisite lilt of Högni and Sigga's vocals. This unique group of instrumentalists form an allegiance which already has a very solid fan base amongst both critics and the public on home ground. The UK lies in wait and will surely be theirs in due course...
The song “The Trees Don't Like the Smoke” was written in the autumn months of 2008. The lyrics are written by a dear friend of the band, Óskar Arnórsson who is currently working as an architect but has been active as a sideman in the icelandic music scene for a number of years. Making his debut as frontman in a legendary Reykjavik based hip-hop group. When in San Fransisco, where he studied his profession, he sat down at an open café in the Haight Ashbury district, where his attention was drawn to a couple Chinese guys, sitting under a tree, lighting cigarettes. Right next to the men stood a vagrant, or some kind of a bum, clearly at unease with this unhealthy action of the two men. Standing there with his shredded clothes and dirty hat, the vagrant began to scratch his head and walk in circles seeming very agitated. The two smoking men were alarmed by the drifter, right until the tension was broken with the vagrant cried “The trees don’t like the smoke! The Trees don’t like the smoke!!” The lyrics to the song are the fabrication of the extended thoughts of the vagrant in this situation. Small things matter.
The song was recorded in small doses spread quite evenly over the year 2007. The songs instrumentation is varied. With the standard guitar bass, drums and keyboards, the orchestral instruments play a big roll in the soundscape. Large woodwind- string and brass groups were recorded along with a choir. Altogether there are around 30 people playing on the track.