Apparat Organ Quartet

 The Apparat Organ Quartet is an Icelandic band founded in 1999 by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hörður Bragason, Músikvatur and Úlfur Eldjárn. Apparat Organ Quartet´s debut album, simply entitled "Apparat Organ Quartet" was almost 3 years in the making. The Quartet´s members say it took so long because they had to discover by themselves how to record an organ quartet. "We couldn't just go to the record-store and ask for an organ quartet album. We had to invent the genre." The album seems to have many layers. The oldest takes date back to 1999 while some of the songs underwent major changes during the last few days of mixing. The sounds heard on the album come from AOQ's vast collection of antique synthesizers, Farfisas, Hammonds, home-organs, cheap portable keyboards and all sorts of malfunctioning machinery. AOQ use old discarded technology, home organs and cheap consumer cast-offs often salvaged from garbage dumps and then customized by the band for the rigors of live use. Their passion for out-moded musical machines and ancient communication technologies is clearly reflected in their collaboration with TF3IRA, a trio of ham radio enthusiasts. This performance, documented on the Kitchen Motors CD "Motorlab 2", featured an enormous electric sound sculpture involving shortwave receivers and morse code transmissions mixed in with the organ quartet´s ethereal soundscapes. The album cover art features oil paintings of the band as Playmo characters by the artist Markús Þór Andrésson. Apparat Organ Quartet has been invited to numerous festivals and prestigious venues in Europe before even releasing an album, including the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, London´s ICA, Batofar in Paris, as well as performing in St. Petersburg and Helsinki. The band have played New York´s Central Park Summer Stage, Denmark´s Spot Festival, Stockholm´s Kulturhuset as well as Holland´s Lowlands and the Belgian Pukkelpop festival. Apparat Organ Quartet´s members include: Músikvatur, who has collaborated with múm and has released several solo singles. Hörður Bragason, a former associate of Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch and by day, an organist in Reykjavik´s largest church congregation. Úlfur Eldjárn, also a member of the group Trabant and former member of Kanada. Arnar Geir Ómarsson, who has worked with Magga Stina, Ham, Lhooq and others. Jóhann Jóhannsson.   The band was originally conceived as part of a series of improvised concerts organized by Kitchen Motors, a record label and art collective founded by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir, and Hilmar Jensson. Apparat Organ Quartet is also part of a collective of Reykjavik-based musicians that includes members of Sigur Rós, Múm, Kanada, Trabant, Funerals, Slowblow and others. A number of these acts share members, and have collaborated on other projects. They were one of many Icelandic bands documented in Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon's 2005 film Screaming Masterpiece (Gargandi Snilld in Icelandic). In March of 2010, Apparat Organ Quartet announced that they had begun recording their second album. The album is scheduled to be released on December 9th, 2010. It will be titled Pólýfónía.