It's Been Emotional - Trabant

“You’d really have to meet me and spend the night with me”
Emotional moments don’t get much more emotional than that proposition, but then again Trabant are not your usual band either. A champagne spraying, clothes ripping off monolith of lunacy, they have to be seen to be believed. Of course, Gigwise wasn’t being offered a date, merely being answered as to what makes Trabant emotional but you can never be sure especially with these nasty boys around.
 
Trabant spewed forth in 1999 in Reykjavik, Iceland, a nation known for producing its fair share of musical loons. As to why Iceland has the ability is anyone’s guess, beanpole drummer Porvaldur Grondal muses “it’s such a tight knit venue everybody knows everyone”, insanity is infectious it would appear.  The band began as a two-piece instrumental band, then congealed into a five piece once they were ready to face the world, “As soon as we had played it live, the band as it is now just formed”. You will never find five more different borderline mentally ill people in a band at all: lead singer Ragnar Kjartansson is a performance artist who likes to ride the snake (who doesn’t), Vidar Gislason; bass player and functionalist, Hlynur A. Vilmarsson; keyboard master and also The Prince Of Darkness, Gisli Galdur; a mad scientist of turntable art and finally Grondal; electronic drummer and our guide into the weird world of Trabant.

Trabant make, in their own words, ‘sexy funky spastic electronic music’, something which they wholeheartedly try to maintain throughout all aspects of their life, “We tried to stay true to our silly beliefs”. Starting out as a duo, “It was just the two of us working and we were just doing this thing” they soon realised that to make a band they needed something more, “It was really soon that the other guys came in and actually helped us on the album”. ‘A Moment of Truth’ was their first album, a studio based electronic album that perhaps lacks the flair of later material. The Trabant of today is a screaming mix of guitars, drums and keyboards fronted by a maniac. They have just released ‘Emotional’, a definite graduation from A Moment Of Truth, “We realised that we had to do more. So that’s why we started playing with all of us together and making a song together, making this album”. 

The sound of Trabant has been influenced by a massive number of artists, as different as the band members, “It comes from all over, I mean I like Elvis Presley, Queen, Television, The Only Ones, it’s just whatever, Prince, R’N’B” or as our guide more eloquently puts it, “It just depends what shoes I put on in the morning”. Porvaldur growing up drew his musical influences from a more unlikely source, “I wanted to be a drummer like Animal”. The idea of a band being so flippant is almost unheard of but from Trabant, fun is their number one priority, “we’re just trying to keep it a good friendship and have a good time” and in the live arena is where Trabant really hit their stride.