Daisy Hill Puppy Farm
2006.05.27
There are two famous and often quoted sentences in icelandic rock history. One is a statement made my Einar Örn, singer of the well known Sugarcubes, while he was an angry punk in a band named Purrkur Pillnikk around 1982: “It doesn’t matter what you CAN do, it’s what you DO that matters”, and this view has no doubt inspired many a musician since then. The other, less famous quote, was made by Gunnar Hjálmarsson in his band Bless, and it constitutes the whole lyrics of one of their songs: “Total silence is good…. but good noise is good too!”
It is with the latter quote in mind that I proudly present to you Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.
Daisy Hill Puppy Farm was in it’s prime in 1987-1988 and released one 7″ single and an EP named Spraycan. Their walls of noise and feedback were rather an astounding experience for concert-goers then and was heavily influenced by the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain. The vocals were usualy drowned in beautiful distortion and feedback. The front-man of the band, Jóhann Jóhannsson has since moved on to become a respectable musician, composing music for movies and theatre, and has worked with f.e. Emiliana Torrini, Marc Almond and Barry Adamson. He is now also part of Apparat Organ Quarted which I’m sure many are familiar with. For my part I consider Daisy Hill Puppy Farm his finest work. Sadly the band suffered a major blow when the drummer unexpetedly parted from this world.
Jóhann kept it going as a solo project for a while but what I heard of that didn’t come close to this, and the project was abandoned with just a song or two appearing on a compilation CD on Lakeland Records. Oddly enough this band is never mentioned in his discographies, perhaps intentionally, but it should be championed as the band that brought feedback and distortion to Iceland, and re-issued all over the world.
Check out their cover version of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” which appeared on the 7″ single, turn the volume to 11, and though total silence is good remember that good noise is good too!
Daisy Hill Puppy Farm – Heart of Glass
Photo courtesy of Björg Sveinsdóttir – bsmyndir.mis.is
March 5th, 2010 - 18:14
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