Virgin Orchestra recently released the song “Banger” and the accompanying music video. The singer’s voice and off-balance delivery pulled me right in.
The video reminds me a little of Da Funk (also, subway windows open in Iceland? Wild). It’s a great, gloomy, atmospheric single with a ton of reverb and a definite debt to The Cure. There are some strings lurking in the background of it which is what drew me in to find out more.
Virgin Orchestra is a three-piece band from Reykjavík, Iceland. They released their debut album fragments in 2023, and “Banger” is the first single from their upcoming second album (referenced in this article in The Face).
In this interview with Illustrate Magazine, they describe their sound like this:
At the foundation of it there are bright post-punk-y guitars that often border on noise, dream-like vocals, experimental use of synthesizers and programming platforms such as SuperCollider and then a classically played cello which gets distorted to the point of it sounding completely different from how it should sound.
fragments is a spectacular and well-sequenced collection of songs from a band just bursting with weird ideas. There’s an orchestral element to these songs, with cello and other instruments providing depth and mood. The songs are long, too: there are only 7 tracks on fragments, and most of them run longer than five minutes.
Opener ‘intro’ is a hypnotic piece, with cello and piano slightly off-kilter and discordant, while electronic drums with lots of reverb set a darkwave-y tone.
“off guard” has a slightly discordant chamber-pop introduction, and when the vocal comes in it’s clear this is going to darker places than one might expect:
Most days i would tell you to fuck right off
Most days i don’t care about shit like this at all
Most days i don’t hand myself over like this
Most days I don’t give a fuck
One thing that distinguishes Virgin Orchestra from their peers is that cell0: where so many bands in that post-punk/darkwave genre rely on synth beds exclusively to provide the moodiness and atmospherics, Virgin Orchestra’s strings add an analog, organic element to their sound.
That said, the trip-hop influence here is strong as well. “give in” is a gorgeous, vibe-filled bit of downtempo until, well, listen for yourself:
There’s so much depth and complexity on this record. I must have played it a dozen times on headphones, and each time new elements revealed themselves: a menacing vocal, a bit of distorted noise in the background, or gorgeous harmonies buried beneath a hundred layers of noise.
And finally as I began to put this piece together, I went looking for their other music videos, and found “on your knees”, which has some real home movie creepiness to it:
The band’s Instagram has a few videos of the recording process, which is every bit as elaborate and experimental as you’d expect.
No annouced release date for the next record, though they’ve been teasing it in interviews for a couple of months now.
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