FM BELFAST

An organically grown, highly addictive electro-pop outfit from Iceland, FM Belfast have been capturing the imaginations and swaying the bodies of constantly growing audiences throughout the world since they first appeared on the notoriously vibrant Icelandic music scene in 2006.

With no official release to their name, the band's fanbase had grown so large and loud by 2008 that the promoters of the renowned Iceland Airwaves music festival were persuaded to bump them to headliner status by popular demand. Around the time of the festival, FM Belfast finally released their long-awaited début, 'How To Make Friends' locally via their own World Champion Records, to great critical and commercial acclaim.

'How To Make Friends' certainly made FM Belfast a few friends, and then some. In 2010 alone, the band appeared at over fifty music festivals all over Europe (they were the second most booked act appearing at Eurosonic 2010, following XX), sometimes appearing to crowds of over 20,000. And that's not counting their countless club gigs and shows in that time.

Now on the verge of releasing their greatly anticipated sophomore LP, 'I Don't Want To Sleep' (out this spring via Kimi Records in Iceland and Morr Music internationally), FM Belfast seem ready to put the entire world at their feet, or better yet, to make friends with it. And after all this: what does the music sound like? It is in its core melodic, electronic pop music. Yet it is damn near impossible to convey just how uplifting FM Belfast are, how much energy and joy they channel into a given audience, and how much ambition and sweat they put into their recorded efforts. I don't really think they fit into any particular genre, in fact I think that they've made up their own genre, based on how young Árni Rúnar perceived music growing up in the eighties, back when he was first hearing the hits of that time filtered through bedroom doors and over the FM waves when he was supposed to be asleep. Adventurous, miraculous, raucous and exciting, open to the future and somehow, shiny – that's FM Belfast.