G! Festival is a beacon of creativity, collaboration and curation

G! Festival, named for its location in Syðrugøta (known simply as ‘Gøta’ locally) on Eysturoy – the second biggest of its eighteen islands and home to its highest mountains – celebrated its twenty-fourth edition earlier this month. With a programme of music drawn both locally and from across the globe, plus an (almost) non-stop party vibe to rival Glastonbury, it’s a festival most won’t have heard of but should be at the top of every music fan’s bucket list.

The global reach of Faroese music is really quite staggering considering its size (around 50,000 people and 75,000 sheep) and location: Teitur, Eivør, Joe & the Shitboys and Greta Svabo Bech are just some of the names you might recognise from across the last two decades; Bech collaborated with Deadmau5 on the Grammy-nominated “Raise Your Weapon”, while the Shitboys last popped up alongside Iggy Pop at his Ally Pally show earlier this year and remain one of the best live punk bands around.

Like its northern neighbour Iceland, the Faroese have long fostered a scene characterised by collaboration, experimentation and an openness that feels entirely in line with its remoteness and beauty: dramatic guillemot, gull and puffin-dotted archipelagos, grass-covered roofs and endless vistas of the most verdant, breathtaking nature you’ve ever seen. The Old Norse-speaking settlers arrived here in the early ninth century, but the Faroese didn’t get their first musical instruments until around 100 years ago which has had a dramatic effect on shaping the sound of these lands.

Arriving at Vagar airport on Streymoy island, it’s just a short drive to the capital Tórshavn. Around a tenth of the size of the smallest borough in London - just 15,000 people live here - it’s a historic port city that handles most of the maritime cargo and passenger traffic. En route to Gøta it’s here I get my first taste of the Faroese music scene, stumbling upon a jam session at the beloved venue Sirkus, where Elin Heinesen – mother to Brimheim – is singing jazz standards to a snugly-packed upstairs room. The bar and restaurant with its Hawaii-inspired decor, has become one of Tórshavn’s musical hubs; owner Sunneva Eysturstein also puts on Skrapt Festival, which focuses on the more experimental and underground sounds coming out of the Faroes. Sirkus actually spun off from a Reykjavík bar of the same name - where Eysturstein once worked alongside Skrapt co-founder Jóel Briem.

Just a one minute walk away from Sirkus I find another Faroese institution – one I’m told is a linchpin of the entire music industry here. On the surface, this could be any small street-corner record store but label and shop TUTL is a fundamental part of both the past and present of Faroese music. Its founder is something of a legend in these parts – Jutland-born Kristian Blak moved to the Faroes in the mid 70s and has been here since the very beginnings of the music industry. A composer and musician, he also serves as the artistic director of the annual Summartónar festival.

50 years ago, Blak’s Havnar Jazzfelag (“jazz club”) gave a home to musicians wanting to play jazz and experimental music; the TUTL spun off a few years later as the performances got recorded and released. The name, explains 78-year-old Blak, comes from the Faroese word meaning a "whisper or murmur". In total, the label has put out more than 1200 albums, with around 12-15 more each year; scroll the artists’ section of their website and you’ll find over 200 names listed. Among TUTL’s genre offerings is the wonderfully named “Grotto Music” – a creation entirely of Blak’s own making and related to music made in certain caves across the islands where the acoustics and ambient noise lend themselves to the recordings.

TUTL built a reputation as one of the most vital creative centres in the Faroes. It’s here that Fríði Djurhuus – better known as the frontman of Joe & the Shitboys - has also held down the longest job he’s ever had, outside of touring and recording. “I get tired of everything I do, but I’ll never get tired of that place,” Djurhuus tells me when we talk a few days later. TUTL’s business model is more akin to the studio labels of the 1950s: walk in with an idea, come out with album, he explains: “If you release through us, you don’t have to put money on the table…. we keep it cheap and we’ll help you get a grant which is for more than the cost of putting it out, so you’re already in the plus.”

Djurhuus works as a promoter as well as working with G! and Skrapt Festivals. He DJs, writes about music and at TUTL is both an A&R and event organiser. TUTL, says Djurhuus – with a smile – is giving people a platform in a place where, he quips, “nothing happens and nobody comes over except rich tourists!”

Djurhuus is also one of our guides as we travel to Gøta for the first day of G! It’s a short 45-minute drive but feels much longer given there’s barely a moment where the eyeline isn’t drawn to something no less than stunning – including a subsea tunnel built five years ago and connecting the two largest and most populous islands in the country. More than eleven kilometres long and 189 metres below the sea’s surface at its deepest point, the Eysturoyartunnlin is known for the jellyfish-shaped roundabout at its centre, linking three two-lane tunnel sections to each other. Decorated with an 80-metre steel artwork by sculptor Tróndur Patursson, it’s illuminated by colour-changing lights and even has its own music. Enter the tunnel and you can tune into 97.0 FM for a soundscape created by Faroese composer and sound engineer Jens L. Thomsen. At eight minutes long, “ÆÐR’”, meaning ‘Vein’ – lasts for the time it takes to travel the tunnel by car and is composed of sounds recorded during the tunnel’s construction.

Thomsen channelled some of the late writer Mark Fisher’s ideas in his composition. “You’ll notice a crackle from the signal as you pass through the tunnel,” he said in an interview last year. “At first I tried to get them to remove it, but later I started reading Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life, and there’s a passage about how noise creates cracks in late capitalism. After that, I became contended with this ghost in the machine. Not everything adds up, which is why there’s an augmented fifth that creates dissonance in the final passage…”

The origins of G! Festival origins stretch back to 2002 when locals and fellow musicians Sólarn Solmunde and Jón Tyril came up with an idea to transform the musical landscape of the islands. Tyril played in the band Clickhaze who were only around for about five years but have a legacy that shines brightly over G! and the wider Faroese music world. Drummer Høgni Lisberg is its current booker, singer Eivør has played here almost every year and bassist Jens L. Thomsen is the very same Jens L. Thomsen who composed the Eysturoyartunnlin soundscape.

“We wanted to have a ‘real’ music festival on the Faroe Islands, in the spirit of Woodstock and Roskilde,” Lisberg tells me. “A moment to come together open-minded and listen to music. It has always been very much about bringing great music from abroad to the Faroe Islands, to give the Faroese the option to hear music from all over the world. And also, to have such a stage for Faroese artists to perform on.”

Lisberg’s approach to booking G! means listening to fifty times more artists than the festival can accommodate. “At the end of the day we need a well balanced program that is able to pull in ten percent of the nation’s population, while we aim to stay true to our original agendas. This means we need some names that draw in a big crowd, but we also want to challenge our audience.”

That challenge, Lisberg explains, is to live up to the expectations the audience have when they come here. “They buy a ticket each year to a festival where they don't know many of the acts, but they trust our choices - a trust we value very much."

This year, he's has brought IDM trio Frankfurt Helmet all the way from China; from London there’s the mighty Ebbb; from the Ukraine, Kyiv folk quarter DakhaBrakha. Iceland - who the Faroes have always had a strong musical bond with – have sent Eurovision electro BDSM project Hatari and blues-rock powerhouse Kaleo; and from the US there’s the rising rap/punk/pop fusion of Pomona, CA duo Punching Bag.

Anyone can apply to play at G! Festival, an approach which reflects the myriad of music reflected in the line-up. “We look for great live acts, and are not so consumed with streaming stats,” Lisberg explains “If the material is credible, and you are the missing piece of the puzzle of creating the total program, we will happily book you and we don't care if you only have 20 streams per month. If it works it works!” Given the festival’s wide demographic - from newborns through to 99-year-olds - it needs to have something for everyone, Lisberg says, and “some of the most beautiful moments are exactly those that bring together people of all sorts and ages.”

The Faroese have also brought their A-game to this year’s line-up with the likes of Tórshavn-born rapper Marius D.C., Eurovision finalist Sissal, pink-pop auteur Ester Skála plus the awesome power of Greta Svabo Bech and Eivør – two of the Island’s most beloved breakouts. Svabo – who now lives in France – hasn’t played here for a while, and bringing her back for G! This year is something of a coup for the festival organisers. “She should be well known throughout the world, as she is truly a star,” says Lisberg. Opening the festival are hopeful Tunghoyrt, winners of the annual Sement music competition, previously won by the likes of Aggrasoppar, Marius DC and gówa, who channel screamo and Muse into Dead Kennedys riffs and even throw a cover of “Killing in the Name Of”.

Anything goes at G! Festival: Wanna lay in a hot tub staring out at the ocean, just 50 metres from the main stage? Join a Faroese chain dance? Smoke a cigar in a makeshift whisky bar then go jump in the sea at midnight? A lucky few of us get carried 20 minutes into the Atlantic for a stripped back show from Silvurrdrongur on a misty afternoon. Performing on an actual boat, we moor up alongside to find Trygvi Danielsen - filmmaker, writer, poet and musician (he’s also part of Aggrasoppar) - unleashing his Silvurdrongur persona, clad in a woollen string vest, skirt and babushka headscarf. It's my third time seeing Danielsen play and he's apparently something of a virtuoso here, embodying the same playful and confrontational outsider spirit of Lawrence Hayward as much as Tyler, The Creator.

At various points in the festival’s history, almost a fifth of the Faroese population have been to G! but these days, it’s found a more comfortable capacity. “We call ourselves a 5,500 cap festival,” Glenn Larsson, who heads up the Faroese Music Export office, tells me. “This is the max amount we think works, so it’s still a nice experience to be in the village. The beach fits 10,000 people – which was seen in 2005 when Europe played – but we have agreed that’s too many.”

Kids aged twelve or under can come for free to G! – and there’s hundreds of them here, enterprisingly collecting refundable cups for extra pocket money – and the family-friendly atmosphere from start to finish somehow doesn’t feel at odds with the balls-to-the-walls hedonism that many of the older Faroese music fans bring. A mile away, there’s a few hundred local teenagers camping out bring their own Reading/Leeds vibe alongside the village fete charm - and somehow it works.

The presence of the Faroese music world at G! is matched by their global counterparts, which is where Larsson steps in. He’s brought London gig promoters and booking agents here this year, alongside folk from labels such as Bella Union, and staff from Reeperbahn Festival and Waves Vienna. It might only be a minor cross section of the wider music industry but these are the kind of relationships that could mean a Faroese artist taking their first steps to play overseas, or even signing to an international label. “To experience the acts on their home territory is always better than experiencing them on a tour somewhere,” Larsson explains, “but we always hope for opportunities to come out of G! Festival – both in the short term and long term.”

The music industry has actually been coming to G! Since 2005 – among them staff from Eurosonic, SPOT and Iceland Airwaves. The Reykjavik showcase in particular maintains a close connection to its southern neighbour and remains another important platform for showcasing Faroese music to the wider industry. It was at Airwaves I first saw the likes of Marius Ziska, Aggrasoppar, Jazzygold, Brimheim, Joe & the Shitboys and many more. These kind of partnerships are vital in supporting the community that Lisberg feels is at the heart of G!: “For the isolated Faroese, we feel that we are a part of something bigger and international,” he explains. “And for the foreigners, we hope to give them that ‘island feeling’ of hospitality and village-togetherness. I believe we all benefit from this cultural exchange, where we inspire each other massively on many different levels, musically and on a level of how to exist and co-exist.”

The festival has been a catalyst for both social and musical momentum in the Faroe Islands. I’m told often during my time here just how much it’s transformed the attitudes of locals to outsiders as well as the cultural identity of Gøta. “For a few days of the year, people from all walks of life gather here for a shared musical experience, and I think that inspires people and broadens the horizon of the local community,” explains G!’s managing director Sigvør Laksá, “but the effect goes beyond the village. For aspiring Faroese musicians, a gig at the G! festival is an excellent opportunity to perform in front of international audiences and critics.” Having played the festival himself many times, Lisberg has also seen an impact by simply having international artists sharing the stage with locals. “You want to give your best performance!” he enthuses.

“And you learn so much from seeing and hearing artists who have travelled for many years and who maybe have a different approach than yourself...new friendships are being made every year at the G! Festival between musicians from all over.”