Ronja and Spider Network are redefining Iceland’s experimental music scene

The most mischievous of DJ sets soundtracked a once-in-a-generation cosmic display by way of maximalist glitch electronica, lowercase ambient, and some magnificent mic screaming. “The concert was just unreal, it all felt like a dream sequence,” Ronja remembers.

I talk to Ronja and the rest of her musical collective, known as Spider Network, just two days after the chaos of playing Echolalia. “It was surreal, all the friends together, just witnessing the sky felt apocalyptic,” she adds. Of course, sharing a lineup alongside Reykjavík royalty, plus her esteemed protégé Arca, is an impressive feat. Their set had been rehearsed, but in true Ronja fashion, plans remained unfinished, deliberately, until much of the day itself. There was also no prescriptive brief from Björk. “She just got us the slot, the idea was just go crazy, do your thing.”

Since the age of 14, Ronja has, indeed, gone crazy, with her extreme electro-noise output. Contrary to the more palatable offerings of contemporary favourites like Laufey and Of Monsters and Men, Ronja’s limited discography as a solo artist lives unquestionably on the edge. Performing all around her native Iceland since 2015, including a standout showing at Akureyri’s Mannfólkið breytist í slím festival, she released her debut LP 000000 as part of the post-dreifing collective, comprising young talent from every corner of the Reykjavík grassroots scene. In 2023 came abyss0p3lagic, a fluid frequency of static magic, DnB, hums, and hardcore kicks.

Three years later, there is a new solo record finally on the horizon. “So I’m calling this my pop album,” Ronja tells me, quotation marks in the air. What began with a single track grown from Auto-Tune play, high-pitched vocal experimentation and vocal processing, would develop into a desire to construct an entirely refreshing auditory panorama, for Ronja at least. “Five, six years ago I was listening to hyperpop. But I went my own direction with it I feel like, so I can’t quite call it hyperpop.” She works in Ableton, incorporating live objects and random modulators to generate unexpected but striking results. “You often get some really cool things out of procedural things, using complex modulator chains.”

Ronja plays sacrificial lamb in a video directed by Hrafn Helgi Helgason for “crst4l”, the first single from her next record and the first taste of her surrender to pop. She is, again, in the company of her musical peers, many of whom can be seen dancing in the shadows of flashing red. One of three voices behind all the mic screaming at Echolalia and MBS, multimedia artist, lyricist and composer Yulia Vasileva is a long-time friend and collaborator. She helped produce, style, and act in the video, which premiered to a cozy crowd at Reykjavík venue MENGI, complete with xylophone playing.

Alongside her solo work, Ronja is a crucial component of the projects Graphic Futanari and MC MYASNOI – an independent entity originally formed with Vasileva in Russia in 2012. The two spearhead MC MYASNOI as an experimental electronica pairing with socially critical lyrics, releasing singles and live albums at their convenience ever since their debut 2020 EP Factorial. А почему бы и нет. Also associated with post-dreifing, MC MYASNOI has been fundamental to the development of Ronja’s voice. For the project, Vasileva recalls asking her to sing with Auto-Tune as a second vocalist, which propelled the sound now dominating her upcoming solo pursuits.

Considering Ronja’s performance style and zeal for collaboration, the word “solo”, however, feels inadequate for a musician who thrives off of jamming and improvisation. “I don’t think it’s a very intentional thing for me, taking my friends, it’s something I just tend to do,” she ruminates. “It feels like the most obvious thing ever, it just brings it to life so much.” Ronja is also particular about the distinction between recording versus performance, preferring her “living, changing” modus operandi as opposed to “concrete, set in stone” production. “The solo live stuff is always very social, but the solo release stuff is me with headphones on, in my bedroom.”

This is where Spider Network steps in: part label (you can find them on Bandcamp), part events collective, archive and creative support system. Its roots predate its exotic, connecting name, Vasileva explains. “We were always talking about Spider Network for years. We have friends who lived here, and we would make art with them. They would go abroad and we felt it’s like a spider web, spreading all over the world.” 

Even in her own solitary confinement, Ronja’s music-making at home does not mean restricted access. “She sends me a link and then I listen, I'm like, ‘ahhh,’ and then maybe I add something or she brings it to the band,” says Vasileva. “That’s actually kind of spot on, you know me better than me,” Ronja agrees.

She is Reykavík-based, but Spider Network’s mad, sprawling movements are helmed by like-minded new-Icelanders who have found themselves on the island relatively recently. Their creative contributions are boundless, though. Vasileva; Japanese composer and sound artist Masaya Ozaki; and Eva Yuki Mik, a Reykjavík Grapevine writer, poet and performer from the Netherlands, are among a core stronghold of seven.

Reykavík’s music scene is tiny, yet its population functions through an active system of friendship favours and lawless loyalties. Cross-collaboration, whether it be medium, discipline, or genre, is encouraged; indie musicians are especially pushed towards noise and to experiment beyond their typical practices. Spider Network’s arrival introduced a new energy to any kind of insular community, rattling the cages of existing structures that are not so welcoming of its noise mechanics. “You don't even have to be able to play an instrument. You can just smash a glass and put contact mics on it, and just have fun with it,” Mik says.

The collective was eventually formalised after years of events organisation. Parties and DIY shows, including at the queer-friendly Bravó (now 22 Bar), extended into performance art, visual art, and computer gaming. Recent performers include Björk collaborator Ólöf Arnalds and her husband Skúli Sverrisson, who’s worked with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Stephen O'Malley. Colombian composer María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, who ate mud as an exploration of femicide in Latin America, connecting the body and the land. Arna Björk smashed a porcelain vase filled with salt with a hammer, before vacuum cleaner intervention through an incidental spill noise performance by artist Spindilhús. “I think that really describes our events, you never know what to expect,” Mik says.

Ronja’s choice for what song best captures her sound is revealing: “Maybe ‘XcomputerXmustXdie’ off slugs are legal now?” Recorded at Reykjavik’s honeycomb Harpa concert hall, MC MYASNOI’s 2024 live album tells a story of sculptures fitted with chains and motors, behind the distorted mechanics of a heavy, industrial, hard rock heartbeat. “It was really dangerous,” Ronja admits of her performance choices. “Motors going at full speed, spinning chains. You can kind of hear them in the live recording. One sculpture, as soon as we plugged it in, it just starts spinning. Me and a sound technician were standing a little too close to it when it started happening, I was like ‘holy shit.’”

Now, after preserving another ephemeral memory through archival impulse, with the recording of “XcomputerXmustXdie” comes a brand-new music video, also directed by Helgason. Rejected from the Reykjavík International Film Festival, it was screened exclusively in wet weather at the city’s annual Culture Night. The video’s also “a very living thing,” as Vasileva describes. “There’s a 64-year-old man from Ukraine who lives here. He was just dancing, improvising live to concerts outside of Smekkleysa. Lúpína played her set six times, and he danced every time, and it was so inspiring and beautiful. I just asked him if he can dance for our videos, he said yes. Hrafn was co-directing with me and being on camera, Yuki did lights. We are also recreating Death Stranding.”

Spider Network survives on structure in order to set up events, still all kinds of imaginations are welcome to enter the web: “You just have to show initiative and the framework.” That open invite is vital in the context of Reykjavík's experimental scene, venue closures are a frequent restriction. “It’s just as bad as it’s ever been, and not showing signs of getting better, but we’ve learned to cope with it better,” Ronja speaks on the situation. Spider Network’s efforts have given way to transformation opportunities in the final days of a departing venue.

Spaces elsewhere have struggled with a growing problem in noise complaints, be it a resident or tourist in a luxury apartment or hotel, despite cases when sound was, evidently, not escaping buildings. At 2025’s FALCONFEST with activist collective No Borders, Spider Network’s 12-hour noise fundraiser for refugees and immigrants in Iceland received a noise complaint from a nearby resident. After spending hours of work setting up a huge outdoor stage, they were forced to move everything indoors. 

“We had just finished setting up these huge speakers, which Konrad [Groen] almost died pulling up,” says organiser and co-founder Jökull Máni Reynisson. “So we're like, ‘You know what? Fuck it. We can make the best of it.’ We pulled the huge speakers back down again, and we set up just the absolute loudest and biggest possible thing we could inside. We turned the bad situation into a good one."

Stories of closures and noise complaints, though talk of the town, are only more reason for Spider Network to “make more noise, be louder, more visible, more experimental, and take our space,” in Mik’s opinion. “I think the most fitting thing is like, yeah, do a noise festival,” Ronja says. Each member wears their politics on their sleeve, with Vasileva clarifying a conscious resistance to the male-dominated reputation of noise music. “We try to keep the ratio of women artists equal or greater to that of male artists. Or non-binary. Just not cis male white dudes playing boring noise.”

Spider Network has a strict zero-tolerance policy for homophobia, transphobia, racism, and bigotry. Its leftist ethos of creative freedom is simple, everyone can make art and you can be radically experimental as long as people feel safe enough to participate. “I love to join projects and get invited onto things, and invite other people onto things,” Ronja says. “It’s just to so fun to take part in this flora that’s going around.” 

Birthed in the solitude of her bedroom it may be, the next phase of Ronja’s musical development seems inseparable from the security of her supportive peers. Hierarchy absolved, in the face of fame, “If I get attention, I love attention... I will always love attention,” she says. “But if I keep doing this until I die, where I’m just playing with friends and doing these little DIY shows, I die happy.”