Icelandic trio Fufanu explore the human condition – new video + track ‘One Too Many’

Named ‘Iceland’s most exciting young band’ by Pitchfork after the release of their celebrated sophomore LP Sports last year, enigmatic trio Fufanu have revealed their brand new video and single One Too Many via The Line of Best Fit, taken from the freshly announced forthcoming album The Dialogue Series, out 19th October on One Little Indian Records. The band have been releasing a series of EPs throughout the year – each one an exercise in exploring their multiple sonic personalities, from motorik and post-punk to alt-techno, to woozy avant-garde electronica.

The video celebrates human individuality, while the track explores temptation. Speaking about the new track, lead singer Kaktus Einarsson explains: “All temptations lead to another temptation. The wheel spins on and on until you direct yourself into another way. Most of the time it happens well before crossing any lines and sometimes you’re on the line. One Too Many does not cross the line but almost – so there’s nothing to worry about.”

The trio don’t care for being placed neatly into a box, which has never been more evident in their career to date as it is throughout The Dialogue Series.“What is great about the creative workflow of Fufanu is that we’ve never just stopped” says Kaktus. “We’ve never hit a sound that we’re going to stick with, it has always been about discovering what it is we want to make during each moment, and to just keep on exploring.“It is a dialogue between musicians with different backgrounds, different approaches and different live styles, but we all have the same excitement about going into a new field of sounds. For example, we did cosmiche / motorik but worked it like hip hop and did pop like it was techno and also the other way around. Musically, the outcome goes from being deep and drugged, to fast and harsh, with heartfelt ballads in the middle.”

Once the band returned to Iceland after a long stint touring, they had a bag of demoes written at different junctures on the road, purposefully created with no regard for a unified sound. They were eager to release the tracks into the world as and when they were written, looking to capture the sense of urgency with which the songs were formed.

However, they asked MC, DJ and producer Alap Momin (Dälek) to listen to the demoes and before they knew it, he was on a flight from Harlem to Iceland to work with the band. The result of his input only served to highlight their desire for a distinctive exploration of genres between each record. Kaktus laughs: “Three Icelandic techno-rockers brought the Harlem club scene to their studio in Iceland – it was a life changing week.

“There’s this crazy need for people to always categorise everything. Life isn’t just on or off, good or bad – it’s everything in the middle.”