The iconic Icelandic band GusGus have teamed up with the revered Reykjavik-dwelling American songwriter and musician John Grant for their Bolero EP on HE.SHE.THEY., the all-inclusive fashion label, event series, and record label.
To announce the release of Bolero, GusGus have shared a captivating video to accompany the lead track ‘Hold Me In Your Arms Again’. The video features Iceland’s first reality TV stars: Patti Jaime, Bassi Maraj & The Twins. Their show Æði, now in its fourth season, became a sensation and has since made bona fide celebrities out of its stars. Æði (translation: awesome) portrays the friendship between a group of queer friends and has had a huge impact on Icelandic pop culture and created a space unlike any other television series in the nation’s history.
Speaking about ‘Hold Me In Your Arms Again’ and its accompanying video, GusGus’s Biggi Veirasays: “My first love of music was Italo Disco and HiNRG back in 1983 and buying vinyl blindly from the GayClub charts in Record Mirror, I came to possess two 12”s by Fancy, the tracks’ Slice Me Nice’ and ‘Chinese Eyes’. I loved those at the time but did not dive deeper as my taste moved towards more industrial stuff like Depeche Mode and then later into the mind-blowing new realms of electronic music introduced by the club scene at the end of the 80s. But last year during Covid, the ghost of the 80s visited me and put this Fancy track called ‘Bolero’ as a curse on me. There was this weekend that I just had the track on repeat, and I felt I had to do a cover. For me, the message of this track (Hold Me In Your Arms Again) was the light at the end of those boring times of no parties.
“Though I am probably defined as queer, my true freedom is being without the need to categorise myself. “Hold Me In Your Arms Again”, or “Bolero” as the original was called, is a track about reuniting with the love in yourself. Being part of a community that is both adored and hated at the same time, the Æði boys have the charm, drama and the karma that I felt fitted with that message. So I asked them on the job…”
The full tracklist for Bolero is:
Hold Me In Your Arms Again
Hold Me In Your Arms Again (Radio Edit)
Hold Me In Your Arms Again (Ali Schwarz’s Dance Tili You Popo RMX)
