Premiere: Bjarki makes music for Icelandic sheep with 'Soda Sugarlicious'

Bjarki is one of electronic music's most unique and singular artists. Whether it's techno, ambient, expreimental or just plain fucking weird, chances are the Icelandic producer will have conjured something special up.

His latest EP 'Geothermal Sheep Vol.1' is a collection of tracks that he produced to be played into fields to herds of sheep in Iceland. We're not even joking, that's true.

“It was back in 2015 and we were only just putting together the original plans towards making bbbbbb a label. While this was happening, I got a call from a friend who was working for a local tech start-up and marketing company. They’d been contacted by the Icelandic Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture who came to them with a weird proposition. They were looking at the idea of marketing Icelandic lamb as this user-exclusive commodity for high end restaurants, the same way they do with Kobe beef in Japan. His marketing company was going all in with this idea of creating an elite herd of sheep that would get the 5-star treatment – fresh food and beer, shampoo and geothermal baths for their fleece, and entertainment such as TV and music for when they were in the hills. That’s where I came in.”

Here comes even more weirdness.

“When I met my friend and his team, they were going to have music pumped through a series of remote speakers across the hillside” Bjarki explains. “But when they showed me what they were going to play to them, I almost fell of my chair laughing! It was all this cheesy, easy listening, orchestral Icelandic bullshit. I said to them ‘This is nonsense! Why are you bringing me into this project if that’s all you’re going to be playing?’ In the end, I told them I would completely redo all the sounds and music they were going to be using. I was going to drag the Icelandic sheep into the 21st Century”.

Although the tracks never got used (shocking) he has just released them via his bbbbbb imprint and we've got a premiere of the highly contagious, Candy Crush sampling 'Soda Sugarlicious'.

The sheep don't know what they're missing. Check it below.

Funster is Mixmag's Digital Editor, follow him on Twitter