Bjarki Rúnar Sigurðarson is an artist in flux, slipping through definitions as easily as he does genres. His early output on трип suggested a clear trajectory—big-room techno, high-impact, and high-energy. But Bjarki has always been more interested in disruption. He loves veering off the beaten track.
Over the past decade, his identity has splintered across at least twenty documented personas (and perhaps some more hidden from the voyeur’s view), each serving a vessel for the unpredictable. He functions in a space of humour and unease—shaping music that is erratic, raw, and wholly untamed.
And there is a lot of it—keyword: a lot. Bjarki doesn’t just release music; he floods the system. His latest album, ‘A Guide to Hellthier Life‘, is a sharp, satirical dismantling of the wellness guru social media economy, where self-care is commodified and monetised at scale.
Stepping up to deliver IA MIX 389, the Icelandic producer extends that same critique—a surreal, self-aware meditation on the absurdity of performative well-being. Dark humour is nothing new for Bjarki, but here, his observations feel more honed, more biting, more necessary.
The mix itself is impossible to bracket, moving through states rather than styles—thoughtful, meditative, ridiculous, and deeply melancholic all at once. It’s a trip, in every sense. And, as always with Bjarki, it’s best not to ask where it’s going.
Interview by Asmi Shetty
"I like creating things that don’t tell you how to feel, but leave you somewhere in between and for the listener to decide."
Thank you for taking the time to record this compelling IA MIX. Could you share the concept behind this podcast, your track selection process, and how, when, and where it was recorded?
The mix is part instinct and part ritual. I recorded this mix in Iceland, at my grandma’s place, during Þorri or Þorrablót. I chose tracks that felt like they could exist outside of time. Some are from artists I’ve listened to endlessly, others just fit the narrative I was going for. February is the month of witchcraft when we need to burn our negative energy out and welcome the new and positive.
I’d love to hear about your experience growing up in Iceland—a place often associated with isolation and surreal landscapes. How did you first connect with music in a deeply personal way? Did the geography and environment shape your sonic perspective?
Iceland is like living on a slightly unhinged alien planet compared to other countries. The weather is the dominant force and the landscapes are brutal, reminding you that you don’t really have any control over anything. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to extremes in sound—pushing contrast and letting things be too much. I think that’s what Iceland feels to me most of the time.
Growing up my music was maybe like an escape but I think it was filling the silence. It has been with me as long as I can remember. I realised when I was 17 or 18 that not everything needed to be shared. The music I didn’t show was mine. music didn’t need to be shared or listened to with others —it was then it became a language of its own.
Blönduós is quite remote. What was the local artist community like? Did you ever feel constrained by the size of the scene? Where did you go to share, discuss, and listen to music?
There was no scene in Blönduós at the time when I was there and I was not aware of any art community. I was very young and was never good at video games so I made music at my friends house. if I found something weird and exciting I kind of just kept it to myself. When you did meet someone with similar taste, it felt like two spies exchanging classified information.
You’ve spoken about using Fruity Loops at the age of 13 and experimenting with text-to-speech generators. Is that one of your earliest memories of music production? What initially sparked your desire to create your own sounds?
Yeah I was around 12 maybe, the voice generator made me laugh shitless. Weird pitched robotic voices stuck with me over the years. I love creating something that feels alive but slightly wrong, like it’s not supposed to exist.
I was always completely immersed in music when I was a kid. I was also in a garage band playing drums and trying to play guitar. It wasn’t about desire—it was just something that happened naturally. I never thought about why I was interested in music, because it never felt like a choice.
What skills and methods from your formative years have carried through into your music production today?
Not overthinking while recording and trying doing something before my brain has time to analyse it. I like working fast and letting things unfold without too much control. Trust my fingers and let the mistakes happen. I do spend more time outside the studio wondering and overthinking about things. The best ideas come to me when I’m busy doing something else. Then I lose them, and if they come back the second time that’s when I try to catch them. I think my love for text-to-speech voices never really went away. Now they’re just part of the sound design.
Who have been your biggest influences, both locally and globally? Have you had the opportunity to collaborate with any of them?
Locally, I’ve always been drawn to artists who do their own thing, completely detached from trends. I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by super artists in Iceland. Kuldaboli is someone I’ve collaborated the most with—we sync in the studio and have worked on many projects, from techno to whatever. In3dee (Indriði) is doing both drone metal and electronic music — we’ve recorded a lot together and traveled to Ukraine to make music. I think my friends influence me the most because our friendship goes beyond music—it’s conversations, life, and the way that naturally turns into sound.
Globally, the list is long—Liam Howlett, Peter Christopherson, Genesis P-Orridge, Bruce Haack, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Curtis Roads, Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, Mark Pritchard, Curtis Roads, Steven Stapleton, and of course, Aphex Twin and the Rephlex label.
I’ve been lucky to collaborate with amazing people but collaborations are tricky, sometimes the best collaborations are the ones that never happen—just knowing that someone exists and hearing their work is enough.
"What’s circling in my head outside the studio—what I’m reading, watching and obsessing over. What happens in the outside world always reflects my inside world. It’s just how I want to deal with it."
Going back to your IA MIX, I hear themes of joy, meditation, and even pain—at one point, I swear I heard a distressed dog (or was I imagining it?). It feels like a playful extension of your upcoming album, A Guide to Hellthier Lifestyle. Would you say these narratives connect? Do they reflect your broader state of mind?
If you heard a distressed dog, I won’t argue with you. Maybe it was real or maybe you imagined it. That’s kind of how I want to approach sound—blurring the line between what’s happening and what you think or is happening. This mix might connect to the album in that sense. There’s humor, there’s discomfort, there’s an underlying tension that never fully resolves. I think what’s funny is also sad. I like creating things that don’t tell you how to feel, but leave you somewhere in between and for the listener to decide.
Your album satirises wellness and influencer culture, critiquing the relentless production of self-improvement content and tracking apps. You’ve described it as “capitalism in yoga pants.” While there’s humour in that, there also seems to be a layer of frustration. Could you expand on that?
Life is full of frustrations. But without humour the whole thing would feel suffocating. It’s the trojan horse as I call it. beneath the satire, there’s the real. frustration maybe. Wellness culture is an endless loop of self-optimisation, constantly selling you the next thing while ensuring you never actually get there.
It’s capitalism in yoga pants because it markets peace while keeping you anxious, sells balance while making you dependent. everything turns into data, another product, another subscription. At some point, it stops being about health and becomes about control—self-surveillance disguised as self-care.
Even Ai, ChatGPT—everything online is monetised, nothing is free. People don’t hold real beliefs anymore because all they see is collapse. But is the world actually falling apart, or is that just the story we’re fed through our screens? Maybe it’s all just organised chaos. A circus. And we’re the ones buying the tickets.
Between California and Latvia, how long did it take to write the album? The idea stems from “the story of a soul born into the wrong womb.” What drew you to that concept?
It took around two years, the first demo of Womb Rider was made in January 2023. The idea of the album kept evolving. The “wrong womb” concept came from this idea of misalignment – feeling like you were dropped into the wrong timeline, the wrong place, the wrong body. It’s not a personal story, it’s more of a broader metaphor for how we people move through the world, trying to reshape ourselves to fit expectations that maybe were never meant for us in the first place.
You’ve previously said that music became a form of therapy for you, and this album seems to reinforce that. Does that still hold true?
Yeah definitely, music has been that space where I can process things without needing to explain them and just be alone. It was also the first time I stepped back from touring after 10 years and stopped other distractions. Instead I spent time with friends and family and being where I wanted to be. checking in with old friends and cutting out the ones I had been meaning to let go off. That was its own kind of cleansing.
It’s not like I take any of these therapy themes or concepts directly into the studio. The music doesn’t come from sitting down and thinking, Okay, now I’m going to make a track about wellness cults and digital exhaustion. It’s just the state I am in that period of time. What’s circling in my head outside the studio—what I’m reading, watching and obsessing over. What happens in the outside world always reflects my inside world. It’s just how I want to deal with it.
A Guide to Hellthier Lifestyle marks the debut release on your new imprint, Differance. What motivated you to launch a new label for this project, and how did your collaboration with Thomas Harrington Rawle come about?
Thomas and I met during Covid. He made a film called Care More, which was released on Nowness and I fell in love. I called him and from then on we decided to be best friends. We wanted to create a space where music and visuals were part of the same world. We’re taking our time to shape it properly—there’s no rush, just a shared vision that we’re slowly building.
We have a lot of the same interests, especially in film and music and we’ve always worked well together. Differance is meant to be more intentional, maybe a bit more thought-through. The way I see bbbbbb is more like a lucky strike in the studio—unpolished, instinctive and raw. It made sense to separate the two, give each space to exist in its own way.
How are you dividing each of your roles within the label?
For this album I had the concept laid out early on and wanted it to be what I envisioned. So I took on most of the visual identity myself from designing the font to working on the cover, making sure everything was aligned with the music. My wife, Brenda Jansone worked on the drawings, and we went deep into tying everything together so all the elements felt like part of the same world. Nothing was random—it was all very intentional. In theory, I make the music and Thomas builds the world around it. But we feed on bouncing ideas back and forth in a very natural and chaotic way.
We’re at a pivotal moment where technology is reshaping artistic expression. You used AI extensively for voice generation and modulation on this album—do you see AI as a creative tool, or do you have concerns about its impact on music production?
To me, AI is just another tool—interesting, but not a replacement for anything. The real issue isn’t AI making music; it’s people assuming that just because something can be automated, it should be. I’ve experimented a lot with AI, even made an album entirely about poop and piss—it was hilarious, and I enjoyed it. It all depends on what you are into.
People have always feared new technology in music. There was panic over pianos, then synthesizers, then the TB-303 replacing bassists, and drum machines replacing drummers. And in a way, they did replace them—but they also created new forms of music. AI is no different. But it’s not intelligent. It wont see the world through my lens, yet..
Reflecting on your journey as a musician, if you had the chance to do it all over again, would you?
Nei takk ég er á bíl.
‘A Guide To Hellthier Lifestyle’ is scheduled for release on 7th February via Differance. Order a copy from Bandcamp.
Bjarki!K7bbbbbbDifferanceтрипAmbientExperimentalIDMSpoken Word