Behold the World’s Smallest Music Scene. It’s in Antarctica.
As you might guess, there are very few bands on the entire continent of Antarctica. Nanocyborg Uberholocaust (or more correctly, Nǽnøĉÿbbœrğ Vbëřřħōlökäävsŧ) was formed by two scientists stationed at a research outpost. In addition to a whack of material over the years, they even recorded an album exactly at the South Pole. Specializing in “ambient cosmic extreme funeral drone doom metal” or “post-noise,” they’d make a good tour companion for Sunn O))) or Earth. They sound like this:
They sound like this. Hey, they live in darkness six months of year. What did you expect?
But NU isn’t the only group on the Antarctic music scene. From the BBC:
The Vernadsky scientific base – a handful of grey huts surrounded by penguins in Antarctica – was once home to some of the world’s most important climate science. It was here, in 1985, that British scientists did some of the key work to discover the hole in the ozone layer. But today, it’s home to something altogether different: the closest thing Antarctica has to a rock star, a 44-year-old long-haired Ukrainian geophysicist called Bogdan Gavrylyuk.
“Here it’s a special place for writing songs,” he says, standing in his laboratory, where musical instruments are propped up among the scientific equipment. “We’re like prisoners, locked up for 10 months in the cold. Alone! But it creates a special mood. Possibilities!
“I write all kinds of songs: about pirates and gangsters; about sailors hard at work; about the salty, sweet taste of kisses; about hope and love. I can’t write about those things back in Ukraine – there’s too much noise.”
