We chose this location because of its isolation and near impossibility to get to. Only a handful of people had ever visited before. It felt very fitting in the middle of the Pandemic. The only way to get there is by helicopter and we had to be very strategic about getting our gear there. There were two generators running behind the lighthouse and our sound engineer recorded it from inside the lighthouse. This project took approximately 28 hours to capture and was recorded right before midnight during the summer in Iceland.

In order to get down to the volcano cave you have to take a small elevator that only fits about 4 people. Therefore, it took a great deal of time to get all of the equipment, band and crew in position. The acoustics inside the cave were very unique and it was difficult to find your footing on the rocks. We wound up spending over 25 hours on this project.

We had to drag our equipment on sleds through the ice the day before our performance inside the ice cave. January days are very short in Iceland with only about 4 hours of daylight which made this project very challenging. In addition, we were performing in negative 15 degrees celsius temperatures.

It’s a historic place in Iceland since it is where the first and oldest church used to stand.

We wanted to record there because of the beautiful acoustics inside. The string accompaniment alongside JJ’s vocals and guitar melded perfectly.

The hike up to the volcano was extremely challenging considering we had to carry the equipment by hand. There was also a short window of time to shoot due to the horrendous weather conditions. The volcano had only just started erupting 3 days prior so we were able to get very close. It was still winter in Iceland which meant that even though we were standing next to an active volcano it was actually freezing cold temperatures.

This was the most challenging live performance we have done thus far. We had two generators on motor boats floating around the iceberg and then laid the power cables into the water leading to the iceberg. Our sound engineer recorded the performance sitting with a laptop on one of the boats. The weather was challenging and it started raining so we were lucky to have pulled it off. It was shot during the summer around 2 am when we have 24 hour daylight in Iceland. The project took over 26 hours to capture.

Recorded on a gorgeous summer day at Ellidavatn with a single microphone on JJ’s own boat.