Ruxpin

b. Jonas Thor Gudmundsson, 6 April 1981, Iceland. Drawing overt influence from artists such as Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Future Sound Of London, and Vangelis, Gudmundsson recorded his first album of pretty, experimental electronica (1999’s Radio) at the age of 17. The follow-up, Midnight Drive, was issued by Elektrolux, a Frankfurt-based label famous for hosting the Space Night show on German television (and releasing a series of accompanying down-tempo albums). As if to accentuate the sense that Gudmundsson’s music could provide an apposite soundtrack for the otherworldly and the mystical, Ruxpin’s third album, Magrathea, derived its name from an imaginary planet in author Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy that was capable of building other planets. The follow-up, Avalon, meanwhile, took its title from an island paradise in the western seas where, according to Celtic legend, King Arthur and other heroes went at death. Ruxpin has notably remixed for artists such as Múm, Ampop, Krom, and Sanasol, and was featured on 42 More Things To Do In Zero Gravity, Thule Records’ lovely 2002 collection of electronica that seemed to make explicit the correlation between ambient music and the Icelandic topography.