One of the latest discoveries from the archive.

In this clip, Dad is being interviewed on Icelandic television ahead of A-ha's visit to Iceland in 1987, talking through the band's contract and some of the requests that came with bringing one of the biggest bands in the world to Reykjavík.

What I love about it is how ordinary and extraordinary it feels at the same time. He's standing there discussing paperwork and logistics, but behind those pages was the challenge of bringing major international artists to an island that was still relatively isolated from the international touring circuit.

As I continue researching Split Promotions, the documentary chapter within the wider Bits + Bobs archive project, I'm becoming increasingly interested in the people behind the scenes. The promoters, organisers, crews and connectors who helped make these events happen, but who are rarely mentioned in music histories.

Every VHS seems to reveal another small piece of the puzzle.

Archival clip from an Icelandic television broadcast, recorded from a family VHS. Included here as part of ongoing archival research for Bits + Bobs and Split Promotions.

BITS + BOBS

Bits + Bobs is an ongoing archive-led project exploring fragments of my parents’ lives and work.

The project has grown out of loss — both of my parents passed away four months apart in 2012 — and a desire to return to that time, to understand it more fully, and to reconnect with my own sense of identity and roots.

One chapter focuses on the music scene in Iceland during the late 1980s, with other chapters emerging over time as the archive expands.

Bringing together photographs, ephemera, interviews, and other people’s memories alongside my own — including personal VHS recordings and recovered broadcast material — Bits + Bobs traces small moments, backstage stories, and cultural fragments. Some are complete, others still in progress — part recollection, part reconstruction.

The project is being developed with the intention of forming a wider public body of work, with potential outcomes including exhibition, moving image, and publication.