KUGGUR

Photo by Guðmundur Óli Pálmason in the Icelandic Glacial caves

Icelandic Darkwave artist KUGGUR (Former SÓLSTAFIR Drummer) releases a new single “There’s No Reason to Be Afraid”, from the coming album “Interglacial”, coming out November 21st. The single features Svart Tulpan.

–Artist: Kuggur and Svart Tulpan (= The Black Tulip – SE)
–Single title: There’s no reason to be afraid
–Release date: Sept 26th, 2025
–Presave link: https://found.ee/I5BeoZ

Music by Guðmundur Óli Pálmason and Svart Tulpan. Published by Bark At Your Owner Publishing. Recorded and produced by Guðmundur Óli Pálmason. A&R John Lewis Cloud. Mixed and mastered by Henry Barboza from Henryaudiouk.com. Vocals for Svart Tulpan recorded at Blind Boy Scout Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. Engineer: Max Lorentz. Backing vocals on ”There’s no reason to be afraid”: Max Lorentz, Cecilia Backman.

For fans of: Mareux, Boy Harsher, Zola Jesus, Dead Can Dance, Ten Walls, GusGus, Ulver, Perila, Molchat Doma, Polynation.

There’s no reason to be afraid was originally one of those songs that had some potential, but wasn’t much more than background music before it had vocals.

My label boss, John Cloud, a man extraordinary, had already pitched another one of my songs to Anders Ericsson, a Swedish legend known from Lustans Lakejer and a former member of Ubangi now operating under the moniker Svart Tulpan. Anders had already agreed to sing on, and delivered amazing vocals for that one (if I didn’t know John to be such a sweet guy, I’d swear he must have some shit on Anders! This must have been some blackmailing involved!)
Anders did such an amazing job on the first one that I thought I must try my luck and see if he’ll do another (he ended up doing 3 songs for this album!).

There’s no reason to be afraid was originally named TYDIH, an abbreviation I won’t explain here, but clues can be found in the album’s title, Interglacial, as well as MWP1a and MWP1b, two other songs written for Interglacial.

Without going into details, it all has to do with the transitions between glacial and interglacial times. The transition from a glacial maximum to a glacial minimum, in other words, it’s about change.

We’re petrified of changes, all of us, and understandably so, because one change leads to another, which ultimately leads to our end. Anders likes to argue though, that there’s no reason to be afraid, and I don’t know about you but there’s something in his voice that makes me believe him.

Guðmundur Óli Pálmason / Kuggur