Bardi Jóhannsson (1975) is an Icelandic rock musician, film composer, writer, author, short film director and more. He is mostly known for his work with Bang Gang (who have released three albums to date, and is working on a fourth), Lady & Bird, a side project alongside French artist Keren Ann and a new project with Jean-Benoît Dunckel (Air, Tomorrow’s World) called Starwalker.
Aside from these primary musical outlets, Barði has been involved in a vast array of other audio-visual projects, most significantly he has written music for commercials (Emporio Armani, Lancia, TGV, Yves Rocher, Citroën) and for the National Theater of Iceland & Centre Dramatique d’Orleans (Museum of the Sea by Marie Darrieussecq); he has appeared at the Festival Aix En Provence; and he co-produced and co-directed short films.
Barði has also been active in terms of writing scores for movies and documentaries, such as Haxan (performed by the Bulgarian symphony orchestra) and Óskar Jónasson’s Reykjavik Rotterdam (2009), which won Best Original Film Score at the Icelandic Edda Film awards for the best original film score and was nominated for the Scandinavian Film Music Awards at Giff Film Festival (2010).
He wrote the score for the film Would You Rather with Daniel Hunt (Ladytron) directed by David Guy Levy and the score for the film De toutes nos forces directed by Nils Tavernier that was for 3 weeks on top 10 in France and got around 700.000 visitors.
(photo by Xi Sinsong)