My Album in a Bottle washed up on a beach on the east coast of Iceland a few days ago and was found by Sigrún Sigurpálsdóttir who now owns this very special album. Congratulations! I recorded the album as part of my Straight to Vinyl project where I recorded 30 x 7" vinyls during a live 24h broadcast on Icelandic National Television and my Youtube channel.
Initially, we dropped the album (encased inside a bottle and equipped with a satellite transmitter) in the ocean from a helicopter during the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival last November but after two weeks it stranded on an uninhabited island in Breiðarfjörður on the west coast of Iceland. With the help of a few good men who went to pick up the album and Eimskip who were kind enough to let us put it in on board their container ship Lagarfoss on route to Rotterdam the album then embarked on a new adventure when it was thrown overboard just south of Höfn í Hornarfjörður on November 24th. Since then the album travelled over 5.000 km before washing up on shore, even crossing the arctic circle at one point! You can see the details of the travels here.
Below you can see Sigrún and her family opening up the bottle with the album which luckily proved to be whole and not damaged at all
There are still some of those rare 7" vinyls in the world that remain to be hidden for some lucky people to find. You can find a list of all the winners to date and which albums they own right here.
For The Album in a Bottle project, we collaborated with engineering firm Verkís Verkfræðistofa, Ævar vísindamaður and Icelandic National Broadcasting Service RÚV. In addition to the fun factor of the project, the aim was to raise awareness on the negative impacts of marine pollution while simultaneously contributing to a scientific study on how winds and currents affect how things drift in the ocean.
Big thanks go out to all collaborators and everyone interested in the project.
-Ásgeir & team