14/02/2012

Yunioshi // Bloodgroup // Nottingham Contemporary

Yunioshi // Worms

With the drudgery of January beginning to seem more like a distant memory than an excuse to curl up on the sofa with a DVD and wine/pizza/cat, I have a rather nice week musically to look forward to, culminating in a minor adventure to the old motherland of Nottingham (which has changed beyond all recognition since I was a student there 15 years ago). But it’s not nostalgia for revision-related sorrow drowning (any nostalgia for that is long gone) – it’s Iceland, and an EP launch at the Nottingham Contemporary, a wonderful looking venue surely perfect for hosting such cosmopolitan sounds. (And it’s free entry, get it in your diaries!)

The EP in question is from the delicious Yunioshi, who despite being quirkily English, clearly have an ongoing love affair with Iceland (the EP is entitled Reykjavik). First single from this release is Worms, setting the scene for an indulgent romp into their fuzzy lo-fi spacefunk world where girl/boy vocals drift over what could easily be 1983. The EP Reykjavik amalgamates waves of synthfunk and 8-bit-dreamy, with just the right amount of unnervingly sinister, to make you concerned about your imminent kidnapping by a gang of deranged Harajuku girls.

Bloodgroup // My Arms // Live

And joining Yunioshi are Icelandic masters of fiery, glacial electro Bloodgroup, on the last night of their European tour. This makes me doubly excited. It’s not often an Icelandic band outside the obvious Sigur Ros pigeonhole ventures to the UK, much less do they make it outside London. Bloodgroup were also one of the first Icelandic bands whose music I was introduced to, and it was their album Dry Land, with its uniquely dramatic electric purity that first inspired me to give music reviewing a go (the album review is here).

Also joining the line-up are Nottingham’s fuzz folk outfit We Show Up on Radar,  who promise crunchy, Beck-influenced vibes, which sounds thoroughly appropriate given the company of the evening. It’s free in to the whole launch night, so I hope like me you’ll be dusting off appropriate footwear in which to throw shapes, and heading for The Contemporary this Saturday.

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09/01/2012

I Support the #SpartacusReport

I’ve been meaning to write about disability benefit for ages, but 1) it makes me really really angry, and 2) I must admit, I’m a bit rubbish.

But one person who is most certainly not rubbish, and deserves our complete admiration, is Sue Marsh, blogger and disability campaigner with crippling Crohn’s disease, who, along with others with similarly disabling conditions has led the research which has gone into today’s Responsible Reform SpartacusReport, a crowdsource funded report carried out by Sue and her fellow sick & disabled campaigners in their spare time, having had to use the Freedom of Information act to access the public government consultation on welfare reform. (Figures and any other facts quoted in the blog are from this report, which is itself thoroughly referenced).

The story behind this is all pretty widely known in the disability campaigning community, but what if this is the first you’ve heard about welfare reform? Or if you think disability benefit claimants are all lazy, complaining & exaggerating scum, or “dribbling cripples” deserving nothing but pity? It’s easy to think it doesn’t affect you if you don’t know much about it, or if you’ve had the misfortune to buy into the stereotypes peddled by the media, but disability benefits are a lifeline to many and may be to you in years to come. Changes in health can come suddenly and unexpectedly:

  • If there is the slightest risk of you ever sustaining a head injury (road traffic accident anyone?)
  • If you have risk factors for diseases like stroke (having worked with stroke victims, I can tell you that living with the aftermath of a stroke is SCARY). Smoking, high blood pressure & family history are the main risks
  • If you have a condition which may later become progressively worse or complicated, for instance MS, or loss of sight or limbs with diabetes
  • If you have ever worked with sick or disabled people
  • If you have friends or family who have difficulty working or living their lives independently because of a medical condition
  • If you have any condition in your family (like autism) which your kids or grandkids may inherit / have inherited
  • If you are planning kids (or your kids are planning your grandkids) and have any of the usual worries that it may be born less than 100% healthy
  • If you love someone to whom any of the above applies…

…then welfare reform affects you. 

Please read on, share the link to the report (here) and use “I support the #spartacusreport” on Twitter & Facebook. Most importantly, email your MP and ask that they read the report and respond. The government says it’s listening to disabled people, but has been shown in this report to be doing the exact opposite. Make them listen.

We will not stand for 20% cuts to the most vulnerable in society when there is no justification for it, when there is still real, genuine need, and when the disability benefit fraud rate stands at only 0.5%.

We will not stand for the government & popular media continuing to demonise the sick & disabled, and propagate the myth of the disability benefit “scrounger”, hugely overquoting rates of benefit fraud in this group of claimants and using dismissive & derogatory terminology.

Why is this so important?

It often costs more to live when you have a disability, especially if you have a carer, whether that be the loss of income incurred when you cannot work yourself and a partner or family member have to give up their job to look after you, or whether you need special equipment to help you with your activities of daily living (ADLs) and mobility or help with transport costs to access medical treatment (if you need specialist help only available at regional centres this could be a couple of hundred miles round trip).

The current target of government reform is Disability Living Allowance (DLA), which was introduced to address this additional cost. It is not, unlike most other benefits, means-tested, so if you have qualifying problems affecting your daily life then you automatically get it depending on the severity of the impact of those problems. This aspect of it probably needs reform, but despite disability benefit fraud rates being 0.5%, the government wants to reduce the DLA budget by a massive 20%. Meaning they will remove vital support from a big chunk of genuine claimants – with – and this is the crucial part – genuine needs. Perversely, this DLA money can even keep some people in work by allowing them to buy for instance aids that will maintain mobility, and yet they still want to cut it.

The government wants to scrap DLA and replace it with Personal Independence Payments, or PIP, as part of the welfare reform bill. This change would cost an estimated £675million to administer (I don’t see how this would aid deficit reduction myself) and to paraphrase the Responsible Reform report, cause great cost in human suffering – as benefits which are often also lifelines are arbitrarily cut without thought or understanding, or even consideration of human rights legislation.

The government has consulted on the welfare reform bill, but has not followed its own guidelines. The consultation should have been open for 12 weeks, but rather than extend this further to allow full engagement of the sick & disabled people it affects (for instance some may need larger print or braille copies), it was closed 2 weeks early, and 2 days after debate on the welfare reform bill had begun. How could the government be taking into account the views of disabled people and their families & carers if they had already decided the legislation?

The Responsible Reform Spartacus report seeks to highlight all these failings and more. Using Freedom of Information legislation it summarises in detail the responses to the consultation that were received but never fully published, and seeks to ensure that ministers have access to the full facts before voting on the proposed changes that will make our society’s vulnerable even more ill and marginalised. Even Boris Johnson’s response to the consultation on DLA opposed the changes, explaining how it would unfairly discriminate against people with fluctuating conditions (which is pretty common) and demanding justification for the 20% cut in light of the 0.5% fraud rate.

These are the most vulnerable people in our society and they in the most part will have nowhere else to turn if their benefits are cut. Reform needs to be responsible, and engage intelligently with stakeholders – in this case sick & disabled people, their families, carers, and specialist charities. Please – get involved.

 

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29/10/2011

Selling Kenya

Kenyan Personality

I’ve just been surfing my telly with more-than-terrestrial-but-less-than-proper-freeview channels on it for a little bit of junk to watch while I have my lunch after finally making it home from work (I made it up the M1 fine but Leeds has shut Armley it seems..).

As it’s Saturday afternoon there’s not much on so I found myself clicking on Afrika Rising, a programme or indeed channel (I wasn’t paying that much attention) focusing on African culture, and in this case a singer called Asa, who’s Nigerian. It wasn’t particularly her music that made me want to write this though, although it’s worth a listen, she’s got a beautiful, rich, warm voice with a quirky female-Andre 3000 style about her. She’s also been compared to Bob Marley but I don’t think that’s such a claim to fame as EVERYONE in Africa (well, Kenya anyway), is obsessed with Bob.

What made me want to write is that I wanted to connect again with a little bit of African life. I was only there for a comparatively short time, and with so many other mzungu volunteers, and in such conflicting ideas running through my head about why I was there, that it was hard to form real friendships. But I’ve found myself missing Kenya, and in particular the people that live there, their incredible diversity, persistence, ingenuity, warmth, and joy. I’ve in fact just got in touch with Rhoda, the nurse at the clinic I visited, and it’s been so lovely to hear from her.

So I thought, let’s have a look for some DVDs I can immerse myself in, it’s cheaper than a plane ticket – something maybe Michael-Palin-travelogue-like, where we get to know local people without patronising them. OK I know Michael Palin did Africa in Pole to Pole but I wondered if there was anything else I could reminisce at. My brief search revealed nothing of this genre. Type “Africa” or “Kenya” into Amazon’s search engine and you get glamorous and/or colonial Hollywood movies, a huge number of documentaries on the spectacular natural history of the region, and promotional tourism DVDs plugging the latest faceless 5-star resort or expensive safari with the focus not on exploring and discovery but doing what everyone else does, because that must be what all tourists want to do.

WHERE ARE THE BOOKS AND FILMS ABOUT REAL AFRICAN PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES? WHY AM I BEING SOLD THINGS? WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE ONLY MAKE DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT THE AFRICAN WILDLIFE? WHY ARE ALL THE FILMS ABOUT GLAMOURISED COLONIALISM, OR WAR, OR FAMINE, OR THE “QUAINT TRADITIONAL TRIBESPEOPLE”?!!! There are not just wildebeest and cheetah in Africa, there are real people and communities, with real, modern problems and it really pisses me off that we are still marginalising the warmth you’ll be met with when you get to know local Kenyans, and I’m sure other Africans, in favour of buying into an out-dated image of a 24/7 traditional lifestyle, as if being able to earn money by showing off your village to strangers for money, is a sustainable substitute for education, rewarding work, and development to be able to solve your own problems.

So, in response to the person who reviewed Julia Bradbury’s South African Walks, yes, people do wear tracksuit bottoms and T-shirts, yes they do all have mobiles, no they don’t have to conform to your expectations of how they should live, and no you shouldn’t be disappointed that people haven’t paraded themselves in full regalia for your viewing pleasure.

And the wildlife – yes I think it should be conserved, just like I think wildlife everywhere should be conserved (although Chris Packham may or may not agree),  but it needs to be done in a much more inclusive way, to avoid the resentment that comes from believing you’re being kicked off your homeland to make sure the foreign tourists have lions to look at. And it’s not even you they’ve paid huge sums of money to so that they can do so. Stop bigging it up to the complete exclusion of the human communities that live in the same environments (and have no idea why we make such a fuss about saving the animals because we never take the time to explain they can’t breed quicker than we can kill them).

I realise Amazon doesn’t hold the monopoly on travelogues and documentaries, but it does help dictate what the market wants. I’m sure there are plenty of shorts and modern real-life docs (we saw one at Sheffield’s DocFest in fact) but they’re not viewed widely enough to challenge preconceptions. And propagation of outdated perceptions simply pigeonholes Kenyans (and other Africans?) into the role of anonymous and passive recipient, completely ignoring the talent and genuine passion that they have that’s just waiting to be nutured so they can fulfil their potential, both collective and individual.

I guess I’ll just have to look back at my pictures instead.

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28/10/2011

No Sleep for the Wicked

Party Time

This last post has nothing to do with bands (apart from Mammút – hooray for Maamút!), and everything to do with a ridiculous last night in Reykjavik. Well we’d already checked out of our hostel at 10am, and weren’t leaving till 4am, it’d have been rude to stay indoors. After Björk, there were still 6 hours to kill before our bus to the airport, so I headed to Bakkus (shabbily cool bar with cheapest happy hour in Reykjavik) to find Jamie, Kate, Fabian, Rebecca, Veerle and the remnants of said happy hour. And Rebecca from the Grapevine, who I’d met 18 months previously, in Bakkus, and she remembered me – ace surprise!

Gaukur à Stöng

After a very quick stop for G&T at the hostel we legged it to Mammút at Gaukur à Stöng (what used to be Sódóma, and I’m sure many other scuzzy venues before it. It’s still just as scuzzy inside. Excellent). Mammút are punky and attention-grabbing, and it’s not hard to draw comparisons between singer Kata and Gwen Stefani’s breathy feist or even Björk’s colourful vocal range. One of my stand-out bands from last year and 20 times better than that this time round.

Jamie's shot of Mammut on DrownedinSound (click click)

With 3 more hours to go till our airport bus, we managed to sneak back into Bakkus which was just about to close have a lock in. Result! Cue lots of dancing with the Reykjavik hipsters (I love that I can go out in my walking boots (I’d packed my good shoes already, woops!) and woolly dress in Reykjavik and not get funny looks in the bar. But maybe that’s just me and I’m just used to dressing down when I go out. I also love the way Icelandic women (and men come to think of it) all seem to look confident and classily quirky – maybe it’s the absence of chain clothes stores and abundance of well-stocked charity shops that helps, but more likely the Icelandic sense of individuality. I’ve never seen an orange faced, bad extensioned overweight slapper falling out of her lycra in Reykjavik. Which is refreshing.

Further Entry for #BeardClub

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, dancing in Bakkus. Always fun, the DJs always seem to know how to get people on their feet. We were enjoying it so much we didn’t notice that the reason the music finally stopped was because the cops had clocked the lock-in and came in to ask them to close. Nor did I spot Jónsi, who’d been chatting with his mates 3 tables from us all evening, till we were all gathered outside deciding where to go next. He then very quickly and probably very sensibly disappeared. But at least I didn’t feel like the only Airwaves-er not to have bumped into him over the festival.

i8CD

Now Bob was saying there was a party at i8, and we should go. Did somebody say party?! i8 is a flat above a shop inhabited by two cool Icelandic dudes Steinþór and Atli, and they’ve been having off-venue concerts there the whole of Airwaves. JUST LOOK AT HOW MANY CDs THEY HAVE!!

Stefson/Recipe Cross Continental Supergroup win Edible Oscar at i8

The flat was super busy, full of Airwaves-ers we knew and Airwaves-ers we didn’t, locals and oddments of bands (the two I remember were Random Recipe and Retro Stefson – one of whom had a spirit level with him to measure the level of drunkenness. An Icelandic thing apparently).

Bruce does some measuring of spirits

The tunes & dancing just kept coming, the new people to talk to just kept coming, and we had a right good dance and a right good chatter to most people there. And in the best delivered “oops the neighbours have complained” announcement I’ve ever heard, Steinþór let us think the party was over but then  invited the neighbours too – this was Reykjavik, this is party town! He even charmed the cops who’d “popped in to make sure everything was ok”.

Veerle, me and an actor chap we met called Árni

There were many awesome things about this party (the bottle of Brennivín I was conspiratorially handed from the freezer, with a wink to share it round, was one),

Sharing the Brennvin Love

but the nicest thing I think was that everyone was genuinely welcome. If this had been in the UK, we might have got some self-important sneer of derision from the host, assuming we could have found them, and probably would have felt a bit awkward in a corner somewhere until we left after 20 minutes. But Steinþór and Atli were there all night making sure all their guests were having a good time, and instead of looking at me strangely when I waved and shrieked at him that I’d recognised him from the Inspired by Iceland website, Steinþór stopped and grinned, took the time to teach me how to pronounce his name, and was absolutely insistent that we should enjoy ourselves as much as possible. What a lovely man! Although me saying that has probably done his street cred no good at all.

Steinþór

Then I spotted Atli and he was equally nice to us even when I demanded a photo with him. This was a party you leave because you have to, not because you’re not having fun.

Partying with Atli is fun

But rather reluctantly, leave we had to, with several people’s business cards and flickr and facebook contact details about our persons (later to be peered at in bewilderment). 4.30am came, and we had to say goodbye to Reykjavik and Iceland, and catch our bus to the Airport. And to maybe think about getting some sleep.

Byeeeeee

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24/10/2011

Sunday is Björkday

Across Reykjavik from The Pearl

For reasons unbeknownst, by Sunday morning we still hadn’t gone swimming in Reykjavik. This is an essential Icelandic pastime boys & girls, involving lounging in geothermically heated outdoor “hotpot” pools and maybe doing one or two lengths. Regardless of the weather. And just after our 10am Sunday checkout (we were leaving at 4am on Monday morning, no need for a bed!) seemed the ideal time to rectify the situation. This was also when I decided to have an acute attack of the “oh-my-god-these-icelanders-must-be-sick-of-all-these-foreign-idiots-pretending-they’re-icelandic-for-a-week”  and got a bit grumpy, despite the lovely pool at Vesturbæjarlaug with the hottest steam room Kate & Jamie said they’d ever been in (wimps).

Hot Pots at Vesturbæjarlaug. (Photo by Joel Adams at Calvin College)

But the Icelanders we were sharing a hotpot with were very nice to us (as they always seem to be), and I felt much better when we saw an entire non-Icelandic band, wrapped up in coats, hats and scarves, doing a photoshoot and interview at the poolside. At least we weren’t doing that.

Reykjavik Perlan (photo by Jamie)

Feeling much better for my dip in the warm eggy pool and shower (it’s very comforting, and amazing for the skin), we still had a few hours to kill before our next gig (Cheek Mountain Thief at Kex), so with trepidation (due to its reputation as Reykjavik’s only tourist trap), we walked to The Pearl, a rotating restaurant with panoramic views, a fake geyser and and expensive menu.

Asja and Reykjavik from the Pearl

It was actually not bad – the middle-floor cafe isn’t too expensive and there are wonderful views (as well as the shit fake geyser):

The Fake Perlan Geyser, not even spouting. Boo.

We arrived early for the gig at Kex to indulge in one of their “big beers”

Katie & her Kex BIG BEER

and even bumped into Mike Lindsay (the Cheek Mountain Thief himself) who told us a bit about his move to Iceland, and more importantly compared beards with Jamie.

Kex Beard Convention

BUT NOW! Björk was playing Harpa! And I had a ticket! What was going to be in store? Once I’d made it to Harpa (I nearly got blown into the moat the wind was so strong) I found my way to the Silfurberg room.

Inside Harpa

Not so easy, as each person was stopped and asked not to take photos when our tickets were checked, and the first 3 doors were reserved for the (even more expensive) seated ticket-holders, for that added tradesman feel. But Silfurberg itself was surprisingly intimate, with the stage in the centre and a tiered and roomy standing area. I met up with my friends Gabriel & Ilan who’d been to see the show on the Wednesday too – they’d bagged a priority spot behind the drummer who was, they assured me “fit”. (I couldn’t disagree, purely from an aesthetic point of view of course. Hi Jamie). We could also clearly see the upturned woks (a “hang”) and big twisty guillotiney thing (a pendulum-harp) that Mark had described. Gabriel pointed out where the Tesla Coil would appear from. Joachim arrived in the nick of time, just before the lights dimmed and Björk’s choir filed on stage, closely followed by Björk in her huge orange wig.

Bjork's Hang, Sharpsicord and Pipe Organ

Having made a point of not hearing Biophilia before the live show (I don’t have an iphone or ipad and wanted the horses mouth experience), it was exactly the sort of bonkers but perfect concept performance you would expect. There are big screens showing the visuals from the relevant apps all around the stage, projected on both sides so you can see everything from wherever you were. Björk and her choir filled the stage, playing to all sides in rotation, and Gabriel said Björk seemed much more relaxed and into the performance than the previous Wednesday, which we could tell from the cheeky grins she threw at the audience.

On the screens, ‘Moon”s moon waxed and waned through its cycle with every beat of the xylophone.  One of my favourites was ‘Crystalline’ – just watching the choir dance in crystalline formation was a joy to behold, the notes of the song perfectly echoing – well crystalline things. Maybe it brought back a bit of chemistry geekery in me, I don’t know. My other Biophilia highlight was ‘Mutual Core’, an ode to the effect tectonic plates have on our lives. It starts off with Björk singing solo the least likely, unpoetic lyrics you would ever expect in a song, like A-level geography revision to music (“the Atlantic Ridge drifts, to counteract distance…”). Bonkers quotient filled. But then the song explodes in crescendo, the choir joins in, the stage erupts with vibrancy, the screens drip with volcanic lava, IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE ON SO MANY LEVELS.

Set List!

There were a few non-Biophilia songs too, highlights for me being Isobel, and Declare Independence, proper dance around and get caught up in the moment numbers. So was it worth queueing for a free ticket, getting turned away, and ending up paying fifty five quid anyway? Yes. For me at least, it was more about seeing the performance as a whole, than “seeing some Björk songs live”. She does kind of hide away to a certain extent behind her costume and choir, and only speaks between songs to say thanks and to introduce her fellow performers. But it’s a breathtaking pleasure to watch how each song is put together, with such originality, attention to detail and vibrancy. What a show.

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23/10/2011

Saturday Night’s Alright (for fighting)

GusGus at Reykjavik Art Museum

Well I’m back home now and still in need of substantial amounts of sleep after Airwaves. But why exactly am I so sleep-deprived I hear you ask? Well I shall endeavour to remember… Our Airwaves Saturday started with us stumbling to Hresso to see Elephant Stone, a Canadian band that rocks the sitar, which Katie had seen the day before and insisted we check out (they were rather good when we finally did see them).

Random Recipe

But! The timings had gone to cock and we wandered into a stunning set by Random Recipe, wholly more ballsy energetic live than the mediocre youtube clip I’d seen of them pre-festy. Rapper & Beatboxer Fab bounced, jumped, yelled and grinned her way through each song joined in no less equal measure by Frannie on guitar who sang with such passion I thought she’d fall off her seat more than once. Definitely a must-see live and I think possibly my pick of the day for sheer unexpected intensity, freshness and fervour. After the gig we bumped into Haukur from Reykjavik!, and editor of the Reykjavik Grapevine, who tipped us off he’d be playing with Ben Frost at Kaffibarrinn in his performance of Music for 6 Guitars. Kaffibarrin was totally packed, very overheated with toasty bodies of fans, and the best view I could get of the 6 guitarists was this steamed up little snippet:

 Kaffibarrinn Fuzz

Ben Frost does with sinister industrial noise-scapes what you’d expect from someone who has moved from the sunny climes of Australia to the dark winters of Iceland  - intense and twisted, yet strangely warm and soothing, his 6 guitars mesmerised and enveloped us all.

Lamb with all the crazy sauces and stuff YUM

After a bit of a treat involving Icelandic lamb, Arctic Char, and 2 glasses of house red at Sjávargrillið (yum), we found ourselves in Faktory for Ghostigital whose intense and near-maniacal performance was as magnetic as I remember from last year, and kinda set the tone for the rest of the night as it was spent dashing between various venues in 101 and dancing about like a lunatic -

The Beardy Boys' Queue

probably missing as much as we saw but we had electro in our feet and people to meet at Gus Gus which I’d love to be able to tell you more about but I’d had quite a lot of gin by this point and all I can say is that, as long as you avoided the main street of Laugavegur (whose atmosphere in the early hours of Sunday morning suddenly turned decidedly spiky and aggressive), it was an awful lot of fun. And I managed to collar 2 more Icelandic musicians for A Negative Narrative, plus one look-alike who was very nice about me thinking he was Someone Else Entirely.

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15/10/2011

Iceland, Iceland, Iceland.. The Country Where I Want To Be..

Cheek Mountain Thief

(With apologies to Monty Python and to Finland) – There is something about Iceland that seems to get under peoples’ skins. Aside from my own experience of nearly moving here (long story), and all the other Iceland-obsessives that I have met in the last 2 years, it’s happening to the bands too.

Cheek Mountain Thief is Mike from Tunng‘s new project (very new – tonight’s set was their debut performance). I’d not realised till I got there that he’s now moved to Iceland (to the north, near the Cheek Mountains – well that’s what they’re called if you translate the Icelandic), and I’d not realised until I heard him explain at his Nasa gig last night that he’d only decided to move since playing Airwaves for the first time last year with Tunng. I knew exactly what this overwhelming sense of Iceland turning your world upside down felt like, but I also felt a pang of envy that he’d just gone and done it, and seemed to be so at home. Oh and I loved his band too – intense, more folky than Tunng but just as eclectic. And wearing fabulous woolly snood things.

Mugison's Drummer

British label Bella Union is also here curating one of the stages at Harpa, which is where we headed next, for bluesy rocky ballsy beardy Mugison and for Ólöf Arnalds‘ beautiful voice. I follow Bella Union’s Simon on Twitter, and it seems he’s been hit by Icelanditis as well – checking my stream late last night had several updates from him explaining how much he’d like to move here (and that’s after just 36 hours  in the country apparently). I hear ya sir, and feel your pain!

Olof and Klara

But back to Mugison, who was even more fun than I remembered, with a drummer that could easily have taken centre stage too. I wanted to see Ólöf Arnalds too, partly because I’m a bit rubbish and tend to overlook singer-songwriters, even if they are amazing, but also because my friend Klara was singing with her. Klara came on stage after 3 songs, looking gorgeously va va voom, but it was their duet of Mr Tambourine Man, a song they sang together when growing up, that blew me away - Ólöf has a typically stunning glacially Icelandic voice as it is, but with Klara’s voice added the sound was like the most exquisite bells driving through your soul that completely took me by surprise.

Reykjavik! at Bakkus

As you might have gathered by now we are ones for variety so, news of violence in the queue for tUnE-yArDs we unfortunately avoided Nasa and headed for that must-see Reykjavik rock experience, Reykjavik! in a small dingy bar. Reykjavik! are loud, shouty, fast, but so much fun, and singer Boas regularly climbs into and onto the crowd and anything else he can get his hands on, while guitarist Haukur banters with crowd, offering them free vodka tonight if they know the words to one of the songs. Fun and sweat quota for tonight achieved. YES.

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15/10/2011

The Future is the Symphony

The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra

Thursday’s Airwaves sums up for me just how diverse the music scene is here in Iceland, and just how bloody good it is. Our first stop of the evening was at Harpa for the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra playing Draumalandið by Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurðsson. I’m not normally one to take more than a passing interest in classical music, but when I stumbled across Valgeir’s work on recommendation to see him and his Bedroom Community labelmates on the Whale Watching Tour, I couldn’t stop streaming it on repeat – the next thing I knew I’d reached for my credit card and a hard copy was in the post to me.

I’ve seen the Whale Watching Tour twice and narrowly missed a third performance of it along with the Icelandic Symphony in the Icelandic Opera House in Reykjavik, so I didn’t want to miss this one. The weight of a full orchestra behind the powerful and evocative score brought the drama of the Icelandic landscape and climate to life way over and beyond what you’d hear on record or on a smaller scale – and even then the lights and shades and tones and shapes and colours of Valgeir’s home are the most expressive I’ve ever heard. Wonderful.

Futuregrapher

But, there was another act I really really wanted to see here, and that was Futuregrapher. Futuregrapher is a founding member of Reykjavik’s weirdcore movement and I stumbled across him at last year’s Airwaves playing to a sparsely filled bar. He’s an electronic musician – I’d say DJ but apparently there’s an old connotation that DJs only play other people’s music, pressing a button then putting their feet up with a fag and a coffee till the next tune’s ready. But Futuregrapher is entirely original, and has more than a set of CDJs at his disposal. Normally I don’t particularly differentiate between people who look like they’re fiddling with knobs on mixer boards too easily – if I can dance to what they’re playing (which I probably will do most of the time) then great, and if not I’ll probably just wander off. Such folk aren’t often that visually interesting to watch anyway and one of Jamie’s favourite complaints about photographing them is that they all just look like they’re checking their emails on stage.

But Futuregrapher is a guy you have to watch as well as dance to – he dances, he gesticulates, he grimaces, his eyes pop, and if you’re lucky he’ll jump up on his desk and wave his mixer about – quite simply he breathes the music he’s making just as much as he knows you will. Definitely not an email checker, and definitely one of Jamie’s favourites this festival. And mine too – I was really pleased to see him headlining Faktory with the entire upper floor jumping around just as maniacally as Futuregrapher himself.  And I don’t know anywhere else where you can see such breathtaking performances by such hugely different artists and be blown away by both.

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14/10/2011

Negative Networking

I love the atmosphere at Airwaves – I’ve been telling Jamie how friendly everyone is and fortunately they’ve lived up to my rambling expectations. I’ve met up with old friends – Mark from Iceblah (whose recommendations for what to see at Airwaves should be taken as gospel, he’s never let me down!) and Elzio another journalist from Brazil who I met here last year. While I’m here I’m also attempting to track down as many artists as possible who might want to take part in A Negative Narrative, and actually this is much easier than in other places as everyone’s so approachable – you can wander past Jonsi and FM Belfast in a cafe and no-one bats an eyelid. I’ve pounced on three so far, although I shall keep their identities top secret (mainly in case they lose the bits of paper with their allocated questions on that I shoved in their stage-sweaty faces)!

Bob & Ben

We found Iceland Bob in his natural habitat of dark and dingy Reykjavik music venues, hobnobbing with the stars and reviewing Airwaves gigs for the Grapevine. He’s brought his brother Ben along this year too who seems to have a knack of bumping into us everywhere too!

Impostor-Hellvar play Hemmi og Valdi

The ever delightful Veerle, who I spent a lot of last year’s festival with and later met up with when I went to Brussels, is here too, staying with her Icelandic friends in the band Hellvar. She is doing some PR for them this year and we managed tried to catch one of their 7 airwaves sets at intimate off-venue Hemmi og Valdi, although caught instead a beautiful-sounding band who (I thought) introduced themselves as Hellvar, but must instead have been telling us to stick around for them. I must learn Icelandic soon.

Klara is here too, a friend who I met through another friend and who coincidentally works in the hostel we’re staying in. I’m looking forward to catching up with her properly when she is less busy – not easy when there are 5 or 6 bands playing in the hostel foyer every day this week as well as the usual guests to look after but I’m sure we’ll manage it!

We have also managed to track down my two friends Gabriel and Ilan, who I’ve not seen for ages and have come over from Israel for the festival, and in particular Björk, and of course we’ve already bumped into Yunioshi. It’s starting to feel like home!

Fabian & Jamie enjoy some beard time at Hellvar

But then there’s all the new friends we’ve met and are hanging out with round town – Joachim from the Bjork queue, and Fabian and Rebecca one of the couples we met in Vik. They’re ace to hang out with and we’ve been investigating many of the same gigs. Although Bob at off-venue Dillon wasn’t the hilarious half hour of legendary excitement we’d secretly hoped for!

Bob Justman plays off venue Dillon

There is a bit of a twitter crew here, mainly from Katie’s neck of the woods in London, but it’s been great to finally meet Bngddrd, NickBason and PamHutch who are all lovely (and who all had Bjork tickets for Wednesday, grr!). And later thanks to Mark, I finally met another Twitter/Iceland buddy Paul, a writer, photographer and finger-in-interestingthingspie-er whose brains I’ve picked many a time (thanks Paul!).

And wandering down Laugurvegur (back to the hostel to pick up more gin) we found Caroline & Jorge, who we also met in Vik, and yep, it was great to catch up with them too. Iceland is a small place and it seems to attract people with the same sorts of interests and attitudes so I guess it’s inevitable that everyone is so much bloody good company.

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14/10/2011

Airwaves 2011

Airwaves 2011

So Airwaves has begun! Airwaves, for the uninitiated, is a city centre festival with official venue gigs that you need a wristband for, and ‘off-venue’ gigs organised by local bar, club, bookshop and hostel owners which are open to everyone. There are a lot of fun, usually more cosy, less formal and often easier to get closer to the band.

But there are also unofficial off venue venues that aren’t on the programme at all, which is where we ended up on Tuesday night, before the festival ‘officially’ started. But that’s what I like about Iceland, nothing needs to be official and anything goes.

Reykjavik

Kex is a new hostel on the harbour front. Its name means biscuit we discovered, because the hostel is in fact a converted biscuit factory. If you were a cynic you might say it was a hipster hostel, but you wouldn’t catch me saying such things. We liked it a lot, kinda like if the people behind the Nation of Shopkeepers in Leeds did hostels.

Prins Póló

And on Tuesday night at Kex, were Icelandic popsters Prins Póló, full of smiles, woolly jumpers and party hats. They were followed by Norwegian Honningingbarna who had a front man so suavely dressed yet enigmatically  energetic on stage you’d be forgiven for forgetting they were a metal band – until their guitarist started shredding for Scandinavia. A jaw-dropping joy to watch, and an awful lot of fun.

Honningbarna

Once the adventures of the Björk queue were over, it was off to start the festival properly at  Hresso, another off-venue, with each day’s line up curated by a different record label. Icelandic 80s electrophiles Berndsen, complete with full ginger beard quota, were brilliantly 80s influenced, and seemed to be having as much fun on stage as the crowd were watching them.

Berndsen at the Hresso ginger beard convention

Is if that wasn’t enough entertainment for one hour, ubiquitous crowd-pleasers Retro Stefson were on next. Retro Stefson are an eclectic bunch of musicians with Latin and funk running through their chords, just as much as Icelandic, and if these guys can’t get a crowd dancing and a party started then no-one will. Before the first song is out they’re leading everyone through synchronised dance moves, and before the end of the set there is a conga-influenced circle pit, West-Side Story team-dancing between the band and crowd and orchestrated crowd surfing by singer Þórður. The bestest sweatiest start to Airwaves!

Retro Stefson

But in search of something different we wandered to Barbara and caught a multimedia vocal performance by Raketa. Icelandic girls all seem to have to most amazing angelically glacial voices and this project was no exception.

Raketa at Barbara

Similarly back at Kex, where the off-venue performances there were being broadcast live on Seattle Radio’s KEX-P station (pretty surreal walking past the sound desk and the West Coast accent doing his show beside us), and Icelandic experimentalist side-project Samaris were playing.

Samaris - coming to you live on Seattle KEX-P

Perhaps a little less glacial ok, but quirkily enthralling, with such Björk-like vocals I consoled myself that I was in Kex and not Harpa (where Björk was playing at that moment), and that I was probably much much nearer the front than I’d ever have got in Harpa.

Orphic Oxtra

The queues were starting to get busier though and while we got into Nasa to see Orphic Oxtra (a typically Icelandic upbeat big band affair), we had to give Soley at Harpa a miss because the line was right round the room. But we went back to Barbara to catch Yunioshi, unexotically from Nottingham but who I’d met at Airwaves last year and are not only thoroughly lovely boys and girl, but play the most awesome electro space funk rock I’ve come across in a long time.

Yunioshi (with Bloodgroup on sound desk)

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