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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14/10/2011

The Joy of Text

So today of course I had to ask everyone who had been to Björk how she was. Words such as “magical”, “amazing”, and “FIND A WAY TO GET A TICKET” fired back at me. Mark Iceblah’s blog on her Wednesday show fired even more words of enthusiasm (the title alone sold it to me to be honest, you should read it). Damn! The queue for the remaining free tickets for her second sold-out Sunday show would surely be bigger? And possibly colder! Oh no! It was sounding more & more like it would be worth it and that I’d regret not taking this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Joachim & Bjork

But then I got a text from my friend Katie who had just seen a tweet – more tickets had been released for the sold-out show. Ooh! Now they weren’t cheap (9900 isk), which was why I’d not bought one in the first place but.. this would surely be worth it. And.. that’s what credit cards were invented for right? It took me about another 30 seconds to reach for my laptop and the Harpa.is website to book my ticket – and I’m now the proud owner of a confirmation email to see Björk on Sunday! Word about how good the show was had obviously got out, as when I texted my Björk queue buddy Joachim to tell him tickets were available he ran straight to the box office to get one, and you can see his Björk-related glee above! Till Sunday on the Björk front then!

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12/10/2011

Björking

Smekkleysa Records

So we’re at Airwaves and the big news this year is that Björk  is playing. Now I’m not a die hard fan, but I do like and have a lot of respect for what she does, and can only imagine how fantastic an experience her live shows must be. If it’s anything anywhere near as mindblowing as Ghostigital‘s Airwaves set last year (it’s her ex-Sugacube mate Einar Örn Benediktsson’s band) then I’m in. The only problem is that entry to her 2 gigs aren’t included in the Airwaves wristband and additional tickets were upwards of £55. But – 200 free tickets will be released to airwaves wristband holders on a first come first served basis on the morning of the days of her shows. The first one of which is today.

Windy Vesturgata

Ticket hand-out starts at 11am. I didn’t want to seem too keen but neither did I want to stand in the cold for nothing. But I’ve been in queues like this before and found them to be a bit of a laugh, so I dragged my backside out of bed and trotted over to Smekkleysa for 9.30am…

Queueing round the corner

Huge queue was already there. Ah. Probably near enough 200 people. But I didn’t want to count (I don’t like staring and pointing at people), plus what if people left or pushed in after I’d counted? So I joined the end of the queue and got a bit of a gauge of the mood. Most people were cautiously optimistic but we decided to stay put, we wanted to try our luck.

I got chatting to two Icelandic girls, one of whom had the best mittens in the world (made by her friend):

Icelandic PacMan mittens

about the Northern Lights and whether it gets a bit boring tourists banging on about them all the time . No! was the answer, Icelanders love the lights too, they’re always beautiful. (I forgot to mention, although the conditions seemed good for the lights in Laugarvatn, and we drove out to the countryside and waited until 1am to see if we could see them, we had no luck and are still Northern Light virgins). But at least I felt less silly constantly asking people whether it would be possible to see them!

I also made another queue buddy with a German chap called Joachim, who I practiced my German on (poor bloke!) and who also wanted to try his Björk luck. We debated the likelihood of us getting a ticket – how near were we to the magic number 200 in the queue? We decided that it was too close to call but that if we weren’t lucky then it was ok – there are plenty of other things to do. But then a girl walked past clearly counting the queue, so I asked her how many, she thought we were around 190 – close but positive…

Then 11am arrived and the queue moved forwards. As we turned the corner and neared the shop, we started to get excited, we really wanted tickets! We’d waited, we’d got really cold, we’d heard the whoops of the people at the front of the queue as they got served – those tickets were ours!

Close but no cigar

We neared the shop window, people were coming out and saying we should be ok there were plenty left. We got to the shop window, still another 15 or so people in front of us. And then someone said “it’s finished”. NO!! “Are they sure?” we thought..? We seemed so close! Everyone left in the queue clearly wondered the same thing. Come on, confirm it! But then a security guard came out and confirmed it. Oh.

So no Björk tickets for us, at least not today. Whether I’ll try again on Friday I don’t know. But it’s nice to know either way that queueing for tickets can still be fun and it’s always nice to meet new people who are all there for the same reason, and all are obviously a little bit mad to want to wait in the cold just in case.

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12/10/2011

Thingy.. what?

AlÞingi at Þingvellir

Yesterday was our last day with our hire car, so we drove back to Reykjavik through Þingvellir (Thingvellir) national park and in effect from Europe to America, and this is where you can see where the Eurasian and American tectonic plates slowly slowly pull apart. Again I’d seen this before on a grey December day but it was glorious to see the natural amphitheatre where modern democracy in Europe was founded in the bright sunshine.

Europe, America & Arctic Char

The lake was a stunning blue and the river that runs through the tectonic rift was clear and full of Arctic Char, the rocks covered in greens and reds of moss and heather. Jamie’s still getting his head round the letter Þ so we settled on “Thingy place” until next time!

Reflections in Þingvellirvatn

Jamie was pretty gutted to be leaving the peace of the countryside and wasn’t all too sure about hitting a big city just yet. But the nice thing about Reykjavik, I think, is that it doesn’t feel like a big city, it feels cosy, relaxed and friendly. Jamie was impressed – it’s not often that you can hear the autumn leaves crunch under your feet in the middle of a capital city. So we went for a little wander, picked up our festival wristbands, took some panoramic shots of the city from the tower at Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral and then I took Jamie for the best hot chocolate in Reykjavik at Hemmi og Valdi on the main street. Let the fun commence!

Skólavörðustígur from Hallgrimskirkja

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12/10/2011

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls

Systrafoss

Making it back from Jökulsárlón was nearly event-free, apart from the big cream coloured bin bag floating across the road in the twilit distance. When we got nearer this of course turned out to be a big fluffy Icelandic suicide  sheep standing right in front of us. I narrowly avoided it though, much to Jamie’s lamb chop loving annoyance.

Jamie looking over the edge of Systrafoss

We stayed overnight in a guesthouse in Kirkjubaerklaustur, under the Systrafoss waterfall. We had a day of waterfalls planned next so it seemed only appropriate to start here. Systrafoss is a tall, sloping fall which you can walk up, to the lake right at the top, with some breathtaking views of the lakes, fields and streams across the sands towards the sea.

The drive back to VIK

Driving back the way we came along the coast through Vik and out the other side took us past more snow-capped mountains we’d not seen earlier because of the low cloud. Skógafoss wasn’t much further along and we stopped there to have a look, snap its rainbow and find out what the legend was behind it: apparently a Viking king hid some treasure behind it which cannot be reached – a young lad did try once but all he managed to grab was the handle of the chest, and this handle now lives in the local museum. All waterfalls are pretty but there’s something about Skogafoss’s setting that makes it shine and twinkle.

Skogafoss

Two down and with two to go, our next stop was at Seljalandsfoss. I was looking forward to this one because you can walk behind it, and when I visited it before, I saw and managed to photograph a circular rainbow coming off it. Perfect yes? We knew it wasn’t far and I knew what it looked like, but by the time we saw a sign for a landing strip that according to the map was another 20km beyond Seljalandsfoss, we realised we’d missed it. Jamie thinks it might have been when I was looking for the chocolate hobnobs to pass to him while he was driving, instead of looking for the foss. There’s a lesson about biscuits in there somewhere.

Alpine summerhouse on route 35

But we were nearly at our next destination Selfoss,  so we decided to carry on instead of turning back. Selfoss isn’t a waterfall but a town, and a big-ish one by Icelandic standards, but more importantly to us it has a petrol station, a big river and marked the turning to our next destination, Gullfoss. The drive from Selfoss to Gullfoss takes you through a mountainous region full of summer houses and golf clubs, and the odd volcanic crater (at Kerið).

Kerið Volcanic Crater

There are luminous turquoise lakes and vibrant fields, against a backdrop of snowy mountains. In a way it turns from being volcanic and inhospitable to an off season Alpine ski resort. The road also takes you past Geysir which is the town with THE geysers that draw the tourist crowds. Even though Jamie kept saying he wasn’t all that bothered about seeing it I made him pull over to have a look at the earth steaming away (I never get tired of watching this) and witness Strokkur (the active geyser that spouts 20m every 4-10 mins) do its exploding water thing.

Strokkur at Geysir (by Jamie)

 We also went to have a look at the original hot water spout Geysir, the one that all the others are named after. It used to spout 80m frequently, and the Icelanders took great pride in showing it off to visiting dignitaries. It didn’t always spout at the right time though so they used to chuck soap in it which seemed to work, but now it’s not spouted for years, so it seems that it might now be broken (although earthquakes have revived it in the past).

Me and Jamie inspecting the broken Geyser

But our final golden waterfall beckoned (gullfoss means golden waterfall in Icelandic). I’d seen it before but on a foggy December day and it just looked big, foggy and grubby. But an hour before sunset  I could see exactly where this huge waterfall got its name with the sun glinting off the deposits in it to give it its golden tinge. Gullfoss is Iceland’s biggest waterfall and sits in a deep river gorge which at that time of day puts a lot of it in shadow, hampering Jamie’s picture taking somewhat, although it was nice to be able to see the contrast between the bits in direct sunlight, and the swathes of grass covered in frost and frozen ice layers from the waterfall’s spray in October temperatures.

Gullfoss

So 4 waterfalls down we were off to our next hostel with a beautiful view of lake Laugarvatn, still and moonlit. Conditions were looking good for the Northern Lights too so we had tea and set about finding a good spot in the hope we might see them.

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