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Sigur Rós: Inni

So, yesterday I sat down in my darkened living room to watch Sigur Rós’ latest optical output, the concert movie Inni. First of all: this is not Heima. No images of the guys playing in Sleipnir’s hoofprint here – there’s no Icelandic landscape at all. The show was filmed at London’s Alexandra Palace in 2008, and it’s completely black and white. The film very much focuses on the performance of single bandmembers, shots of the audience and the whole stage are few and far between, and besides the monochrome coloring also uses distorted images of background animations and instruments to further fragment the viewing experience. It feels very abstract – even though the cameras are on stage with the band, the viewer is clearly not. The songs are interspersed with unsorted snippets from interviews dating from the nineties and early noughties, the only specks of paint in the whole movie.

Music-wise, it’s the best-of setlist one would expect of Sigur Rós in 2011 (or 2008, for that matter) – songs from all releases including Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust . Despite the bleak look, the sound is very much the live-sound, including audience applause, and drum-heavy tracks like Sæglópur and Popplagið are much more livelier and have a raw feeling, especially when the camera is close to Orri’s cymbals. There also is a new song running over the end credits called Lúppulagið.

All in all, the film did not convince me – a concert movie should either have a narrative and substory like Heima (or Spinal Tap) or show the musicians up close on stage with sweat running and bleeding fingertips. Sigur Rós is not Arcade Fire, but the one thing that always fascinated me is the massive wall of sound they produce playing live, and sadly the movie does not transport this to my living room. I’ll try to catch one of the many cinema-screenings of Inni – maybe my shabby couch and small laptop did not do justice to the movie. On DVD, it looks like a 1920s newsreel with better sound.

Sigur Rós: Festival (Live) from Sigur Rós on Vimeo.

Klara Harden took a little walk through Iceland

Klara Harden took a little walk through Iceland. We are speechless with amazement.

The SONIC ICELAND AIRWAVES blog – day 4

Image by Óskar Hallgrímsson, Iceland Airwaves

Let’s get this over with first: BJORK IS MAKING MUSIC WITH TESLA COILS. BJORK IS MAKING MUSIC WITH TESLA COILS. There, I’ve said it. But more of that later. We started our day with a hamburger and chips at Prikid, and to make up for the comfort food we then headed out to the Blue Lagoon for the afternoon.

Back in Reykjavik, we braced ourselves for the last night of Iceland Airwaves. And it looked very promising: first up was Bjork’s Biophilia performance in Harpa, and after that Hjalmar in Bakkus. So, while Reykjavik was blasting revellers with an icy wind straight from the top of Mount Esja, we headed down Laugavegur to the concert hall, which we reached just in time to get our tickets and for Anne to hand in her camera – Björk was not allowing any pictures to be taken.

Image by Rúnar Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Iceland Airwaves

I had read this brilliant article in the Rolling Stone, so I basically knew what to expect, but the experience was something different. On a stage in the middle of the room, open to all sides, Björk placed herself amidst her choir, a group of Icelandic girls clad in blue and gold, herself sporting the enormous whig? hairpiece? mushroom? which you can see at the Biophilia-cover, and directed the proceedings. All songs were, like the songs on the app itself, introduced by the disembodied voice of Sir David Attenborough. For the first song “Thunderbolt”, a large cage containing two Tesla coils was lowered from the ceiling, switched on and the lighting shooting between the coils produced the bass line for the song. Making music with electricity, that is all.

For the next 1,5 hours, auntie Gudmunsdottir was the proverbial crazy old woman on stage, a herb woman tip tapping around to gather ingredients for her music, borrowing some drum patterns from percussionist Manu Delago, a melody from Jons Sims at the keys, and finally concocting her soundbrew with the help of the “Graduale Nobili”-choir and her IPad. Huge screens on all sides of the stage showed the doings of the “Biophilia”-apps in coordination with the songs played. Björk ended the official Biophilia-performance with only herself placed in front of four strange harp/bell-misconceptions, singing “Solstice”. And during that song, she missed a beat for the first time. But it only showed that the elf-mother of apps and melodies is still a human. And as she and her hair piece from hell hopped off stage, shoe-less after the encores of “Medulla” and the crescendo of “Declare Independence”, she uttered a final “Declare Independence! Takk fyrir!” and was gone. But I was happy to have met her.

After that other-worldy experience, I was glad to return to the world of rock’n'roll – or reggae, to be more precise. We headed over to an tightly packed Bakkus, were the good guys of Hjálmar were playing a sweaty set to introduce their new album which will be out October 27th. So I got a few more Polar beers, and we ended our Airwaves listening to the melancholy sounds of the world’s saddest reggae band, while inside the sweat was pouring from the ceiling and outside the viking-wind was doing its best to tear the place down.

Takk fyrir, Reykjavik and Airwaves!

The SONIC ICELAND AIRWAVES blog – day 3

Ah, gravel roads. How I missed you. Due to the fact that we had a rental car at our disposal, we welcomed the fact that we were not overly hangovered (the magic of Bæjarins beztu pylsur) and took to the countryside, leaving a surprisingly sunny Reykjavik behind us and drove north, skipped the tunnel to Akranes and rounded the Hvalfjord amidst bands of rain, spells of brilliant sunshine and heavy winds, almost alone on the road. We stopped for lunch in Borganes, where we also visited a sheep market, or a local gathering of people with sheep, whatever you want to call it. Some people even led their family sheeps around on a leash. I also spotted a mutt wearing his own little Icelandic jumper. They do love their pets here.

After that it was another two hours on gravel roads, driving through endless lava fields around Husafell and enjoying the incredible colours of the Icelandic scenery in autumn. Slightly tired, we were back in Reykjavik around seven in the evening, just in time to get ready for another show at Harpa. This time is was the turn of Ólafur Arnalds, who played a best-of set in the same hall as Mugison they day before. Óli had brought his usual string support, but I was delighted to see Janus from Bloodgroup setting up his own array of laptops and mixers on stage. The aditional layer of sound and programming that Janus provided made the whole set much more livelier and the songs sound much more diverse than on record. Ólafur himself seemed to enjoy it all, joking with the audience in Icelandic and English and introducing his fellow musicians – his demure stage behaviour a thing of the past, seemingly. A very enjoyable show of one of the best contemporary Icelandic composers.

Next up were baguettes (hamburgers were already sold out) from a booth on Hafnarstraeti and then Gus Gus at the arts museum. Due to the late hour (the band was on stage shortly after midnight), the crowd showed multiple signs and levels of intoxication, from leaning against the wall and starring into nothingness despite the massive beats from stage to what I can only describe as tribal dancing, the main action was definitively off stage. Due to the big venue, the impressive sound system and the massive crowd, the whole Gus Gus set looked and sounded like a bad Faithless-show ca. 1999. I have completely lost track of current line-up and releases of Gus Gus, so I’ll leave the googling to you. Show was good, though, if you like that kind of sound.

Our final stop for the night was the Sudden Weather Change show at Iðnó, the 19th-century restaurant/venue right next to the city pond. Since the departure of singer Ben Stacey, they have moved away from the three-guitar-wall of noise and added programming and loops to their sound, which takes some of the raw edge away, but makes their music much more comprehensible. So maybe this is the next logical step for their sound – the crowd, including many members of local music gentry like Jonsi and Ben Frost, was more than pleased.

Overall, the crowd turnout was much less then the days before, and the people that came to the shows, media people or not, showed various signs of disrepair. People fell asleep on the sofas in Harpa, and despite the energetic sound of Sudden Weather Change did many revellers rely on the walls of Iðnó to prop them up. Iceland Airwaves takes it toll.

Coming up today: Blue Lagoon and Frau Gudmunsdottir live. Talk to you later.

The SONIC ICELAND AIRWAVES blog – day 2

Day two was a nice one. We started our day with a strong coffee and shopping tour through Reykjavik. I bought books, yay – I’m especially happy that I got a copy of “Zombie Iceland” by Nanna Árnadóttir. And then it was already time for work, well, self-promotion: I gave an interview to a German film crew from Cologne production company Florianfilm, who were in Reykjavik to film a documentary about the Airwaves and Icelandic music in general. We met in the cozy surroundings of Hemmi og Valdi, and I was happy to chat about Sonic Iceland for half an hour, hoping that my hair’d look good.

After that, we had more coffee and a delicious vegetarian dinner – and then it was showtime again. We started the evening with a show by one of my favourite Icelandic musicians, the mighty Mugison in the newly opened concert hall Harpa, which is a stunning building right next to the harbour, designed by Olafur Eliasson.

The set was was incredible. Mugi looks more and more like an Icelandic Tom Waits with his fierce long beard, and he had completed his on-stage outfit with a wide-brimmed hat and a waistcoat. His backing band was equally impressive – the drummer behaved like a dog waiting for his master to throw a ball whenever Mugi was counting in a song and added a super-tight rhythm foundation to whatever song from whatever album came up. I had expected Mugison to focus on the Icelandic songs of his newest album “Haglei”, but we were treated to a best of-playlist. The new songs got a makeover as well, and so the first single from the new album, the eponymous “Haglei” sounded more like a Johnny Cash-track than the melodic pop-song that it the recorded version. The set finished with a mean, belched-out version of “Murr Murr”, which sounded very White Stripes-like and made all bums in the audience sway. All.

We then walked over to Bakkus, to watch the very drunken show of our favourite art rock band, Reykjavik! The guys were not only celebrating the release of their new album “Locust Sounds” (which you should buy!!), also was it guitar player Valdi’s birthday, so the band was handing out shots and shrieking out songs by the busload. Singer Boas got bored on stage and climbed over the nearby bar and hung himself from the speakers, so to say. Very sweaty and very good. The only thing they did not do was play my favourite song “Internet”. But they are forgiven.

After the show: more beers, and another hot dog. Stay tuned for more. Also more hot dogs.