Breaking the (Air)Waves
The third day started off with Half Moon Run, one of the Canadian bands I mentioned in the previous post. They caught my ears instantly but I wasn’t that fond on every song. But I will definitely check out their album.
I also had a ticket for today’s puppet show, Breaking News, for which Sóley did the music. The piece was about our relationship with the news. It was at times a hallucinating trip on how someone can get lost in all the news and information that is fired at us via all sorts of media all day long. Quite often you could hear people giggle about how nice they sometimes knew to recreate an image we are all familiar with. My favorite scene is the one where a newspaper was being opened and house rose up in a pop-up style. And by flipping other parts of the paper more and more houses and buildings were raised from the ground up. Before you now it a whole diverse village had grown in front of your own eyes. Brilliant and beautifully done! And then I didn’t even speak about the soundtrack. If Sóley would make a more ambient album filled with soundscapes I will be the first one to buy it! I did not take any pictures during the show, as I would be irritating myself :).
Breaking News Trailer:
[iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/52176643?badge=0″ width=”500″ height=”281″]
Then it was already time to prepare ourselves for the evening part of the day. Which included painful decision-making: on one side we had the Bedroom Community label night (Paul Corley, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, …) and on the other side five other bands I also really wanted to see (Low Roar, Ólafur Arnalds, For A Minor Reflection, Exitmusic and Shearwater) in Harpa. So intuitively I went for the Harpa evening. As many of the Bedroom Community members had newly released material I see them touring soon trough Europe. Also the wind, which was already blowing through the city for more than 48 hours, was only getting stronger and stronger. Parts of several roofs have been blown off throughout the day. And if I picked to stay at Harpa I was safe and warm if I had to stand in a waiting line.
To give you an idea of what the weather was like:
And sometimes it was great struggle to get somewhere. Good thing you can also grab a bite in Harpa so I could stay the whole night long in this beautiful safe haven.
Low Roar started of the night with his breakable tunes. The venue was packed by the time he started. It was his only show at the festival so it was the only chance to see him perform. From the first note he and his drummer had the audience in his pocket. Hopefully he’ll be releasing a new album next year. He left the audience wanting for more.
While waiting for Ólafur’s I went to see Cercueil. A band from France which took you to their dark electronic underworld. Not every song was convincing but at times they showed that they knew how to recreate interesting music from chopped up noises. If you can do that you’re pleasing me easily.
Next stop Óli (who is turning 26 this Saturday according to his blackboard). He played a set close to the one I saw last month in my hometown. The only difference now that we were at a festival and that clearly not everyone was as interested as back then. So some of the vibe got lost. But still the performance from him and his string players was again very nice. I think I will never get tired of this.
Once the strings left the stage for the final song I knew what was brewing up. “Lag Fyrir Ömmu” was coming up in the way they did it on the Five Years Erased Tapes tour: Ólafur plays the solo version but just when I think the song is over the strings pick up from behind the scene and walk slowly further backstage. Goosebumps.
For A Minor Reflection was not playing that many shows this year. They were the first band I saw at last year’s festival. They sold themselves back then. Although they were good I expected more from them. Nonetheless good show but I would have expected them to have grown a little bit more. Still a band to keep an out for.
With Exitmusic and Shearwater we started the non-Icelandic part of the night. From both bands I have a few favorite tracks and they were all played live. It was a nice end of this third day.
