First day of Airwaves 2012
Right after my previous post I went straight to the Airwaves Media Center to pick up my wristband and ticket for the Sigur Rós concert. I should have gone straight to KEX to attend Sóley’s performance. The crowd was already leaving by the time I arrived. Her show was already finished. But they were still gathering the gear so I took the opportunity to take some pictures. Which would be very difficult during the show due to the large crowd. Here is my favorite one but do look at the bottom of the post for more pictures:
Afterwards I went to the other end of downtown Reykjavik, to “Reykjavík Downtown Hostel”, to see “Ghost Town Jenny” and “Me and My Drummer”. But on my way over there I passed “Inspired by Iceland: The smallest Iceland Airwaves off-venue” which is a small house in which a band plays a few songs for two selected people. The rest has to stay outside to enjoy the music. For those who are interested you can enjoy the performances via live stream or on demand replay on their website. I was walking around there during Tilbury which was a fun show by the way (let that be a tip).
So after that it was off to “Ghost Town Jenny” and “Me and My Drummer”. Enjoyed both, couldn’t see a thing, it was very crowded, but could listen all the better.
Ghost Town Jenny – Natural (liked this song much more live than this version):
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Me And My Drummer – You’re A Runner:
After that I went to pick up my ticket for a puppet show on Friday for which Sóley has created the soundtrack. The shows for Tuesday and Wednesday were already sold out. While waiting for the show of Úlfur I saw parts of “Jón Þór” and “Futuregrapher”.
Then it was time for my first concert this year in Harpa!
Úlfur was part of Jónsi’s live band during his solo tour. He likes to play with all sorts of effects in his own music, which is currently only available in Japan for some reason. I expected a little more from this but what he created were still beautiful soundscapes.
[iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/35760168″ width=”500″ height=”281″]
The next stop should have been Pascal Pinon, Sóley and Sin Fang. But a waiting line had already developed. Eventually after an hour and a half (in the very cold heavy wind) I decided to go for other bands I had marked on the line-up. Hopefully I’ll be able to see these bands play later at the festival. The saddest things about all this is that this was the first lesson I learned last year: be well on time for the things you really want to see because everyone really wants to them.
Pascal Pinon will play on Thursday in the Inspired by Iceland house at 17:OO (GMT). Their debut album has been a small addiction of mine a few years back. And now they just released a new record (produced by Alex Somers, “Jónsi & Alex”) here in Iceland. Which makes me all the more curious to see them. Let this be another tip!
Teaser for the new album:
So then it was back to Harpa. Nóra had also just recorded a new album and they wanted to introduce it to us during Airwaves. I was not fond of all their material but there were some songs that really got me going. So I’ll probably check out their records later.
The singer-songwriter Snorri Helgason was the final act of the day. He has had some big hits here in Iceland with previous projects and I was more than interested to see what it was live. It was again nice to see how all the artist support each other: the drummer (also in Amiina) and guitar-player from Tilbury earlier today were also here on stage.
