Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.10.2007, Síða 14

Had it not been for Montreal’s Plants and Animals,
the performance of the night would have certainly
been awarded to the sound guy at Iðno Friday
night. The poor gentleman was tasked with man-
aging transitions between a chamber pop group,
an eighteen piece big band, and a five piece hip-
hop group, and impossibly he managed to keep the
sound gorgeous for most of the evening.
Part of the magic of Airwaves is stumbling
upon a gem you’ve never heard before, and Plants
and Animals provided that in spades. The Cana-
dian quintet delivered an astonishing set of shape-
shifting post-rock punctuated by the stunning
“New Kind of Love” which began as a hushed 3
part harmony and finished with a cathartic climax
worthy of the Flaming Lips. They closed the set
by dropping the traditional folk song “Sinner Man”
into the middle of their original piece “Guru”, an
East-African inspired work that channels the hard-
charging guitar lines of the late Malian legend Ali
Farka Toure.
The rest of the evening was energetic and well
received. The elegant chamber pop of Rökkurró
somehow made a cello and an accordion harmon-
ise gorgeously, and the funky Samúel J. Samúels-
son Big Band had the uber-cool Icelandic crowd
actually letting down their guard and dancing.
Singer Daníel Ágúst’s “Vampire bit Liberace” look
didn’t mesh well with the mood of Esja’s music, but
it’s hard to knock his vocals, which at their best
conjured up visions of classic-era Michael Stipe.
The hip-hop portion of the evening came with
mixed results. For all of their apparent talent, the 3
MC’s of Forgotten Lore came off as a bit homoge-
nous, a shortcoming amplified by a sound mix that
drowned out the beats in a sea of bass. Canada’s
Buck 65 took the opposite approach, dialling down
the volume, and opening up the mix for the audi-
ence to hear the nimble beats percolating beneath
his charismatic rhymes. If you closed your eyes
during “Heather Nights” you would have supposed
a jazz combo was backing the MC, rather than a
Macbook.
Samuelsson sent 70 percent of his big band
home and brought the rest of them back to the
stage, sans the sharp black suits they sported ear-
lier, to finish out the night with the tight funk of Jag-
úar. The six-piece proved to be a perfect injection
of energy to the enthusiastic late night crowd. Don
Barteltt
Iðnó
Feature Review
Esja by Rúnar