Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.10.2009, Blaðsíða 32

Réttir Music Reviews
Saturday 26.09.09
Cultura
Saturday 26.09.09
Grand Rokk
As I enter the basement of Kaffi Cultura for the Melodica
showcase, troubadour Svavar Knútur is playing his version
of Clementine on a ukulele. Introducing himself while still
playing his ukulele, he even gets a la la sing along at the end
of tonight’s first track. His stage presence and interaction
with the crowd are just perfect, and his troubadour take
on Nick Drake means we are all in for a special evening.
A few hardened fans in the crowd put in requests and are
kept happy as most are played. There are more anecdotes,
a ukulele solo and a tale of getting accosted on a Hamburg
subway by drunk Germans that somehow turns into ukulele
covers of Eye Of The Tiger, Living On A Prayer, Rock Me
Amadeus and Firestarter—‘cause in the German’s words, “he
is the party man with the ukulele.” You look round the crowd
and everyone is smiling from the pleasurable gig. Svavar may
not be the party man the Germans wanted, but he is perfect
for tonight’s mood.
By the time next artist Daníel Jónsson finally turns up,
you can see he is visibly flustered by his late arrival. As soon
as he picks up the guitar and begins picking his way through
his first song, he starts feeling at home. Soft and gentle lyrics
combine well in this candle lit cellar, and its rhymes perfectly
with the raging storm outside.
Best known as bassist for Miri and Króna, Hjalti Jón
Sverrisson is here tonight to play a collection of his own
songs. Not as captivating as Svavar or Daníel, he still shows
his strong song-writing abilities, at times resembling an
acoustic version of Radiohead. Unfortunately, his voice
doesn’t seem to fit. Comparing anyone’s voice to Thom
Yorke’s is probably unfair, however.
Mysterious Marta brings immediate appeal. Her finger
picked guitar and beautiful voice bringing Regina Spektor to
mind. She soon has the crowd under her spell and shows she
has a promising future in her field. She keeps the momentum
going as Svavar joins her on piano for a track, and it is just
perfect. Again Svavar joins her for the final two songs of the
set, finishing with a completely acoustic version of Heartless
Heart and the quiet crowd show their appreciation for a
magical performance.
As an added bonus tonight we get Halla Norðfjörð.
Although lacking the crowd interaction of the other
performers, her voice along with a strummer guitar provide
a softness that is the perfect end to the evening. Think of a
stripped down Beth Orton and you’re somewhere close. She
dedicates her angry song to Davíð Oddsson, but it’s not really
angry. In fact, you can’t really imagine this songstress ever
getting angry. It’s a fitting end to a beautiful evening in some
perfect surroundings. - Adam Wood
Entering Grand Rokk, I was not in the best of moods. Due to
an optician’s mistake, I had been prescribed a wrong set of
glasses, which resulted in serious headaches and nausea.
Still, the show must go on and after gulping down a nearly
lethal dose of pain-killers I set out to hear what Okidoki
would bring us.
Sadly, I was too late to catch Helgi Valur’s show. This
young man with the angelic face and generally likeable
attitude has recently released an album titled The Black Man
is God, the White Man is the Devil. The less said about that
choice for a title the better, but I couldn’t help wondering
what Malcolm X would think of this?
Still, I’m told this dude is good live. I will check that out as
soon as possible. Feel like I owe the guy for showing up too
late, migraine or not.
I did arrive in time to see a young Brit hop around the
stage fiddling with some effects and staring intently at his
lap-top. This was Matthew Collings, and he had a guitar
strapped to his scrawny and lanky frame. Why, I don’t know
and it looked like he didn’t either. The music was some sort of
ambient drone only broken up occasionally when Mr. Collings
realised he was playing for an audience of 13 and began
pounding his guitar in frustration until he returned to his
lap-top staring contest. This did nothing to quell my migraine,
quite the opposite.
At this time the pain in my head had gone from a dull
throbbing to a searing hell. But I had heard too many
interesting things about Rökkurró, so I persevered. This is
a band comprised of five young people, two girls and three
boys who had a nice quiet demeanour, play instruments like
the accordion and cello and I could have sworn I saw a few
fairies jumping around...yes, this had KRÚTT written all over
it! Rökkurró is not a bad band. The music is serene, moody
and it felt like every song was some kind of a lullaby. Sadly,
some of the guests had apparently forgotten they were at
a concert and began chatting and laughing loudly. By then
the Optician’s Curse hit me full time, and after having graced
the lovely toilets of Grand Rokk with some colourful vomit, I
headed home.
That means I missed the performance of Ljósvaki, Útidúr,
Caterpillar men, Bárujárn and Dynamo Fog. I am sorry
about that and will definitely try to be around next time those
artists will perform. I will just have to put my glasses on first.
- Flosi Þorgeirsson
Saturday 26.09.09
Jacobsen
The final night at Jacobsen was put on by the Breakbeat.is
gang and it started off upstairs with some nice, glitchy, weird-
ass tech courtesy of DJ Hero’s Trial. He defies convention by
spending half the time sitting down, meanwhile pumping out
super FX’ed sci-fi house, full of clicks, beeps and quivering
white noise. It’s like the soundtrack to an epic video game
or a Ridley Scott movie, and even the early bird crowd dances.
The room has steadily packed in for the next act, and left
and right I am getting strong opposing opinions. Everyone
seems to have a nostalgic memory attached to XXX
Rottweiler, but they are extremely polarized. Not being
able to understand their apparently shocking lyrics, I am still
impressed by their cadence and group dynamic. Even more
impressive is the crowd reaction and the overall energy of
their live show. I think I fall on the love side.
Everyone is in need of a serious breather before the night’s
main course comes on, and Kalli & Ewok provide the perfect
relief. They smooth things out with a set of shimmering 80s
electro, offbeat old-school hip-hop grooves full of shakes
and heavy bass. Their use of pitch-shift is ample and clever,
blending old and new styles of drum’n’bass the whole time.
Down in the basement, NintenDJ has kicked off a set of
standard, classic d’n’b. The deep beats trip over each other
nicely, as they should, and people are happily skipping about.
It’s all very fine and dandy, but ultimately my mind isn’t blown.
Dude still has a fucking great artist name, though.
Back upstairs, Hudson Mohawke is climbing up to the
decks and I have managed to secure myself a comfy spot
sitting on a speaker at the front. The crowd around me is
out of control, screaming and bumping bodies to the funky,
Commodore 64 trip-tech. It’s no wonder why this UK boy-
wonder has been so heavily anticipated. Jumping back and
forth in time between the late 70s and early 90s, his songs
are full of elastic bass lines and lush, twinkling keyboards
creating absolutely gorgeous and infectious hits. Pretty soon,
I am dancing on that speaker.
Once Hudson finishes up, nearly everyone heads
downstairs to hear Muted finish up the night with more
classic drum’n’bass tracks. He throws in a bunch of old
school jungle for good measure. It’s a nice way to come down
from the previous act and regain some composure, but it’s
also steady and hard to stop dancing. Unfortunately, the cops
showed up before 6am and that was how it all rounded up.
Good times! - Rebecca Louder
I bought Tim Hecker’s LP Harmony in
Ultraviolet off the shelf at NYC’s Other
Music in 2006. Frankly, I nearly pissed
myself when the album opener, Blood
Rainbow, tore through my speakers for
the first time. It was like a Kandinsky
painting had exploded across my living
room in sonic imagery perched at the
intersection of noise, dissonance, and
melody.
The critically acclaimed Canadian’s
work has been described as “structured
ambient” and “cathedral electronic mu-
sic”—the latter phrase was what actually
made me pick it up, because it has a cer-
tain Shakespearean oxymoronic imag-
ery I appreciate, and I don’t know who
said it, but they were spot-fucking-on.
As a very special guest of the Bedroom
Community label, Airwaves 2009 will
mark Hecker’s debut in Iceland.
Ben Frost: “I find it easier to talk
about music in visual terms than in au-
ral ones; and with that in mind, to me
your music is very much a painted im-
age—oil paints on a brush. Would you
agree with that? Your records also im-
ply grand design, demonstrated if any-
thing by the way in which everything is
carefully stitched together, and by your
use of refrains and codas—composi-
tional devices rooted in classical music.
Thoughts?”
Tim Hecker: Yes, I think that’s quite
fair and spot on. Although I often see the
music more in terms of squeegee-based
oil painting than maybe brush-based.
During the recording one of my last
records, Harmony in Ultraviolet, I was
reading a collection of Gerhard Rich-
ter’s early writings and found that text
a million times more inspirational than
anything directly musical. His f licker-
ing large abstract paintings from the
80s and 90s have immense depth, and
it was fun to think of how something
like that would transfer into the sonic
palette. Having said all that, however,
there is a limit to the music-as-visual-art
metaphor.
I also agree with all the attempts to
obfuscate, transform, mangle and va-
porize instruments or structures, I’d say
it still fails in that it falls back on some-
times very traditional notions of musical
form. Maybe that’s good though, in that
there needs to be some sort of anchor or
things have the tendency to f loat away
I first came across Ben’s music right
around when Theory of Machines was
released. Like most genres, electronic/
experimental music can be very dull at
times. On the cover of his record I found
the musician suspended from what ap-
peared to be a meat hook in a butcher
shop; I later realised it was a medi-
calesque mise-en-scéne. The music con-
tained on the disc has even more per-
sonality. Not dull music at all—tranquil,
brusque, ethereal, even violent at times.
A charming addition to the robust world
of Icelandic music indeed.
Tim Hecker: I’m listening to your
new record quite a bit (which is com-
ing out soon!) so let’s talk about that.
It’s lush and heavy, but also whispers at
times. Your music is great on a bunch
of levels, but there’s a looming threat to
this record that makes it special to me.
Maybe you could talk about intention
and mood, because it seems like there’s
a coherent chromatic hue to this music
and I’m curious how much of that was
design, or whether things took on a life
of their own in the studio.
Ben Frost: I felt a definite pull back
to more acoustic, classical elements with
this record, specifically the thick dark
wooden sounds that you find in old Ger-
man made pianos, hammered string
instruments like the harpsichord, and
of course the double bass—performed
by Borgar Magnason—which was very
much at the heart of it and very con-
sciously decided. I cannot say why, but
I think perhaps that came partly as a re-
action to the period surrounding Theory
of Machines.
It was also a return to music that
was less calculated and more instinctual
and more rooted in chance and perfor-
mance. Leo Needs A New Pair Of Shoes,
for example, is more or less a live record-
ing and contains all of the core elements
of this record at their most reduced and
bare form. Most of the material was ini-
tially extrapolated from the simple cycli-
cal tonal patterns that wound up in Leo.
This record is like a Rothko paint-
ing to me: it’s huge, warm clouds of co-
lour—big, dark blood reds, blacks and
golds. If it were a light source, it would
be the glow of a burning church more
than the cold light of a hospital, as in
Theory.
All of those visually oriented, aes-
thetic ideas about this record are very
much by design, and totally present
from the start: again, utterly calculated.
But when I started experimenting to get
to those colours, the elements—such as
the animal recordings and the breathing
transformative qualities of the instru-
ments—came into play. Utilising a wolf
recording or an orca recording here or
there seemed isolated and kind of a twee
gesture that ultimately commanded a
more thorough investigation—I am not
interested in making ‘sample’ music.
Tim Hecker: Since you work in a
studio quite a lot, and this record being
what I think is the product of the pos-
in a bland maudlin sonic fog—or if not,
then too difficult to render any sort of
pleasure or sliver of transcendence to the
listener.
BF: What other people hear in your
work is one thing, and lining your work
up next to Christian Fennesz, William
Basinski, or myself even (ha!) I suspect
is tolerable, but probably a far cry from
what you hear in it. You have influences
I’m sure, but I’m interested in the ones
your listeners wouldn’t see—the ones
you’ve abstracted far beyond the point of
recognition, and beyond music. I imag-
ine literature, ice hockey and beer have
as much input...
TH: You could say that the ice hockey
game I played last night has as much or
probably more influence than abstract
electronic composers, but who knows
for sure. I love all the musicians you
mention, but those direct links are only
part of the package. I think the space
of arrangement makes a huge impact.
Music composed in dark, dank, window-
less rooms often seems more pressure-
infused than the work done alongside
light-strewn windows or even outdoors.
Time of day, again, is something else.
I also find it interesting how much
music relates to what I’ve been doing
that I’ve never even heard—you know,
sort of diffused through other artists—
through second-order relationships,
maybe hearing pieces in passing. I’m
listening to some new age music, prob-
ably from the early eighties right now,
as I write this, and could have been re-
leased last year on certain ‘contempo-
rary’ respected labels from England or
Germany (who would touch ‘new age’
music though!??!).
The web of interrelationships is wide
beyond imagination. I could say, ‘I’m
interested in making music at levels of
immensity never heard before, and re-
alise that both that thought is not novel,
nor has it not been attempted before. I’m
writing right now about certain mon-
ster pipe organs built at the turn of the
century that would kill anything I could
make with a computer and PA system.
And the heavy metal band that tried to
outplay the organ in Atlantic City in the
1970s also failed to beat it.
BF: Like paintings by Leonardo or
Michelangelo, your compositions, to
me, often reveal structure only from a
certain distance, but up close they are
infinitely human and flawed, even.
Your new record, An Imaginary Coun-
try, is like a chapel fresco painting with
noise—which is perhaps most interest-
ing considering that you started as a
techno producer, a musical discipline
which, if anything, visually conjures a
pragmatic, architectural approach. Are
you working from gridlines and blue-
prints or from light and shadows?
TH: Part of why I sidestepped from
techno music was because of the need
to have predictable time signatures and
things like that. My way of developing
music is very messy and unstructured.
This is partly the fault (or blessing) of
the software I use. But it’s also a decision
to keep things off a linear, organised
path. I know techno producers who are
far more disorganised than I am, so it’s
probably not that. I guess I was just more
interested in music unhinged from the
direct referent of the metronome. Or as
you say, drawn to the ‘light and shadows’
instead of the right-angles of edifice.
Tim Hecker performs as a special guest of
the Bedroom Community Label Night @
Iðnó on Friday October 16 at 22:20.
sibilities of the studio as a compositional
tool, talk about how you come to finish
pieces like this. I was mentioning how
fairly disorganised my work process is
to come to a result which seems some-
what structured. Do you come at a piece
with a clear vision of structure, or is it a
messy, esoteric thing?
Ben Frost: To an extent, I think may-
be that’s where you and I part company,
because generally my process is more
like a game of Jenga. I mostly build a
simple, predetermined structure from
the ground up, until it’s a solid towering
object, and then I start poking holes in it
until it collapses. My work is organised
in the sense that I have an end in sight,
right from the beginning.
That is not to say, however, that the
end object is static, but rather it is some-
thing that is constantly being reshaped
and contorted until all the redundant
material is removed. The structural be-
ginning at that root level of most of this
material often ties me to the grid, as you
mentioned, which interestingly is prob-
ably something that draws me to your
work—a kind of-grass is greener-attrac-
tion perhaps?
Tim Hecker: Another thing I love
about this record is the undeniable qual-
ity of breath as a transformative instru-
ment. Whispers turn to gasps turn to
distorted bass resonances turn to dog
growls. The thing is that the nature of
those sounds are never obvious, they al-
ways sort of drift under the surface. Tell
me how you feel about leaving sounds
like this lingering just at the threshold
of audibility....
Ben Frost: Wasn’t it Hitchcock that
described how the abstract threats in
films like The Birds and Psycho are
ultimately more thrilling than the ex-
plicit ones? There is an element of that
mentality for me in this record: creating
a sort of lingering unease which I find
intoxicating. I am not concerned with di-
dacticism in music though, but instead
I am more interested in duality and the
intersection of juxtaposing elements.
By placing a growling wolf in the left
channel and a double bass in the right
where they utter the same transients and
phrasing, I can create a space which is
drawing simultaneously on naturalism
and surrealism. Those two opposing
elements are at the extreme edges of
my work here and between them they
define an internal space where a whole
other level of drama can play out and
that is my concern.
I am saying explore this string in-
strument as an animal, and this animal
as an instrument and then accept this
reality as a three dimensional space, a
hyper-acoustic space and then focus on
it because that is where my music will
occur.
Interview | By Ben Frost
Interview | By Tim Hecker
Squeegee
enthusiast
Tim
Hecker
One With
The Wolves
Ben
Frost
06
Friday 22:20
Iðnó
Friday 00:20
Iðnó
Iceland Airwaves 2009 CD Review
Moto Boy
Mozzer—were you in Sverige 20-odd years
ago? We think you were…
If Morrissey was a little less of a miserable,
arguably racist posing old foppish shit-
haired wannabe light entertainment Tony
Blackburn-show type buffoon, and if he
spent less time waving flowers about and
a bit more time getting out and twatting
around smiling with his mates, he’d write
music like this. There’s such an optimism
about the output of Swede Oskar Humlebo,
aka Moto Boy, that it’s nearly-impossible to
resist. Young Love opens matters on such
a promising, positive, excited note that sets
the tone for the rest of an album that draws
heavily on the Smiths/Cure blueprint—Ride
My Wild Heart is brilliant pastiche.
It’s jangly, wistful, summery, very Eighties,
and will have girls and boys alike twirling
their hair in their fingers and cleaning
imaginary birdshit off their kaftan sleeves
whilst shuffling about shyly, staring at the
floor in the corner of a particularly shy party.
- Joe Shooman
Moto Boy
Grapevine Airwaves Mini 2009 Go to www.grapevine.is/airwaves for your daily Airwaves tips