Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.08.2011, Qupperneq 30

30
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2011
Enkídú - www.myspace.com/enkidurockstar
Arnljótur - www.soundcloud.com/arnljotur
Sóley - www.myspace.com/ssoolleeyy
Nóló - www.myspace.com/homeofnolo
The 30th edition of the Grapevine
Grassroots concerts shows off
some of the series’ favourite acts –
Enkídú, Arnljótur, Ahma, Sóley, and
Nóló
So this was the 30th Grapevine Grass-
roots concert? My god, has it really
been that many? I could swear that it
felt like it was only yesterday when the
Grapevine and Arnljótur Sigurðsson
half-inched a tiny PA and set up a se-
ries to root out (see what I did there?)
and showcase fresh and interesting
Icelandic music. And tonight, they were
introducing some of their favourite art-
ists who’ve passed through those hal-
lowed doors.
When I arrived at Hemmi og Valdi,
the place was packed to the gills and
Enkídú was already toiling away at his
laptop blast furnace. Enkídú’s set con-
sisted mostly of electronics that had
ambient noise loops and stacked synth
sounds set to some decent trip-hop
beats. You could say it was styled along
the likes of Flying Lotus, but it sounded
more like the equivalent of throwing his
laptop down a long flight of stairs which
is all well and good, if it weren’t for the
chatting and general apathy from the
crowd, which rendered his music inter-
esting sonic wallpaper. Bloody ingrates.
Man, I love Arnljótur. The venerable
MC and curator of Grapevine Grass-
roots always has a stuttering, slightly
uncomfortable demeanour whenever
he speaks to the audience, as if he’s
trying to explain quantum physics to a
bunch of unruly hipster squirrels. But
don’t let that fool you; he knows what
he’s doing. He even gave a sly dig at the
audience at the start of his set (‘This is
my music. Maybe you’ll like it. Maybe
you’ll completely hate it. But at least I
will have invoked some sort of reaction
out of you.’).
With his intuitive tape manipulation
antics, he kicked off with rather trippy
bleeps and whoops with a growing
bass throb creeping up underneath,
before settling into a tropical hypna-
gogic dub sound that wouldn’t sound
out of place on the Not Not Fun label
(Matrix Metals, LA Vampires, etc). All
vaseline smeared bass and chewed up
reggae beats. He pulled out a surprise
at the end when he started to sing over
a track that sounded like a deranged
kid’s TV show theme tune (Muppet
Babies go mental?), as if he was DJ
Flúgvél og Geimskip’s big brother. Very
compressed and twisted.
This heavy dub feeling was further
emphasised when Ahma started to play
a wall of ambient noise that sounded
like the winter sea at Vík before a heavy
dub techno beat came in. It was all a bit
Kangding Ray with an IDM chill more
suited to an abandoned factory with
lots of dry ice and blue arc lighting.
With scuttling insect percussion and
weird whale call sounds, it was tight
and packaged rather nicely, even with
it being played live.
But enough of all this electronic
piffle. We want some REAL music dam-
mit! And the call was answered with the
next act, a ‘special guest’ tango music
project whose name I never heard
properly (I simply gave them the name
‘Tango and Cash’). Their rather short
set was smooth musically with tight
arrangements that sounded contempo-
rary, only playing more traditional tan-
go music towards the end. It certainly
made a change and forced several yak-
kers in the audience to shut up for at
least 5 minutes.
Sóley’s music is exquisitely poised
with a dark, almost gothic sensibility
that sets her apart from many of her
contemporaries in the scene. But the
fact that she had to help Tango And
Cash pack up (she was the accordion
player), then setup her own equipment
in front of everyone—nearly blowing out
the PA in the process—did slightly lack
the air of mystery about it. You wouldn’t
expect Bat For Lashes or Cat Power to
do stuff like that would you? Also, be-
cause of the rush to get things set up,
she started off like a flustered librarian
who’d mainlined her eighth espresso in
a row. Sentences would often drift into
cul de sacs, or disappear into space
altogether (‘and this track... err... well
it’s... um... yeah, right! ’).
But that all changed when she
started playing. Playing a mix of old
and new material, it was a stripped
down affair that still retained a lot of
the song’s mystery. We were also in-
troduced to her new ‘loop track’ toy,
which she used to create layered vo-
cal tracks and ‘boom chikka chikka’
beat. A little rough perhaps, but it did
the job in fleshing out her sound. She
even got the audience clapping along
to her track ‘Black Books.’ Judging from
the new material, we can expect more
decent dark pop in the near future.
Now many people I know really don’t
like Nóló. Me, I actually have a bit of a
soft spot for the little munchkins and
their melted, warped psych-pop. But
their sound is something best listened
to on record. In a live setting, even on
something as loose and ramshackle as
a Grassroots concert, their sound tends
to wilt under the restrictions of their
equipment. They certainly can’t sing or
harmonise for shit and some of the key-
board sounds set your teeth on edge.
For example, their last song had hints of
early New Order, only for them to spoil
it when they started singing and play-
ing jarring plastic piano sounds.
And this is a bit of a shame as un-
derneath the clunkiness, there are
some really stylish elements, such as
the guitar, which has a dry, crystalline
sound that’s unlike anything else you
can hear around. And there are some
sublime pop moments underneath the
roughness. The bastard sons of Raw
Sex, they would be a great soundtrack
for entertainment on cruise ships.
Overall, judging from the music of
the night, the Grapevine Grassroots
concert series has to be doing some-
thing right to have gone on for so long
and to have had such a decent success
rate in finding new acts. Here’s to an-
other 30 concerts.
Words
Bob Cluness
Photography
Alisa Kalyanova
Grapevine Grassroots
Hemmi og Valdi 5/8/2011
Music | Live Review
Back To Root Of It All
Photos
1. Sóley
2. Arnljótur
3. Nolo