Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.12.2014, Page 22

The Best Of What We Saw
At Iceland Airwaves 2014
Some observations from our team
ART 22 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2014MUSIC
Anyway, rather than repeat ourselves
for the tenth year in a row, we de-
cided to try something different this
year. “Something different” in this
case meant assembling a small team
of music enthusiasts (and one pho-
tographer), equipping them with press
passes and letting them loose on the
festival grounds, to do as they pleased,
so long as they would turn in at least
one piece per day—interview, review,
thinkpiece, whatever. Then, we also
did fun things like build a portrait
studio in our office and feed pizza to
drunken garage rockers.
This worked out fairly well—a lot of
good stuff came out of it actually. You
can read all those wonderful articles
and look at a bunch of great pictures
on www.grapevine.is/culture/music/
airwaves. In the meantime, read our
team members’ thoughts on the best/
most memorable stuff they experi-
enced at this year’s Airwaves.
See you at IA2K15!
Soup
Parker Yamasaki
It was a cup of soup. A free cup of
scalding oil bubbles, salt, carrots,
meat, onions, and more salt. The soup
reached me on Sunday evening at
Bravó, at the Grapevine team’s final
Airwaves meeting. By that point, I had
been physically assaulted by the festi-
val. I was running off of a maximum six
hours of sleep and a Bounty bar. The
cold from outside had crept into my
core and taken residence in my body
like a parasite. I was a host to exhaus-
tion; this was bedrock. Simply existing
was too grand a task for me, and the
thought of dancing, thinking, interact-
ing nearly brought me to tears. And
then the miraculous hand of Haukur
reached over my shoulder and floated
the oily styrofoam cup down to the ta-
ble. It was relief itself—mediocre-tast-
ing, extremely salty, so hot that I could
hardly use my mouth the next day.
But it was nourishment. It was re-
plenishing my substance and collaps-
ing the ice cavern inside of me. What
was truly profound about this cup of
soup is that it revived in me the will
to be. Listening, dancing, engaging
with the night no longer seemed like
a malicious attack on my sanity. I wel-
comed it, I was excited, even. With a
renewed vitality I charged to Húrra
where Ghostigital were performing
their final Airwaves set. And there I
found my second favourite sight of the
festival, which I have already written a
total fangirl review of.
Purify
Saskia Vallendar
The best thing I saw was Caribou on
Saturday night at Hafnarhús. Caribou's
purified beats and textured electronica
with Dan Snaith's lullaby vocals sing-
ing "I can't do without you" led the
crowd into exciting new worlds of
musical finesse. The diverse variety of
songs, some with a techno beat, oth-
ers with a more electronica focus, gave
us an insight into the many wonders of
music by Mr. Snaith and his band. The
build-up from the first song to the last
added up through dynamic shifts and
created a warm and loose atmosphere
leaving the audience ecstatic! I loved
every bit of it and wish it had never
ended!
"Caribou was the best concert this
year... actually it made it to my Top Five
concerts of the past seven Airwaves,"
my Icelandic friend concluded on Sun-
day night after the final Airwaves con-
cert.
I agree, they were amazing!
Industry
Atli Bollason
Polish sonic assailants BNNT left the
longest-lasting impression at Airwaves
2014. Their performance was both engag-
ing and uncompromising and it shook me
up. Some would argue that it had more to
do with performance art than music. That
might be true. But then, my interests have
simply shifted over the years.
Maybe I feel like something is lack-
ing in the standard concert model. Maybe
I'm not that interested anymore in seeing
kids performing music with their fingers
crossed, hoping a snippet will end up in an
Adidas or H&M ad so their “name will get
out there” and their YouTube views stack
up and their page-like numbers rise. May-
be it has something to do with the “state of
the industry.” Maybe it has something to
do with “industry.” Because my runner-up
also played with the format: The Knife put
on a memorable show that was extremely
successful in doing away with celebrity
and rather celebrating unity. Naysayers
who dread the apparent miming should
consider seriously how much performance
there is generally in electronic shows. I'm
not sure cueing scenes in Ableton Live
necessarily counts as performing, where-
as dancing cheerfully around with a dozen
people in pastel onesies and pretending to
play huge drums definitely does.
But don't be fooled; rest assured that
both BNNT and The Knife performed mu-
sic that was very very very cool.
Emotion
Gabríel Benjamin
There were plenty of great shows at this
year’s Airwaves that deserve special men-
tion, including Agent Fresco and Mam-
mút’s dramatic sets, and Brain Police
Iceland Airwaves 2014 came and went, and oh what a blast it was (it was. It’s crazy.
You should come next year). We very much like the Iceland Airwaves festival. Indeed,
every year since 2005, we’ve operated a gargantuan team dedicated to reviewing EVERY
SHOW by EVERY BAND on the official festival schedule. Through the years, this has
proved a fun and often rough process that has resulted in some great writing, several
nice quotes for a band’s press kit, a few broken hearts, several heated phone calls and
more than one death threat (including that time in the late ‘00s when a local electronic
musician proclaimed very seriously that he would burn our office to the ground). It will
also, as time progresses, surely provide vital insight for tomorrow’s pop scholars.
Photos
Matt Eisman, mostly
Words
Haukur S. Magnússon