A Day Late And A Dollar Short #5

October 2014 (my fifth visit)

Well, it would seem that seeing Sigur Rós did have quite an effect on me as I thought it might. I saw them again in July at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark and have tickets to see them once more in Dublin shortly after I return from this trip to Reykjavík.

There would be no repeat of the inclement weather that plagued the Airwaves festival this time around. A certain feeling of peace prevailed as I arrived from Glasgow. My first novel, On A Small Island is away with my editors for its copy-edit and I feel that it will be ready to self-publish sometime in the first half of next year (February 4^th as it turned out). This may have something to do with the prevailing sensation of tranquillity.

I am in the middle of reading Morrissey's Autobiography and feel that I must finish it while I'm in Reykjavík even though I don't normally read much while away on holiday. It's just that good.

Sunday 27th: I've finally had my first brush with stardom in Reykjavík. While shopping at the Kringlan Mall I see Kjartan Sveinsson (the now ex-keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist from Sigur Rós) out and about with his daughter. She is blonde and very cute and they have been shopping at Bónus together.

The first night of this year's festival has The Bedroom Community performing in the hallowed Hallgrímskirkja. It is unusual, beautiful and typifies what Airwaves is all about, the availability of music in any part of the city. Amazing.

On Thursday while walking past The English Pub on Austurstræti I hear a band playing inside. Upon further inspection it turns out to be Sindri Eldon and the Ways. They are brilliant and I will strive to see them again if at all possible. Later I see Valdimar play in the meeting room of the hotel I'm staying in and then I head to Harpa to see Ólafur Arnalds perform his new album, ‘For Now I Am Winter’ with the Icelandic Symphony orchestra. It is simply breath-taking.

I finally see Endless Dark on a big stage and then wrap the night up with a marathon set from Yo La Tengo. It took them twenty nine years to get to Iceland but they made it.

The Off-Venue schedule continues to impress the hell out of me with gigs from Dikta and Singapore Sling. They have gone out of their way this year to make the festival more inclusive to the public and there are bands playing everywhere during the daytime.

On Saturday night I see Skepna at Gaukurinn before Icelandic/British band ‘Fears’ who are even better than I had expected. So much so that I make the lead singer fight his way back through the crowd to the dressing room to get me a CD after the show. I round off the night with a visit to Iðno to see Dikta on a big stage for the first time since my first trip to Harpa in 2011. Dikta's performance is immaculate as always and a lot of fun.

The next day I decided to check out Sindri Eldon and the Ways one more time at an off-venue performance as I hadn't quite made up my mind whether he was as good as I originally thought or not. He definitely has something going on but seems to be very uptight as a person and possibly drinks way too much. This time round though he was on his best behaviour as Björk was in the audience at Lucky Records. (I hadn’t figured out at this point that he is actually her son and that the guitarist from The Sugarcubes is his father. That minor epiphany is still to come). It was the second time that I have seen her in the flesh, the first being about twenty years ago in Brisbane when I was working on the Big Day Out tour and she was playing songs from her album ‘Debut’ just as her career was beginning to really take off.

She is still as petit and unbelievably cute as I remember and is wearing one of her little Japanese inspired blue dresses with blue tights and sparkling black shoes with big heels. After not seeing anyone famous for four trips to Reykjavík I have now seen two of my favourite Icelandic artists just days apart from each other. It’s true what they say, it really is a small town.

Since moving here to live I have also found myself swaying drunkenly and singing along to a Billy Joel song (Piano Man?) at Dillon in the very wee hours with the drummer from Sigur Rós but that is another story altogether.             

A Day Late And A Dollar Short #4

The decision to get a ticket for the next Airwaves didn’t take long. As soon as I had purchased it they announced that Sigur Rós would be headlining the 2012 festival. Their show would take place in the handball stadium up near the swimming pools.

It would be the only show not in the heart of downtown Reykjavík and it would be huge by Airwaves standards with a capacity of 5,500. Funnily enough it is within walking distance of where I would normally stay at the Cabin but this year I would be moving to a more central location to make those late night walks home a little less arduous.

As the festival neared, the schedule was released and I soon picked the highlights out to see what I would be doing each night. Having been burned out by the end of Friday night at the last festival I decided that where possible I would keep it to one band and one venue per night this time around. Wednesday would be Sykur who I missed last time because of the rain and simply staying too far away from the gig; Thursday would be old favourites Dikta and newcomers Noise at Harpa and Café Amsterdam respectively; Friday would be Endless Dark at Gaukurinn; Saturday would be the Samúel Jón Samúelsson Big Band who I also missed last time due to lethargy and the Sunday would be Sigur Rós.

The Off-Venue gigs would give me a chance to see some more bands and incorporate another couple of venues into the schedule including Hresso and a new hotel called the Reykjavík Marina which is down by the dry-dock for the fishing boats.

My shopping for this trip would be a nice pair of Icelandic leather gloves, some books including the new Yrsa Sigurðadóttir novel, DVDs, t-shirts, underwear and hopefully a name book which contains all the names that you are allowed to use to name your children in Iceland. It is amended every year by the Names Commission as people apply for new names to be added to the list.

It seems that every second trip to Iceland I am met with a travel disaster of some description that inevitably involves Terminal One at Heathrow. My flight to Heathrow was with British Airways even though it had originally been booked with BMI, and was on the last day that BMI would operate out of Belfast City Airport. The inbound aircraft from London was considerably delayed and by the time it got to Belfast and was cleaned and refuelled I ended up arriving in London an hour after my flight to Reykjavík had left rather than three hours before it was due to go. What started out as a supposedly short delay was lengthened by not having a slot to depart from and then not having a stand to disembark with when we finally got there.

The hour was late and I had a pressing need to find somewhere to stay for the night and to rebook my ticket, not to mention letting the Hotel Leifur Eiríksson know that I would be a day late. At this point I didn’t even know how late I would be so I left ringing them to be the last thing to cross off my list. I found that the hotels around the airport were rather full because of the Bank Holiday and the cheapest I could find was the Comfort Hotel (including transfer was £200). It was a great hotel though and I got the 12 pound upgrade for 24 hours Wi-Fi and a late check out the next day which let me lie around until 4pm).

Once I had checked in it was too late to get anything to eat except a sandwich but I had a bath in the room so I was saved. I rebooked my flight for the next day and was done with it. The only seats left were Saga Class and cost me £750 but the cheaper flight the day after would have been offset by the extra night at the hotel. I had always wanted to fly Icelandic First Class anyway!

A Day Late and a Dollar Short:

It would be late by the time I finally arrived at my destination next to the church but ultimately worth the effort, and the additional cost. This I was sure of. I had left Belfast with about five hundred pounds with nothing to do so the debacle had only actually cost me about five hundred. Not as bad as it could have been I suppose. When I did finally arrive at the Hotel Leifur Eiríksson, it was a great feeling to be back in the arms of the one I love. Brennivín in hand and with my eyelids slowly dropping I could no longer deny my love for the girl of dreams, her name is Reykjavík and I belong to her.

The next few days I spent unwinding from my tortuous trip. Once Wednesday came around I was ready for the bands all over again. I saw Skúli Mennski play again in Munnharpan while having dinner and awaiting the Sykur gig.

Sykur didn’t play a single song that I knew from the CD of theirs that I have and still managed to completely blow my mind. Agnes, the girl who fronts the band is one of the most exciting and energetic front-women I’ve ever seen. Every song had a beat or a keyboard sound in it that reminded me of some tune from the eighties but I could never quite put my finger on exactly which one it was.

On to Thursday; I went to Nordic House to see Dikta play an acoustic set along with a real piano and mandolin.

Later that night at Cafe Amsterdam The Foreign Resort was the first of the imports I would see, both Danish. Again there was a real eighties theme, this one owing more to the likes of Killing Joke and The Cure.

There were drum loops and heavy bass lines behind some very rocking guitars that sounded like Joy Division in a good mood or The Cure in a bad one. They were moody, rocky and very danceable in places. The last track in particular, Orange Glow was particularly reminiscent of New Order on some of their more rocky moments on Low Life. Definitely the highlight of the night, although local outfit Noise who came on after them were very good too. The lead singer had the whole Kurt Cobain thing down and that shit still sounds cool twenty years on.

Friday was back at Gamli Gaukurinn with another Danish import and local boys Endless Dark. This time around the Danes were Thee Attacks and they were all about rocking it old-school. Their album is called Dirty Sheets and has a chick dangling a microphone between her legs on the cover. That image alone should tell you what they’re all about. Leather jackets, big drums, hot chicks and lots and lots of guitars. The lead singer definitely got the award for most crazy front man of the festival, they were fucking great.

Saturday was much mellower, musically that is. Not the weather though. I only saw the one band and they were on first at Harpa in Silfurberg were I had seen Sykur do their thing three nights earlier. Samúel Jón Samúelsson and his Big Band were another bunch that I missed the year before but this time, like Sykur, they were not to slip through my fingers. They would be hard pressed to slip through anyone’s fingers, there were seventeen of them on stage. A drummer, percussionist, electric bass player, keyboardist and the rest were brass. Trumpets and saxophones of all sizes and tones with Samúel himself conducting the whole mess like a genius.

They had put years of work into the way that they sounded and the way that they looked. They sound was like Miles Davis meets the Gypsy Kings, part jazz, part mariachi and with a dash of funk just to make you want to shake it all over the place. And then there were the clothes; colourful, loose fitting and covered in sombrero designs and looking for the most part like a catalogue for Mexican pyjamas.

The weather on Saturday morning and afternoon left many buildings without roofs and brought every mountain rescue team from within about a two hour drive into the city centre. They had to close Laugavegur for hours while a huge crane was used to physically pin a loose piece of roofing onto the top of the building that it was threatening to fall from.

By Sunday it was hard to believe that another festival had come to a close. There was only one show left and I had no idea of what to expect. I had bought the ticket because I had sensed that to not go see Sigur Rós in Reykjavík would have been criminally insane. Once in town I had become curious to find out what this band was all about. In the end though I decided to starve myself off all information and let the show be my baptism.

It proved to be a great idea. When the show started I was completely unprepared for what I was about to experience. The immense soundscapes ranging from the picturesque to the most furiously powerful blew my mind. Their music and the accompanying visuals could only be compared to nature. I think that many bands have tried to achieve the great art that this band has produced but unlike Sigur Rós they have all failed. I will never look at music quite the same way again. 

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

                                  Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The Thin Red Line

There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his and make an island for himself.

James Jones

*Another awesome review of 'The Mistake'*

Make No Mistake about it... The Mistake is a great read.


“A small pair of blood-splattered feet were the first things Snorri Petursson saw as he swung the beam of his flickering torch across the snow-covered lava fields…When he ran the light further up the legs across the torn black tights and black skirt he could see that the young woman they belonged to was no longer alive. Her eyes were wide open but staring lifelessly ahead at nothing, covered with a thin layer of blood that criss-crossed her cornea like a fishing net. Her startled appearance gave her a look of being taken completely by surprise. By the state of her head that was exactly what happened,” –The Mistake by Grant Nicol

The Mistake, by Grant Nicol, is an atmospheric trip into Icelandic noir that leaves the reader’s fingers blistering as you fly thorough the pages of this well-plotted offering. The plot is lean, dialogue real, the words seem to have been painted onto the page by a master artist and the characters jump off the page.

The plot is a well-known one. Girl is killed and the police find a suspect at the scene of the crime. The suspect denies his guilt and the police rush to find evidence to convict. Basic fare…right? Not in the hands of Nicol. He has added enough to this plot to bring it to life in a fresh manner and leave the reader unsure of what new twists will be coming next. I found that the cold, dark Icelandic setting helped add to the atmosphere that was being painted throughout the novel. It helped create a dark, dreary vibe that served the experience of reading the book well.

The police receive a call that a young woman’s body has been mutilated and the body has been left outside of a local building. The suspect they find near the body has no forensic evidence on him to tie him to the crime, but claims to have no memory of the 15 minutes preceding him seeing the body. The suspect has a lengthy past that explains this blind spot in his memory and the threads to the story are sewn together where nothing seems contrived.

The story has all the golden nuggets needed to have a dark, dreary tale (in the most positive way). Nicol has crafted a tale that has a vengeful father looking for answers and willing to find revenge in anyway he can, a cop who is desperate for answers and will look high and low for them, call-girls and pimps, and he has an eye for putting them together in a book that was enjoyable and a great introduction to this author.

This is the third offering I have read from the up-and-coming Number Thirteen Press, and I am pleased to say it is the third book I have enjoyed! I am hoping this trend continues and I hope they are considering publishing more than 1 book per month…but I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, as I am really enjoying what we are getting from them every month!

Originally posted at: https://dman4227.wordpress.com/

Review of Guns of Brixton by Paul D. Brazill

‘Even before he’d switched on the lock-up’s strip light, Big Jim Lawson knew that he was bollock deep in the shit.’

It’s a great way to start a story and it just keeps getting better. Split into six parts that are all named after songs by The Clash (Safe European Homes, Guns of Brixton, Police & Thieves, Bankrobber, The Last Gang in Town and Somebody Got Murdered), Guns of Brixton takes you on an old-fashioned rollicking, bollocks-loaded ride through the gutters, strip clubs and greasy spoons of dirty old London town.

As you follow the exploits of Big Jim Lawson and his chums you will be titillated, disgusted and enthralled in almost equal proportions. Rest assured there will not be a dull moment. The characters are gritty and impossible to forget and the story is paced so there is always something holding your attention solidly to the page. Some parts are extremely funny. Some of the guys in the book are so crazy they’d almost have to be real. The shotguns, corpses, rhyming slang and top secret contents of one very sought after briefcase will keep you fixated from the first line to the final revelation. Great stuff. Highly recommended.