Showing posts with label Live Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Live Reviews. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Live Review: "Treefight For Sunlight" (by:Larm News)
Live Review: "Silje Nes" (by:Larm News)
"Nes’ music is all about space and intimacy, and as her short set progresses it seems that she’s managed to turn this large space into the equivalent of a huge feather bed." Click on the pic to read the fill review...
Friday, 18 February 2011
Live Review: "Jenny Hval" (by:Larm News)
If you click on the pix you'll read my rapturous response to her by:Larm showcase. It sounds in places like this: "Hval pulls no punches nowadays, a supreme confidence in the direction she’s taken her music evident in her ability to switch from whispers to wails in the swoop of a note, in the extraordinary lyrical content of her songs, and in the intricately arranged, experimentally textured backing..."
Live Review: "Cold Mailman" (by:Larm News)
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Live Review: "Neither Saviours Nor False Messiahs: Godspeed Live In Berlin" (The Quietus)
"For 15 minutes, as the rumbling grows into one huge, tumescent roar, that's all we've got: HOPE. We've waited the best part of a decade to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor perform live again, and God knows those hopes are high."
Could they live up to expectations? Find out here.
Friday, 17 December 2010
Live Review: "Not The Archandroid We're Looking For: Janelle Monae Live" (The Quietus)
After "the kind of coverage normally reserved for drug-addled models with absent minds when it comes to underwear", it was my turn to check out Janelle Monae, and I even got to take pictures of her doing shadow puppets, while The Quietus editors got to indulge their Star Wars fixation in the headline. Yep: it's all right here.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Live Review: The Woodentops (The Quietus)
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Live Review: Ingrid Olava (by:Larm News)
YOU GOTTA LOVE OLAVA
Oslo’s Nordic maiden seduces a packed Folketeateret with a set of lush and heartfelt magic.
These days, thanks to an implicit lazy sexism within mainstream media, it’s almost impossible for a woman to sit behind a piano with just a hint of kookiness to her character and not be compared to Tori Amos. Ingrid Olava, however, one of Norway’s brightest hopes, claims never to have heard the “flame haired songstress” until people started throwing the name around with reference to her first album. In fact Olava never even considered herself a singer until her early twenties. But whatever twist of fate brought her to the microphone was a happy accident, and that the trail has now led her to what must be one of the country’s finest backing bands is cause for further celebration.
EAGER DIVA
She arrives on this cavernous stage to the rumble of thunder, dressed in an impossibly short skirt that belies her momentary early shyness. But within the first minute, thanks to a melody that unravels with delicate, hypnotic grace, she silences this vast, grand theatre. ‘Passenger’ sets the template, its structure carefully considered and a perfect foil to Olava’s sultry, occasionally smoky voice. She follows it with ‘The Queen’, which swells and surges like the ocean, and while she may be operating in a musical realm that’s often as original as that last tired simile, she’s clearly the mistress of its domain, allowing the song to crescendo to a glorious climax that sounds not unlike one of Sigur Ros’ more jubilant moments.
What sets her apart is hard to define. Perhaps it’s the sweetness of the tunes she inhabits so fully, or her obvious sincerity, or maybe it’s the respectfully restrained backing. Whatever it is, this is much more than dinner party fodder. “I won’t be silenced any more,” she howls desperately at one point, and you can only hope it’s true.
PRINCESS CHARMING
This is music for mature ears, of course: Olava’s unlikely to win over many Lady Gaga fans thanks to the underlying impression that, beneath her excitable bouncing on her piano stool and her breathless between-song patter, she’s on first name terms with her demons. But her dirty laugh as she introduces a song about sex – Lord knows I hope I understood that right – gives away a fun loving nature that draws whoops from an audience who clearly identify with the warm honesty of her onstage persona.
She receives a well deserved and convincing standing ovation from the packed crowd, but then, already overwhelmed by the response, she spots an old friend in the front row and stagedives into his arms. It’s a typically endearing moment, and her decision to return to the piano for one last song is more than welcome. She signs off with a solemn solo rendition of ‘Poster Child’, before running off the stage with childish exuberance. It’s a heavenly end. Ingrid we trust.
Live Review: Johann Johannson (by:Larm News)
CALMER CHAMELEON
Iceland’s Prince of Neo-Classical Chillout calms and goes, he calms and goes…
Every music festival needs its quiet oasis, and Johann Johannson is this year’s Olafur Arnalds, the fellow Icelander who last year spellbound an audience desperate for a little respite from the onslaught of guitars and pounding beats that tend to dominate these gatherings. Like Arnalds, Johannson is all about the space between the notes as much as the patterns they carve. His 2006 concept album, ‘IBM 1401 Users Manual’ (his debut for 4AD records), was something of a contemporary classical masterpiece, and while his early albums may have initially been awash in soothing electronica that Air fans really ought to have been buying, he’s more recently embraced the minimalist arrangements of Arvo Pärt or Michael Nyman. This has heightened the elegance of his early work, leaving him floating in a world of electronically enhanced chamber music.
BIG MAC AND BOW TIES
Of course you know you’re looking at a serious musician when a four piece string section takes centre stage, while Johannson and a colleague, seated behind a bank of keyboards and a Mac, flank them either side, and it’s the strings that open proceedings with a short prelude, Johannson then sending ripples of piano phrases over their surface. The only other sound comes from the audience, a collective sigh of relief at being able to extract their earplugs.
Johannson’s skill lies in his formidable reserve and his belief that a simple phrase, the tremors that the right notes can trigger, are more than enough to still an aching and weary heart. But he’s not afraid of dropping in distant percussive tics like echoing submarine bells, or letting a low bass note spread like melting wax while he traces out piano lines like Erik Satie. But then, just when you fear he might slip off into slumberland, he bangs out threatening octaves while the pitter of electric circuitry distorts beneath it all, unnerving, increasing, unsettling.
STRING US ALONG
But though he operates in soundtrack fields, Johannson is not writing this for the kind of Hollywood movie that he could so obviously score. That, presumably, inevitably, still lies ahead, and until then no one is going to tell him how to set a mood. This is not to say that he gets the balance right each and every minute of this serene half hour. At times he searches perhaps a little too hard for a sense of yearning that sees him drag his feet through sticky sweet avenues, but these are brief aberrations. For the most part there’s nothing excessive, no unnecessary embellishments, and consequently there’s nowhere we’d rather be. What makes this so wonderful is the realisation that, thanks to the lack of theatrics or even a significant lightshow, this place we’ve been is actually inside our own heads.
He ends with the final movement of ‘IBM 1401 Users Manual’, a computerised voice somehow out of place after the purity of what’s preceded it. But such is the emotional tug and pull of this final arrangement – a distant relevant of both Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio For Strings’ and Gorecki’s ‘Symphony Of Sorrow’ – that it does nothing to detract from the intensity of his sentiment. Big calm indeed…
Live Review: Oh No, Ono (by:Larm News)
TESTING POSITIVE
Wyndham Wallace’s jaw drops as he witnesses Danes Oh No Ono unveil their new masterpiece, Eggs…
Where do you start? Really: when it comes to Oh No Ono where do you even begin? Do you start with the helium-inflated vocals, or their mastery of their craft, or the fact that they not only have their own thing going on, but each one of them has their own thing going on within that own thing? Seriously, Oh No Ono: where do we start?
GREAT DANES
Well, where they start is with tribal drums and swirling strings like George Harrison just lent them his soul, and they continue with squalls of guitar, Beach Boys harmonies and melodies that aim for the stars and then keep on going. These five Danes make a panoramic and cinemascopic sound that may borrow from countless sources – including ELO, Harry Nilsson and Supertramp, hardly the most fashionable of reference points – but they understand that influences are merely flavours rather than a meal. And this – take a deep breath – is a five course gourmet meal with added amuses bouches.
To add to the fun, they look fantastic. It’s almost impossible to take your eyes off their two singers: one, dressed in a poncho, looks like a young David Bowie auditioning for a spaghetti western, albeit one filmed in the rain judging from the fact he’s wearing Wellington Boots. He’s also sporting make up that makes him look like half clown, half pixie, something that deserves a medal. His companion is equally preposterously dressed, lost in a fashion world somewhere between Spandau Ballet and Tintin starring in a Charles Dickens BBC TV drama. This, it has to be said, is also a good thing. And while the rest of the band are somewhat overwhelmed as a result, with their drummer lost in the shadows and shrouded in smoke, their presence is never forgotten as they drive their songs onwards and upwards.
WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP
Furthermore, they have that rare ability to make complex pop sound like pop confectionary. If one of them were to shout “Take me to the bridge!” you can be certain the reply would be “Which one?”, but, lost in their trippy, psychedelic world, their songs follow their own logic, played with such commitment that there’s no time to even question the wisdom of their muse. So if Animal Collective can enjoy the curious kind of crossover success that ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ has offered them, then there’s little reason why a band as colourful and ambitious as Oh No, Ono can’t do too.
What makes such potential success even more desirable is the simple but often overlooked fact that they seem to be enjoying themselves so much, exchanging glances and smiles at one another as though they’re bemused by their own brilliance. And, to top it all, they not only manage to match the brilliance of ‘Eggs’, their latest record, but they arguably improve upon it. Given the fact that this is a band whose working methods involve automatic writing techniques – giving rise to such masterful lyrics as “I have seen the queen and danced with her puppy / She’s already made a movie about me” – alongside the endless sampling of unusual sounds like frogs and (one for the fact fans) “the sound of “the cloth washing rituals of the West African Baka pygmies”, this is no ordinary achievement. But their sense of drama and dynamics means that, despite being only a five piece, they come across like a Philharmonic Orchestra.
So where do you start? It doesn’t really matter. Because wherever you start, you may not want it to end. Oh No, Ono? Yes, Yes Yes!
Live Review: Lucy Swann (by:Larm News)
SWANN SONGS
You’ve missed Lucy Swann this year but, writes Wyndham Wallace, you don’t want to make that mistake again…
By the time Oslo’s Lucy Swann takes the stage for her Pre-Larm performance, Mono is so packed that the only people they’re letting in are the police. Quite how so many people know about her is hard to say: her debut album is still at the pressing plant, and she’s not actually a part of the main by:Larm programme. But Swann is obviously not going to be a secret for long.
Half English, half Norwegian, Swann actually has most in common with French artist Camille: she too plays with sampled vocal loops, triggered by a pedal rack beneath her keyboard that she stabs with bare feet to build up angelic choirs around her melodies. Like absurdly underrated Trust Me Records label mate Rockettothesky, Swann manages to combine the sugary appeal of pop and a giddy love of experimentalism that makes her both challenging and highly seductive. Dressed in a pinstripe suit jacket and a scarlet dress, she comes across as confident and charismatic, and though her lyrics, when audible, tend towards the naïve – “When I was a little girl I had a rag doll / The only doll I’ve ever known” – this is mature, thoughtful music full of brooding synthetic tones and skeletal, simple melodies.
It’s also soul of the finest variety. At one stage she samples herself singing “River Deep, Mountain High”, and her voice recalls many a great singer of the late 1960s, though inevitably comparisons will instead be drawn with Amy Winehouse. But Swann is considerably more imaginative and far from concerned with being hip, instead dancing round the stage for an a cappella finale with such glee that she nearly trips over her discarded Doc Martens. The audience don’t care: as she closes her show by testifying “I feel like shouting”, they too give witness. Say it loud and say it proud: Lucy Swann will give you goosebumps…
Live Review: Susanne Sundfør (by:Larm News)
THE DARK STUFF
Susanne Sundfør may be the toast of Norway, but Wyndham Wallace remains uconvinced…
The first thing one notices about Susanne Sundfør is that this is a woman unafraid of an overdraft at the bank. Lined up on stage like beauty queens at a beauty pageant are a phalanx of guitars that would most likely be the envy of almost every single other band hauling second hand amplifiers through the snow in Oslo this week. Feted by the Norwegian press since her appearance at by:Larm in 2007, Sundfør has clearly become a significant priority for EMI Norway, and there’s no way they’re going to let this opportunity to impress an international audience pass them by. And so she appears surrounded by instruments beneath an impressively muted light show, her band rehearsed like their lives depend upon it. Then one remembers that EMI’s life may depend on her too. It may not oly be her bank balance that’s at stake.
BUDGET MENTAL
Her production values match her music, an expensive, somewhat luxurious melange of Tori Amos singer songwriter stylings, gothic rumblings and occasionally dangerous forays into ambitious territory that most major label artists might fear. With two backing vocalists holding up the rear, Sundfør proves herself more than capable of switching between ethereal whisperings and banshee wails, but at times she exhibits a mildly dissatisfying sense of detachment. Her band, meanwhile, hover in the shadows like session musicians perfectly content to wring gently dissonant tones from their instruments. Jesus Christ Superstar this is not.
BANK NOTES
She’s clearly loved by her hometown audience, however, and it’s exciting at first to witness something so obviously grand. But, as her show progresses, something starts to niggle. Like Celine Dion and the divas that have followed in her wake, Sundfør seems to think that the addition of vocal flourishes – sometimes known by cynics as a case of “using fourteen notes when one would do” – can make amends for the fact that her songs themselves lack any definitive sense of purpose. They cling to you much as chewing gum sticks to shoes, but as each one draws to a close it’s not the melody that lingers so much as the proficiency of her performance. Because Sundfør can sing, and at times she can belt it out, but the sense that the most controversial thing about her is the title of her album – ‘The Brothel’ – is hard to shake, especially when she engages in such histrionic flutters.
Of course, there’s no denying the manner in which she has managed to bewitch a packed Sentrum Scene, and when she slides into the kind of brooding, rhythmic complexity of ‘Protection’ era Massive Attack it’s not so hard to understand what they see in her. There’s just an ongoing fear that she may, if she’s not careful, stagger in the wrong direction and end up sounding like Enya. Not that EMI would have any complaints about that…
Live Review: by:Larm Opening Night 2010 (by:Larm News)
RIGHT ON TIME?
He’s a 21st Century Boy, but at by:Larm’s opening night Wyndham Wallace tumbles back in time…
So it’s true that outside the main by:Larm tent there was a giant screen ticking off the seconds until the start of 2010’s official music programme like some Cape Canaveral countdown, but I swear I walked in on foot. And yet, within minutes of The Megaphonic Thrift taking the stage, I’m looking for my silver De Lorean time machine. I feel like Marty McFly, blasted back in time to emerge in a familiar landscape that is still somehow alien. There are no fiery tyre trails behind me, and no madcap scientists played by Christopher Lloyd anywhere in sight, but this has to be the late 1980s, surely? Isn’t it?
ARSEQUAKE EXPLOSION
The Megaphonic Thrift trade in the kind of alternative indie rock that, back in the day, was comically known as “arsequake”. They arrive on stage carrying a metaphorical crate of records under their arm: Sonic Youth’s ‘Daydream Nation’, Dinosaur Jr.’s ‘Freakscene’ on coloured vinyl, My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’ turned up to 11. Like fellow by:Larm hopefuls Serena Maneesh, they’ve immersed themselves in what some would call the last gasp of genuine independent music, a time when experimentation didn’t stand in the way of marketing, a time when noise was medication for the mind. They’ve got a singer who’s perfected that trademark Thurston Moore “I’m-so-excited-that-I-just-can’t-hide-it-and-yet-I’ll-try” yelp, occasional female vocals from a Kim Gordon mimic, blurrily distorted guitars gliding over thunderous drums, and a finale which involves swinging their guitars round their heads before leaving the stage bathed in two minutes of howling feedback. It’s tremendous stuff, a suitably impressive beginning to three days of music, but it’s the end of the first decade of the 21st Century. Isn’t it?
Apparently not. Bergen’s The New Wine may not have been souping up their guitar pedals like Kevin Shields’ life depended upon it, but they too seem trapped in the 80’s, their tunes bringing to mind the likes of both China Crisis and Hall & Oates. There’s nothing wrong with that, some might argue, but the Erlend Øye endorsed four piece lack a little of the prerequisite soul necessary to carry it off. Their beats are funky and yet they drag their heels, as though they’ve worked out the formula but not how to put it into practise. The crowd are dancing, but somehow The New Wine make The Whitest Boy Alive seem rather tanned in comparison.
THE DATA TODAY
Datarock, on the other hand, seem to know exactly what they’re doing. Mere minutes into their set – minutes almost drowned out by the frantic screams of the fans packing out the front rows – they’ve hauled out a saxophone, and yet this terrifying indication that the 80s revival is picking up speed is in fact inspired. They draw on the same influences that James Murphy’s DFA Records have so radically overhauled, and like LCD Soundsystem’s simian cousins they know exactly how to throw down a party: rolling basslines, four to the floor beats, and a bare-chested tambourine player concluding their set by crowd surfing through the tent. (You didn’t get that with Spandau Ballet!) Like council estate superheroes, they’re still wearing the same tracksuits that they paraded at by:Larm in Trondheim three years ago – it’s a wonder we can’t smell them from the back, to be honest – but their schtick seems in little danger of getting tired, and it’s a mystery why they’ve not achieved greater international success. Someone, somewhere, has a duty to put that right.
WATCH ME
Casiokids give away their 80s inclinations before they’ve even taken the stage. Their name speaks of digital watches and cheesy keyboards, and their music lifts from early house and techno with the minimum of fuss. But they make it their own, adding vocals whose ghostly falsetto recalls Sigur Ros’ Jonsi, a sprinkling of Afrobeat, and – obviously – four dancing bears whose hallucinogenic presence suggests that there’s acid in the beer as well as on the stage. One song, I’m reliably informed, is a love song sung in Bergen dialect to a pet dog. It makes perfect sense in any language.
CUM ON FEEL THE BOYZ
If you lived through the 1980s the first time it’s often hard to take this revivification of that era terribly seriously, but tonight’s final act are far from a joke. This is important because the messily named Cumshots are fronted by Kristopher Schau, comedian and TV host, and it’s initially hard to know whether this is one of his jokes. But five albums in it would be a joke that’s wearing thin, and no one finds this funny. That’s because The Cumshots take themselves very seriously indeed, and rightly so. Schau has perfected that death metal roar pioneered by the likes of Napalm Death, and his band tear the tent at least a dozen new arseholes. They’ve got manically nihilist lyrics – “Fuck you all” appears to be the chorus to an early tune, while they finish with the entire audience singing along to “Why Drink Alone?” – and they rock so heavily that the tent sinks at least three feet into Youngstorget. Schau launches himself around the stage between cowboy-hatted musicians, pouring bottles of water over his head, eating his microphone, stripping down to reveal the massive “Guilty” tattoo that straddles his back, roaring into the audience’s faces from the photographer’s pit. It’s hardly original, but it’s breathtaking in its intensity, and after a night of 80s inspired nostalgia it feels good to be brought kicking, screaming and bleeding back into the 21st Century. It’s hard to know whether the gradual thinning of the audience is due to the need to work in the morning or simple, instinctive fear, but no one’s going to forget the night The Cumshots got in their face. Back to the future at last…
Monday, 14 December 2009
Live Review: Them Crooked Vultures (The Quietus)
My full review is available here: http://thequietus.com/articles/03418-them-crooked-vultures-live-in-berlin-what-a-carrion
Friday, 23 October 2009
Live Review: Sonic Youth (The Quietus)
Most people never forget the first time they heard Sonic Youth's 'Daydream Nation', but over twenty years later they're still out there, cranking out their oft imitated, rarely matched atonal 'rock' (for want of a better word). "It's still their genre, copyright Sonic Youth." Or so I wrote for The Quietus:
http://thequietus.com/articles/03042-eternally-yours-sonic-youth-grow-old-gracefully-live-in-berlin
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Live Review: Radiohead (The Quietus)
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Live Review: Hanne Hukkelberg (by:Larm News)
HOOKED ON A FEELING
Three albums in, and Hanne Hukkelberg just keeps getting darker…
TYPE CASTING: In Trondheim two years ago, the last By:Larm to take place outside of Oslo, Hanne Hukkelberg bewitched an audience with a performance of exquisite fragility that gathered together strands of smoky late night jazz, sweet Scandinavian pop and the avant-garde. Her schtick was not only a magical voice but the presence on stage of both a bicycle and a typewriter, employed gainfully as sources of percussion during the show. She’d just completed her second album, Rykestrasse 68, and the fact that it was recorded in Berlin perhaps inspired this Einsturzende Neubauten Lite behaviour.
She’s back now with her third record, Blood From a Stone, written over seven months in a village on an island in the Arctic. You’d think that this solitude and peace would have inspired a music of similar incline, but in fact it seems to have provoked in her a need to do exactly the opposite. Instead of dropping the Einsturzende Neubauten references in favour of the twittering of birds - hell, Kate Bush managed to build a record around such things so it’s not impossible – Hukkelberg has upped the ante. She’s dropped the bicycle and the typewriter, but in its place she has a band which at times – and deliberately, it must be added – make a noise that feels like the sinews of one’s arms are slowly being shredded.
VOICING HER OPINION: Hukkelberg has one hell of a voice, that’s for sure. It swoops and glides gracefully, evocative and full of yearning. But it’s as though she’s so scared of being pigeonholed as another cutesy Scandinavian female in the mould of Stina Nordenstam, Anja Garbarek and Bjork that she’s gone running and screaming like a banshee in the opposite direction. And what she’s found at the other end of the line are her old PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth records.
For this reason, despite the fact that at times tonight there are curious reminders of last year’s By:Larm sensation Lykke Li, most of the kookiness that she might be in danger of exhibiting is buried beneath the clatter of dustbin lid percussion and the clang of detuned guitars. There’s a depth and complexity wholly absent from the synthetic pop of Li, and within this context Hukkelberg sounds more and more like Siouxsie Sioux or perhaps Polly Harvey, the strum of her guitar imbued with a threatening menace, the shadowy figures behind her lending her music an almost gothic mysticism.
SKIN & BONES: Hidden in the cracks of these gnarly, skeletal arrangements are unexpected hints of melody, and this stripped down but oddly metallic approach has brought out a new confidence in Hukkelberg’s delivery. The catch is, however, that while it’s enormously easy to admire the aesthetic it’s not so easy to enjoy the reality. This is less music, more intricately plotted art: determined and uncompromising, quietly but indefinably charismatic. It’s a puzzle that needs to be pieced together and, as the show progresses, it clearly baffles members of an audience that half way through begins to thin out. Those left behind, however, display a reverent devotion for Hukkelberg’s performance, and while she’s unlikely to be the name on everyone’s lips when they retire from By:Larm at the end of the week, she’s considerably more likely to keep on coming back with fresh and challenging music than most of the acts in attendance this week. It won’t be easy to listen to, one suspects, but it will always be hard to ignore.
Live Review: Simon Says No (by:Larm News)
Songs beginning with droning one note guitars: check. Obligatory smoke machine rendering band mere silhouettes on stage: you bet. Vocalist singing with Sonic Boom’s ‘can’t really give a fuck” tuning skills while leaning over his microphone so he can see his boots better: uh-huh. Welcome to the world of shoegazing, 21st century style. Hold on. Doesn’t that song start just like a Chapterhouse song? I think it does. Isn’t that the same ‘glide guitar’ sound that Kevin Shields made his own? It just might be. Could that be the sound of an early Ride single? Hell, don’t ask me, but it certainly sounds familiar. (Could it be the janitor? Could be. Oh, shit. That was Hong Kong Fooey.) Simon Says No have clearly studied their homework very, very carefully indeed, so carefully that they even raise the ghost of shoegazing outsiders, Loop, but therein lies the rub: this is shoegazing 20th century style. All the right musical themes are in place but there’s little new here, little that isn’t instantly identifiable. When they pick up the pace on “Give Me Good Vibrations” they threaten to take off, as they do again at the show’s close, but they need to find a way of doing more than replicating – albeit very well indeed – their heroes. Perhaps they should spend a little more time gazing at the stars rather than their feet.
(Reviewed at Sub Scene)
Friday, 20 February 2009
Live Review: Ólafur Arnalds (by:Larm News)
A CLASSIC ICELANDER
Ólafur Arnalds turns in the most unexpected but undeniably beautiful performance By:Larm will see this year…
They say you shouldn’t use the first person when you work as a critic, but how can you not when faced by music this intimate and personal? In the interests of professionalism I will endeavour to maintain the high journalistic standards set by other writers on the By:Larm News, but trust me: it’s going to be hard. Tonight Ólafur Arnalds could have played until the polar caps melted and it wouldn’t have been long enough. Save the planet, kids! Don’t let him stop! ‘Cos when the shit goes down the only refuge is going to be in the music of people like this.
PACKING THEM IN: Only 21 years old, Arnalds has already cut his teeth opening for Sigur Ros and sold out London’s Barbican Hall. With two albums to his name, but both on obscure UK label Erased Tapes, it’s an extraordinary achievement, but this near faultless performance provided more than ample evidence of how he’s succeeded in capturing the imaginations of those who seek music of sentiment and subtlety missing from almost every other act not only here in Oslo but throughout the world.
It’s impossible to write about music of such exquisite refinement without the use of clichés, so brace yourself. Arnalds’ work is as soft as pillows, as soft as pillow talk. Seated behind a grand piano, a Mac by his side and an effects rack discreetly hidden nearby, he summons gentle melodies from the keys like a magician, allowing them to float like summer mist over the stage. Accompanied only by a four piece string section whose embellishments were elegantly poised and never obtrusive, this modest Icelander ensorcelled a packed and fortunately seated audience with the thirty most peaceful, meditative minutes of the week. At times the auditorium was so silent that the bass thudding from the room next door threatened to overwhelm him, but it remained impossible to tear one’s ears away from the majesty of this understated but unforgettable performance.
PAY ATTENTION: He is of course completely out of place amidst the clamour of By:Larm, where the standard approach of new artists is to make as much noise in as sensational fashion as possible. But such is the contrast from the madness around the city this weekend that he stood out from his peers by virtue of his utter refusal to concede to such attention-seeking behaviour. Drawing upon a wide range of influences – from the glacial soundscapes of Harold Budd to the classical minimalism of Arvo Pärt and on to the simple charms of Erik Satie – he allows his ‘songs’ to swell gently until they blossom magnificently, gentle percussive twitches like ice melting in the background.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS JUST TALK: When he rolls the beats out with more force – and force is a relative term here – a colleague whispers that there’s a danger he may slip into Enigma territory, but for the most part he avoids the pitfalls of mixing electronica and classical tendencies with grace and panache, largely due to the muted quality of his programming. William Orbit this is not. Instead it is perhaps closer to the far-reaching ambitions of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, stripped of its fundamental rock and pop traditions until only the fragile details of that masterpiece remain. Much like fellow Icelander Johann Johansson – from whom he has perhaps borrowed a couple of tricks, such as the computerised voice behind his closing piece – Arnalds creates an inexplicable emotional resonance that ensures that his Oslo debut will remain one of the most enduring memories of 2009. Believe me.
Live Review: El Cuero (by:Larm News)
LEATHER BE ROCK!
Their name means ‘the leather’, and these monumental rockers could tear the skin from your back…
Beer Here Now: The problem with events like By:Larm – if there is a problem, and it’s perhaps unfair to suggest there might be – is that they put more emphasis on the provenance of a band and its music than is arguably strictly necessary. If one stumbled upon El Cuero in a dingy neon-lit roadhouse in the southern states of the US, its pool table stained with cigarette ash and sticky cheap beer, one might be forgiven for believing that one had located the very heart of America. The conviction with which they perform is such that they could be mistaken for any number of legitimately American classic rock bands.
But somehow, for a short while, a question mark lingers in the air above the stage as to whether a band from Oslo and Kristiansund have the right to pull these moves. Fortunately, and with relative ease, El Cuero make their point with such ferocity that by the end of their thirty minute showcase that question mark lies at the back of the stage, the shit kicked out of it relentlessly and unforgivingly.
For Those Ready To Rock, We Salute You: They start with a wall of noise, a deafening roar that drags their audience forcefully to the front of the stage. Guitarist Øyvind Blomstrøm wields a Flying V guitar like a battle trophy, singer and guitarist Brynjar Takle Ohr puffs out his chest beneath his T-shirt, bearded face hidden beneath a standard issue baseball cap. And then they rock. They rock like bastards.
The words Crazy Horse get thrown around a great deal when talking about El Cuero, and with good reason, but to begin with they crank out riffs as though they took lessons from AC/DC during their Oslo show earlier this week. It’s only when they break off into a frenzy of soloing that the crunching of guitar chords recedes, replaced instead by the kind of hurricane squalls that Crazy Horse have made their own. And though, from this point on, Neil Young’s legendary backing band remain a constant point of reference it’s nothing that detracts from the power of El Cuero’s performance. As they stagger through a second slower but still monstrous tune the ghost of The Jayhawks – albeit on a diet of Budweiser, nachos and beer nuts – is brought into focus by immaculate harmonies, but by the song’s climax they’re not so much dragging their heels as booting the face of the front row with size 12 Timberlands.
I Cuero Because You Cuero: Blomstrøm, Ohr and bassist Tommy Reite – pudding bowl haircut hanging down to his mouth – repeatedly face off with one another for a series of guitar duels, while drummer Håvard Takle Ohr beats his kit with the power of Mike Tyson. They strike Guitar Hero poses, wheel out a pedal steel to prove they’re still in touch with their ‘sensitive side’, but through it all they churn out the kind of anthemic rock whose lineage can be traced from Lynard Synard all the way to the jam band antics of My Morning Jacket. Little Steven, one can be sure, would approve.
They finish with another wall of terrifying noise, amps turned up to 12, so loud that it would scare the baby fluff from the Kings Of Leon’s chins. They may not come from Tennessee, but at this volume you could almost certainly hear them in Nashville...
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