Weirdness, snow and good old times

Its snoooooooooowing! Woop! I am such a child when it starts to snow here. I love it love it love it for not only does it make the light brighter and the day feel longer at a time when its length is disappearing at a rapid speed, but I also like to imagine I am the only foreigner who dresses appropriately.

In actual fact I enjoy it so much I opt to walk where I would normally take taxis. I love the feeling of my 80s pink ski suit and how snug I am in it, and my moonboots mean i don't skid like in any other shoes and justify the amount of money I paid for them on ebay several years ago. New ones are needed imminently and not appearing very quickly, there is a hole in my current ones an inch up, so they suffice for now but when the white stuff comes in properly the tootsies will get wet.




Last night I went to see Nýdönsk (or Ný dönsk I have no idea which as its different everywhere I look) at their 20 year anniversary concert. I took my neighbour Friða with me and her 11 year old son Daníel who announced this week I was his best girl friend and neighbour ever. Yay me. I was a little worried that the hour and a half show might bore him, but he did very well indeed and clapped until his hands hurt.



It was a little odd for me to watch as I do not have the connected history most Icelanders do with this band, but had spent a week obsessively listening to the greatest hits album someone at work gave me. I did enjoy it, although reasons being no doubt different to most of those around me cheering and clapping.



On saturday it was Weird Girls the Dark Side and it went fantastically. I have a huge amount of video editing to do - not to mention I only just managed to rescue the tapes from the last one so patience will have to be exerted. Similar with the photos, I have the official behind the scenes shots from Ben Mathis already but do not want to put them online until I get the official posed shots from Skari because I do not want to give the full costume away. I might pee I am so excited to see what they look like. As we walked into the set one of the camera guys looked at everyone then addressed me with 'You are actually a genius, you know that'. Woop.

The makeup started at 3pm and went on until just gone 7, with Elisabet and Birnasif doing a fantastic job. We headed to Organ's basement and ran the shoot until around 10.30pm with Skari bossing us around and taking full advantage to get a shot or two of his own which I cannot wait to see.

Mokki and I began Djing shortly after that and by 1am I was incredibly pleased to see how many people came down, and on top of which, how many dressed Halloweenish. Katherine and her axe-in-the-head won in my view. Hoorah.



The girls took off part of their outfits and ran around with fake blood generally terrorising the masses, much to my glee. These are the click snaps from me and some of the girls, you are allowed to see these as they don't give the costumes away....












Much fun all round yes yes, Mokki even got the crowd going, moves 'n' all to Saturday Night much to my amusement.




Keep posted for photo release when they are done....

Talking of photos, I have had several albums on yahoo for years, which I update but usually only send the url round to a few friends. Recently yahoo was bought by flickr, nei, the other way around. Anyhoos, the upshot is that they transferred all my photos onto one account and I was somewhat gob smacked to discover there are almost 8,000 of them. GOOD LORD. Obsessive over documenting or what and that doesn't contain the other 8,000 I have in my mum's loft in hard copy I haven't scanned. Let's put a little perspective however, these in total cover 1998 to the present day, so its almost a decade's worth.

A good friend of mine here tells me I am but the droplet of my existence, all my internoding is the ripples and they will go on longer than my 3D lifespan and that I will thusly be immortal. He says this with a wry look on his face but if that is the case it doesn't sound too bad, as long as my existence is associated with upbeat times.

I will eventually go through and delete the dull ones at some point, when I have time, but if you were drunk and in my path over the last 6 years you are no doubt on there somewhere...

MY FLICKR

Next up on the personal agenda is me getting old, or maybe an adult at least. I feel a touch Peter Pan these days, especially looking at aforementioned flickr, in my own not so humble opinion I believe I look better these days than I did 3 years ago... I certainly feel snappy. Iceland hasn't hurt in this - good water, clean air, less stress and daily tube/bus hassle has done me proud.... Nevertheless one cannot stop the clock and in 3 weeks I will enter my 4th decade and a party shalt be had unlike any other a few days later. It will rule the school.

The Party never stops

this entry is very hurried so please forgive me. Its no wonder I get a little exhausted, I just looked at my schedule and discovered I basically have no free time between now and the 2nd of January 2008. How utterly ridiculous. This particular time of the year is always more so than others because of the Airwaves, birthday, Christmas, New Year's Eve cocktail - but this year its even more so.

In addition there is the Weird Girls, which i will touch upon shortly, Djing in Poland, to which I have just been asked to add another date, EVE-online's FanFest, plus working and all the digital sideprojects.

and breathe.

Backtracking to the Sunday of Airwaves, I did indeed go to see the Magic Numbers, as did every single other person left in town with a festival pass it seemed. I have never seen it so packed and had a brief moment of panic about being squished. They truly are an amazing live act and I would have kicked myself if i hadn't gone. Byt he second song my eyes welled up with tears, partially because I loved it so and have a little soft spot for them, partially because i realised I missed being able to see good British bands regularly and partially because i was simply exhausted and needed to go home. By around the 5th song that need overwhelmed and I left to go home to bed, aching but very glad I made the effort to see them.



Monday was lilja's birthday and as I had been in Prague for her party I took her for exquisite dinner in Ban Thai, and we more or less ate our own bodyweight in heavenly cuisine. That place is amazing and if you can deal with fresh and hot chilli, ignore the staff's warnings and have the thai salad. Its incredible, each and every flavour jumps up and down in your mouth like a little pixie.

Afterwards we went to Salt, which isn't cheap but does serve the only thing which is almost a perfect frozen margarita here in town that I have come across.





On tuesday I was asked by Organ to change the Weird Girls Project third episode into a whole night's party. This means that the photo and video shoot begin around 5pm for me, the 15 other girls and the crew of 7 and we will then transfer from the set (in the basement of Organ) upstairs to host a party. Dj Mokki and I will play as Halloween based tunes as we humanly can mixed with electroclash and 80s nu wave classics. There will be free punch at around 11pm and lots of mayhem. Bring your camera's its going to get crazy....



More next time with birthday things and gig info and whatnot....

Airwaves - part three quarters

I say three quarters because its Sunday and almost over, but this evening the not so secret surprise concert of The Magic Numbers amongst other things so no doubt there will be more to tell tomorrow, or whenever I can....

To get it out of the way I am going to explain the reasons why this weekend isn't all good. To be completely fair to Mr Destiny the festival organisers - it was an utterly enthralling festival and extremely well put together this year, down to the nitty itty bitty details so don't let this put you off. My complaints rest mostly with the venues themselves not the Airwaves people.

First off Gaukurinn - how i hate this venue, which is a shame as some of my favourite acts played there. The bar needs to be gutted and refitted. The problem is that if a band gets more than 50 people in its audience those any further back simply cannot see a fucking thing. In addition the layout of the stairs, toilets etc means that most of the time unless you're at the right hand side of the stage, you are continually pushed and shoved. I didn't go to see several bands because I knew it would be hellish. I went for the one foreign act I desperately wanted to see, because well, I desperately wanted to see them - Alas, even though I frikking loved the gig I left half way through because if one more person accidentally elbowed me in the tit I was likely to spit flames and its no one's fault, they aren't any more comfortable than the person next to them.

/rant.

The second issue I have is the insanely priced beer. I know for a fact that venues make more money this weekend than any other all year, so why be such greedy cunts? In nearly every venue it was 700 krona for a half warm bottle/plastic glass of Tuborg. Are you kidding me? I was absolutely disgusted. Iceland has a reputation for being criminally expensive in the booze arena anyway, but this is beyond acceptable. A great deal of the local kids work extra shifts to afford their ticket to begin with, and to make sure that they have money to spend at the bar, and I spoke to many who didn't have enough cash to last the night. I am not talking about getting completely ruined, I mean just to enjoyably sup their evening through. Normally a larger bottle of Budvar or somesuch is at maximum 600isk, that is quite enough in my view. Raping a captive audience smacks of greed and it tastes bitter.

/rant #2.


Now then, on with the celebration of a fantastic festival. I officially began my festival on Thursday, although I only saw the one band so that I wouldn't push my health any. The Duke Spirit arrived late the night before and I invited them for my previously promised Lobster dinner. James Dickie and his friend also came over and it was almost like I had imported part of my old north London life to 101.






Fully fed the Dukes played at Lído at midnight as the headline act and the friends of mine who came with thoroughly enjoyed it, as did the rest of the people if the shouting was anything to go by. I managed to grab a recording that Ras 2 radio station made of the whole gig and its mighty fine. The entire gig will be played at some point over the next few weeks.




Friday was the main party night for me, I am therefore cripplingly peeved to inform you that all my photos from that night somehow corrupted upon import so the thumbnails below is all I have. Excuse the layout... the earliest part of the evening - Esja is at the end, so view bottom upwards for chronology.



I didn't see any early gigs because even though I only went out for an hour or so the night before I was exhausted and as I needed to make it through to the end of the evening I began with Esja at Iðno.

Next Magga and I headed straight over to Nasa to see The Motion Boys. I am bitterly disappointed that my Motion Boys video footage also corrupted as this concert was incredible and if i was excited about them playing my birthday beforehand - I literally jumped up and down on the spot with excitement after the event. These boys know how to engage the crowd, and how to look incredible whilst doing so. Yay x twelfty fix billion.

Following were GusGus and I won't say more than excellent as ever. Here is some non corrupted video. Bear with it - Agi's amazing lighting is held back until nearly a minute in and also bear with it because I was somewhat lala frome the TVRs I had supped upon and its aaaall over the shop.




After, to recover from the TVRs I sat backstage and almost missed the whole Ghostigital and didn't take my camera when I did pop out. Following them was Hairdoctor. Daníel performed their version of Moss with them which is mostly caught in this clip.



After this I went home somewhat worse for wear and ate a great deal which meant I woke at 9am feeling rather chipper if a little tired. Magga Sigga came and collected me, Eva, her friend Lilja and Daníel to go to the Blue Lagoon Hangover Party. It was RAMMED. I have never seen it so busy before and the queue to get in was immense but worthwhile.

The Dukes were already soaking in the warm water when I got there. The Djs - Fluokids and Detect were fantastic and set off an insane dance - crowd surfing type affair which i sadly have no photos of but know a man who does so I will update later.






The Saturday evening was low key. First off I managed to catch the last couple of songs of Johnny Sexual's performance and he was looking super fly in his newly made bespoke suit he came back from Hong Kong with. Fly. Seriously.




That aforementioned blergh venue Gaukurinn was the next stop because of one band - Chromeo. This was the only act from out of town I was seriously bothered about. We got in so early that we actually managed to see most of Bonde do Role an utterly insane in a good way dance your ass off hip hop type of number. Lunatics, and ones I was very pleased to have accidentally seen.

Chromeo appeared next and I was interested in seeing them perform before the gig but after - I now officially LOVE THEM. So did everyone else it seemed and they loved everyone back. I haven't seen a band smile that hard in a long time.



Due to the elbows in the tits situation we fled before the end of the gig but that very luckily brought us to Nasa whilst !!! were playing and it seemed hadn't started too long beforehand. My my, they are great live. Go and see them if they come anywhere near you.

Mínus played afterwards and Einar Örn guested on one song... as per below's clip. Once their show was done Krummi summed up my thoughts with a desire to go home to bed and watch tv and eat. Being off the booze that night he drove us home and I was deep down very pleased that even though I had hankered after dancing to Moonbootica's Dj set at Barinn - I was in fact home nice and early so I have the energy to enjoy some of tonight's special guests....

Snot central

Well things have been fairly dull since returning from Prague but that's because i have been illing somewhat. An abundance of snot shall we say. There was even a day when i did at the age of nearly 30 - cry for my mum. I wonder when this stop or if it ever does, do we ever stop missing a little parental soothing when we are sick and for me - an ocean away from family.

Who knows, and no doubt you are thinking - Who cares. So in order not to bore you witless with tales of coughing, fevers and snotville I shall instead give you a quick lalala of what to see at Airwaves. Hmmn, well its not an official what to see, its a what I will see as there really isn't much I am going to go to that isn't just friends I love who do fabtastic music.

First I will say I attended my first conference in a contributing capacity. Yesterday there was the 'Who is in control?' conference, hosted by Icelandic Music Export, which discussed new business models for music, culture and entertainment, as well as the latest trends in digital marketing, new technological opportunities and funding in the digital world. A veritable feast of experts were drafted in, experts and then yours truly. I was speaking as an online community expert and specifically to discuss the importance of using said medium to raise musicians profiles - case study in point was of course GusGus, who with the help of extremely talented designer Linda Loeskow, I have substantially helped raise online presence for.



I am not a shy person, nor am I afraid of standing on stage in spandex in front of a thousand people but I did not particularly enjoy speaking I have to admit. I was/am ill and barking like a sealion especially when talking didn't exactly help either but hey ho. Einar Örn behaving increasingly foolishly as the day went on and his attention span depleted did make the who thing more fun from my end. It was a serious conference about serious issues and it was well done by Ana Hildur but there's always room for a little shinanegans when sitting with various Sugarcubes.

There were some interesting people there and I was very pleased to have met them i just hope they remember me past the girl who barked her way through the day. The bottom line of the day was indeed that the music industry as it currently stands is, to be blunt, fucked. I am just very pleased the task of solving its issues doesn't rest at my feet.

Anyway back to the festival at hand - Iceland Airwaves.



Morgunblaðið just called me to ask what I am going to be seeing over the weekend so this is a duplicate of that basically.

Today, because i am still somewhat under the weather, I am only interested in one band. The Duke Spirit. They are playing at 00.00 at Lído.

Friends since before they were called the Duke Spirit way back in...erm, 2001 or 2002 they have progressively gone up and up. Plus they are all extremely FIT. woof.



Tomorrow, I hope to god I will be feeling up to full health because its a busy night for me. I plan to spend most of my night at Nasa, making one obvious exception for Esja playing at Iðno at 21.30





Nasa will go like this....

20.00 Mr Silla and Mongoose, because she is an angel. (Icelandophile point of interest: Silla is also in Múm)




20.45 Bloodgroup - because I want to see whether they live up to the current hype.

---

23.00 Motion Boys - as they RUUUUUULE - and I am pleased to announce, playing a private gig at my birthday party next month. woop. (Icelandophile point of interest - Viðar is also in Trabant, Arni +1 is also in Hairdoctor and FM Belfast)

00.00 GusGus - O.B.V.I.O.U.S.L.Y. (Icelandophile point of interest - Daníel Ágúst is also in Esja with Krummi of Mínus aaand a solo artist)

01.15 Ghostigital - as they are 2 of my best friends and so weird it makes me smile. (Icelandophile point of interest - Einar Örn was in the Sugarcubes of course and Curver is part of Sometime and my Dj partner)




02.00 Hairdoctor - as they are great, the singer is my sometime hairdresser and Daníel is performing a guest song with them. (Icelandophile point of interest - Arni +1 is also in Motion Boys and FM Belfast)


May the force be with you people.

Planes, trains and limosines

Last Wednesday I flew over to the Czech Republic to meet up with Daníel ahead of the Icelandic Cultural Festival in Prague organised by Sunna Jóna Gudnadottir. Upon arrival we went to Jiri‘s grandparents house in who's workshop we were staying for the first night. This was what I would call the most insightful slice of Czech life during my stay. A small place within a collection of buildings that have been inhabited by the same families for a few generations and I for one was very pleased to have had at least the one night in 'real' life there.




I say real life but the restaurant that Jiri took us to that evening was beyond unreal, it was absolutely stratospheric. La Degustation is now my favourite eatery of all time.

It is run by Filip Trãka, a wonderfully open and warm man whom Jiri had known since school. The menu offered 3 different 'taster' menus and we were steered to try the original Czech Bohemian one, after all, when in Rome – or in this case Prague. Every dish was taken from an obscure czech recipe book over 100 years old (and Filip brought said ancient book for us to look over) the ingredients agonizingly sourced to ensure only the best of the best was put in front of our noses.

There were 18 different dishes, a mixture of the menu's courses and numerous amuse-bouches or 'gifts' as the waiter called them. A different specifically chosen wine was brought out for each of the 7 official courses, and for every item of food and drink which was provided, excellent staff members gave an unintrusive yet informative explanation of what exactly you were about to taste.








I smiled almost solidly for the 3 hours of eating, whether my mouth was full or not. It was absolute heaven and possibly the most princessy meal I have ever eaten.

After this we sauntered to the Orange Bar, a teeny tiny spanish looking bar which was the end stop on almost every night for they sold the best Mojitos I have tasted in a very long time indeed.

The next day Sunna's partner Matûj took us to look at the venue, the Abaton, and then out for some lunch at a place I believe was called the Lounge. I want there to be a bar of this size and décor in Reykjavik. Someone hurry up and do so will you.




That evening, a stroll through the city and another dinner out. This time accompanied by loud Britney Spears style music. This was the only thing which frustrated me in Prague, even though to begin with it was amusing to me and my hideous love of all things cheesy, but that soon wore off. Every shop, every radio station I heard, every restaurant had a mix of manufactured modern pop music and chart hits from the 80s and 90s, played very loudly no matter what genre the shop or restaurant was. We were eating in Barok, a none too cheap restaurant angling to be high class and trendy, but it was utterly ruined by the blaring of Christina Aguilera and Robbie Williams and digestive classics such as Everybody was kung fu fighting and Ring my bell.

Anyway, to make up for this after a walk around the old square we happened upon a live old school jazz band playing in the Prince’s hotel and it was fantastic even if we only managed to catch the end section.






The next day saw the arrival of Sometime and Ben Frost at the hotel and Sunna organized a meal out for all of us.






Much merriment and drinking was enjoyed, Ben was more than pleased with his rabbit and I had some fabulous ostrich.







We were escorted through the beautiful streets to a club/bar called Zero I think, and my appreciation of smoke bans here in Reykjavik tripled. It was so hard to breathe and what’s more, hard to keep our eyes open due to the stinging clouds of smoke that 4 of us went outside and quickly decided to relocate to the Orange Bar again as they had the doors open to prevent such things. It’s funny that all 3 and half of us were smokers (I say half because essentially I don’t do the cigarettes anymore but was being bad) and yet we all said we preferred to be somewhere smokeless....





Several mojitos later.. 4 rounds to be precise...we were all rather ready to get a taxi home, but in joyful shock at the fact that 16 very good, and generous cocktails cost us a mere 3,000isk - that’s about 5 shitty beers here. Unbelievable.






The next day I continued with gusto the ahem, moderate, shopping I had been doing. I couldn’t carry the amount I bought, I am terrible when I go abroad. I was very disheartened as my aim had been to find Czech vintage clothes, but if they have such shops, which they must do, they are very well hidden, so instead I went to chain shops and in a frenzy. I also went to an amazing hat shop with Rosa where we both purchased incredible handmade hats. I heart mine, its classic yet with a gentle scifi feel and as one woman said to me in the airport – its as if it were tailored to suit me.



That evening it was the concert and even though the venue was a fair hike out of town, it was very busy indeed. Ben frost started the show and I have actually never seen him live and enjoyed doing so.







Daníel was up next, playing with a local string quintet.





Worm is Green successfully impressed the crowd and then Sometime went mental. I think they are made for this sort of audience, they played more upbeat and technoesque than I have heard them before and everyone was dancing around in the audience, including us.








Once the equipment was back at the hotel, once again we headed back to the Orange Bar but just for the one drink unlike everyone else as we had to get up stupidly early to get the plane to London where the limo was waiting.






For reasons of hedonistic abandonment and because I have travelled so much this year and couldn't face hiking from Stansted to Heathrow airport with not enough time to do anything London wise via public transport but yet waaay too much time to hang around in airports between connecting flights, I had booked us a limosine. A classy one I hasten to add, none of this white stag night bullshit.





We drove down from stanstead to north London and we went to the Flask in Highgate as I have missed this excellent gastro pub like I cannot tell you. Although it was great to be there and I enjoy the pub itself and the fantastic beer garden I was at heart very disappointed to discover that it must have changed hands because the food, although fairly decent, was no longer the incredible heaven it was once up on a time. Boooo! Oh well, at least I won’t wish I was there as much as I have done on a Sunday when I am in Reykjavik.




Back to the limo, a silver 'baby Bentley' and we battled our way through the traffic to Charring Cross station where our entourage awaited us. My sister Hannah, Fanny, Gaui, Clare and Chris all waited patiently for our late arrival, bottles of bubbly in hand and the mini party began.









I was incredibly excited to hear from Clare that one of my best friends Kate, who had been in Shanghai for around a year and a half then after had moved to Amsterdam just moved back to London. I hadn't seen her (apart from via skype) for 2 years so I scrapped the original plan of a drive along the river in favour of heading to Brick Lane to have a glass of champers with her on the side of the street in a very unclassy yet appropriate style.




After this stop we pootled our way to Waterloo to drop Hannah off and everyone else decided to come with us to Heathrow and find their own way back from there because we were having too much fun. Heathrow Airport made me want to murder someone and I could rant untold words about such, but I am not going to, for it would distract from what was an incredible day, full of the people I love, reckless abandon and champagne….. my favourite combination.