The below content was originally posted on Life in the Vinyl Lane.
For the first time during Airwaves 2013 I’m writing with most of my brain working – not hallucinating from lack of sleep on our travel day nor at 2:30 AM after a complete day of concerts. So hopefully I’m more coherent, because if not I’ve got real problems.
We went over to Lucky Records today to pay for and pick up all the stuff that I’ve had on hold, and even I was surprised at the volume, which is what happens when you ask to have a few things put aside, but spread out those requests over the course of weeks. That being said, I was stoked about what I had waiting for me, both the stuff I picked out as well as a few nuggets Gestur and Ingvar put aside, like a super limited edition múmpicture disc, a couple of 45s, some random CDs, and yes, my dear readers, even a cassette. Let that last part sink in for a minute. This wasn’t a vintage cassette like theSnarl II compilation I wrote about recently. Oh no. This is brand spanking new industrial insanity dual effort from Iceland’s own AMFJ and Auxpan, and I’m looking forward to checking it out… assuming, of course, I still have a tape player floating around in my garage somewhere. Either that or I’ll have to sit in my wife’s car.
I have a stack of cool stuff to listen to when I get home, including new material from The Samúel Jón Samúelsson Big Band and Emilíana Torrini, plus used stuff by Björk, Purrkur Pillnikk, and some almost completely unknown Icelandic bands (well, at least unknown to anyone not from Iceland!). As near as I can tell I got about 27 records and 21 CDs (and one cassette!) so far… and frankly I don’t have room for much more – though I still need to hit up the flea market on Saturday. I can’t wait to get home and start listening! I’m not as much looking forward to cleaning all these records and having to reorganize my shelves… but that’s the price you pay.
We weren’t too inspired by the off-venue program today, but we had one band we wanted to catch – the industrial duo known as Ghostigital. Not too many bands can be as intense and weird as Ghostigital while still being awesome. This marked the fifth time we’ve seen them at Airwaves and as usual they did not disappoint, this time playing a small stage on the top floor of Reykjavik’s opera house Harpa, with the setting sun coming in through the angular windows on two sides and a crowd who was ready to get after it. And they brought it. There were a couple of songs from their latest album,Division of Culture and Tourism, plus a few I didn’t recognize. The small crowd (maybe 75 people?) was way into it and some people were seriously rocking out. This moved solidly into second place in my personal list of best shows this year, behind only Legend. We also caught part of Good Moon Deer’s set, some nice experimental electronic played by one guy on the controls and the other on the drums.
We spent most of the evening back at Harpa catching heavy metal and punk type shows. Momentum opened with their brand of psych metal, though it wore on me a bit as there wasn’t a lot that differentiated the songs in their set. Dimma, however, looked, acted, and sounded like rock stars, like metal gods from the bygone age of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The lead singer knew how to strike the poses and flat out hit the notes all the way through. These guys are a new favorite, and I’ll be looking for some of their stuff before we leave. Endless Dark followed with their own brand of quasi post-hardcore, a relatively large band with not one by two vocalists – though to be fair one was more a shouter/growler and the other a singer. Regardless, they were hard, fast, and awesome. Muck was next, and we saw them live when we were last in Reykjavik back in April. Some decent punk, but while I didn’t think it was anything terribly special, they probably had the largest crowd in that room tonight. Sólstafir was the band we really came to see, and while they were good their sound was a bit droning, sort of Icelandic cowboys (based on how they were dressed) singing like old Alice in Chains. Their style is a difficult one to pin down – I think their music takes a conscious effort to truly appreciate. A lot of people are way into them, and I feel like this is the kind of band I should totally love, but I just don’t quite get them. We snuck out of there a bit early to head over to another room within Harpa to listen to a few songs by Yo La Tengo, who were decent in a kind of folk rock way.
Click here to continue reading Jeff’s thoughts on the second day of Iceland Airwaves 2013.
