Saturday, October 21, 2006

airwaves days 1-3

wednesday - a half hearted attempt at seeing we are scientists. instead i checked out ultra mega teknobandid stefan, which was entertaining but not groundbraking. but hell, i'm sure they'll be a lot better by the time they hit puberty. damn kids these days. then i caught the last four minutes of lokbra. all i can say is that receive a pretty high score using the good music/bad name ratio. in the end though, it is kinda hard to like a band one of whose members sports a korn tattoo. weapons was just boring.

thursday - mates of states turned out to be slightly better than i predicted. but still not the most exciting live band and occasionally they get a little annoying. tilly and the wall were alright as well but perhaps a little too cute - in any case i had had my fill after a couple of songs and headed over to nasa to catch skatar and reykjavik!. i'm not sure what to make of either of them. skatar certainly had moments of polvoesque brilliance but, on the whole, the didn't leave a strong impression. but i would definately check them out again. reykjavik! was a similar story - there is much to like about the band. for example, they are loud and they look funny. but i couldn't figure out what they are aiming for - which may actually be a good thing. metric was up next so i made a run for it and caught a few songs with mugison. there is no question that mugison is talented but the first couple of songs were just a little too slick, which had me worried a bit but thankfully he slipped into his death metal shoes for a song. i returned to nasa before metric finished up but hid away in the back and managed to ignore them almost completely. finally, love is all was quite good actually though their sound is a little limited and kinda wears on you. but i have to give them credit for pulling off, first, a squeaky sounding singer, two, a saxophone, and, three, being swedish. and copying biggie smalls is pretty cool.

friday - i was feeling pretty beat but i made it to the festival after running into bobby fisher at a reception. islands were brilliant, as expected, and the best band of the festival so far. it would have been nice if their set had been longer. next up were apparat organ quartet who, well, try to rock with keyboards. and they kinda succeed. jakobrinarina (or whatever their name is) were up next - i had heard a lot about them but for some reason i had always been a little sceptical. but these kids rock - something tells me they have gotten into their parents' record collection b/c they certainly heard joy division somewhere. though they are a tad more upbeat perhaps. anyhow, a pleasant surprise. then the go!team, which quickly scared a good chunk of the audience away by turning up their guitars and rocking out like i hadn't expected them to. so, another pleasant surprise. the poppier songs were alright but what really won me over was the fact that they like noise. i guess, i'll have to give their album another listen. then, over to grand rokk to see gavin portland. gavin portland sounded massive - in the unsane sort of way. some great heavy riffing but unfortunately the singers yelling in no way matched the band's sound - or at least didn't add anything to it. i think actually would like them a whole lot more if they went all instrumental. and at the end of the night, we went over to the national theater's basement to watch trost. trost was pretty good - a kinda seedy cabaresque music if that means anything at all. but trost was an entertaining performer who liked to climb up on tables and play tug-of-war with the sound guy using the microphone cord.

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