The SONIC ICELAND AIRWAVES blog – day 4

Image by Óskar Hallgrímsson, Iceland Airwaves

Let’s get this over with first: BJORK IS MAKING MUSIC WITH TESLA COILS. BJORK IS MAKING MUSIC WITH TESLA COILS. There, I’ve said it. But more of that later. We started our day with a hamburger and chips at Prikid, and to make up for the comfort food we then headed out to the Blue Lagoon for the afternoon.

Back in Reykjavik, we braced ourselves for the last night of Iceland Airwaves. And it looked very promising: first up was Bjork’s Biophilia performance in Harpa, and after that Hjalmar in Bakkus. So, while Reykjavik was blasting revellers with an icy wind straight from the top of Mount Esja, we headed down Laugavegur to the concert hall, which we reached just in time to get our tickets and for Anne to hand in her camera – Björk was not allowing any pictures to be taken.

Image by Rúnar Sigurður Sigurjónsson, Iceland Airwaves

I had read this brilliant article in the Rolling Stone, so I basically knew what to expect, but the experience was something different. On a stage in the middle of the room, open to all sides, Björk placed herself amidst her choir, a group of Icelandic girls clad in blue and gold, herself sporting the enormous whig? hairpiece? mushroom? which you can see at the Biophilia-cover, and directed the proceedings. All songs were, like the songs on the app itself, introduced by the disembodied voice of Sir David Attenborough. For the first song “Thunderbolt”, a large cage containing two Tesla coils was lowered from the ceiling, switched on and the lighting shooting between the coils produced the bass line for the song. Making music with electricity, that is all.

For the next 1,5 hours, auntie Gudmunsdottir was the proverbial crazy old woman on stage, a herb woman tip tapping around to gather ingredients for her music, borrowing some drum patterns from percussionist Manu Delago, a melody from Jons Sims at the keys, and finally concocting her soundbrew with the help of the “Graduale Nobili”-choir and her IPad. Huge screens on all sides of the stage showed the doings of the “Biophilia”-apps in coordination with the songs played. Björk ended the official Biophilia-performance with only herself placed in front of four strange harp/bell-misconceptions, singing “Solstice”. And during that song, she missed a beat for the first time. But it only showed that the elf-mother of apps and melodies is still a human. And as she and her hair piece from hell hopped off stage, shoe-less after the encores of “Medulla” and the crescendo of “Declare Independence”, she uttered a final “Declare Independence! Takk fyrir!” and was gone. But I was happy to have met her.

After that other-worldy experience, I was glad to return to the world of rock’n'roll – or reggae, to be more precise. We headed over to an tightly packed Bakkus, were the good guys of Hjálmar were playing a sweaty set to introduce their new album which will be out October 27th. So I got a few more Polar beers, and we ended our Airwaves listening to the melancholy sounds of the world’s saddest reggae band, while inside the sweat was pouring from the ceiling and outside the viking-wind was doing its best to tear the place down.

Takk fyrir, Reykjavik and Airwaves!