23 Feb 2011 — Tonje Thilesen
Also see bylarm day 1 or bylarm day 2
Three full days of rushing between venues located in different parts of town is mildly put tiring in its length, but also a lot of fun when you get to see so many great up-and-coming bands all at once, as well as meeting a great deal of friends playing in these particular bands. The programme for Saturday also provided with a great deal of exciting acts such as
Kim Hiorthøy, Susanna & The Magical Orchestra and
Treefight for Sunlight, while I unfortunately missed plenty of other interesting names such as
Tommy Tokyo & Starving For My Gravy, Cold Mailman, Lucy Swann and Iceland's lo-fi trio
Pascal Pinons.
If there's anything Bylarm deserves criticism for on the other hand, it's the fact that they run ridiculously high festival- and day pass prices even though most bands playing are relatively unknown. Not that I mind paying for seeing little known bands however, that is after all the reason why I'm there in the first place, but when the bands themselves hardly get a share of the pot (not talking about
Wavves' weed) for playing up to as many as four concerts during a period of three days, one can't help but wondering where the rest of the money goes. Neither what it is however, I still can't deny that Bylarm always has killer line-ups each year, even though I missed seeing both
Youth Pictures Of Florence Henderson and
Benjamin Finger on this year's line-up. Let's cross our fingers for better luck next year, shall we? Below are the shows we dropped on the last day of Bylarm 2011 — Saturday, February 19th.
"This guy's music is great, huh?" some middle-aged guy points out in my direction, his breath stinking of whiskey and rum. Actually, I disagree — the music of Norwegian singer-songwriter
Einar Stray is not 'great', it's huge.
Having a fresh and critically acclaimed debut album in hand that was released a couple of weeks ago, there couldn't have been a better way to start the journey of my last day at Bylarm 2011 than with Einar's heart-shaking sound and huge compositions of which I've only experienced once before — when he played a more acoustic set without his band in a tiny chapel at
Trænafestivalen last year. However, a lot of the kudos goes to Stray's amazingly tight live band that obviously helps creating the magic. Consisting of both Hanna Furuseth (violin + backing vocals) and Ofelia Ossum (cello) whom are also known for playing in
Moddi (as well as Einar himself), while . Having such a tight bond as a band already, the outcome is impossible to disappoint.
On the other hand Einar Stray himself was well hidden behind his keyboard during the whole show, occasionally opening his eyes to take a short glance at the audience, and this made the whole thing seem much less personal than what I had predicted. Even though it was a good concert nonetheless, I'm
quite sure that Einar can do better than this. Half an hour was as well, as I keep saying, way too short especially for Einar Stray's long and post-rock inspired compositions, they still played my own very favourites (and the not so indie poppy ones from his debut) during their set, including
Yr Heart Isn't A Heart, Chiaroscuro and in my opinion the most unique ones on his debut album Chiaroscuro;
We Were The Core Seeds.
As we've already declared him to be a true NFOP favourite, Martin Hartgen aka
Burning God Little mumbled something about chillwave in my direction as he continued to open his set with a whole new track of which I still haven't managed to get my hands upon, but as I assume can be found on our site in not too long. My thoughts went from
Com Truise to the newest track
Waskerly Way sent me the other day, a more 'dance floor friendly' one that is, as usual filled with glitchy electronic sounds
packed into noisy lo-fi as Bylarm decides to describe him themselves. Now we just have to sit back and wait for the guy to finally release his very first EP, and hopefully we won't have to wait till the turn of the year before getting our hands on some fresh new material from Oslo resident hailing from the city Bodø up north.
The New Wine - Move (Burning God Little remix)
Highly anticipated for this year's Bylarm and already having a fresh concert on their consciousness from a couple of weeks ago in Oslo, the most interesting part of Norway's
Susanna & The Magical Orchestra was probably when
Susanna Wallumrød sung her lovely cover of nothing but ACDC's
It's A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll", accompanied by Morten Quenild's melodic beats and atmospheric tunes. To my surprise I found their set getting a little boring towards the end as I had quite high expectations for their performance on beforehand, and already hearing great things about them playing live, it simply just wasn't enough for Wallumrød to stand up straight and sing into the microphone for half an hour in a melancholic blue backlight, even though the sound and setlist itself was impeccable. Or maybe it was just the audience, I'm not too sure, but at least I know I didn't feel any particular magic during the thirty minutes with Susanna and her magical orchestra.
The four-piece
Treefight for Sunlight from different parts of Denmark (Copenhagen, Århus and Jutland to put be more precise) is indeed worth the hype they've been getting around on the Internet lately, or "faster than the chillwave/drag/post-screw rap we've been enjoying up here" as
The Guardian hilariously enough wrote back in November last year. With three lead singers, the sound of Treefight for Sunlight is indeed of the more blissful kind, sometimes even in the footsteps of
Grizzly Bear's more experimental parts if you've had a listen to their freshly released debut album that was out a couple of weeks ago. Playing at a relatively small stage at the
Rockefeller annex, I am quite sure it won't be too long before we'll see them headlining alongside those huge names on bigger festivals, you can have my word on that.
Treefight for Sunlight - What Became Of You And I
I was very happy when I scrolled through the festival programme and my eyes located the Bergen based six-piece
Lovecult on it (whom we wrote about a while back) — a band with a sound nearly impossible to put into one category, but which can be recognized as something in between 70's krautrock, shoegaze and psychedelic pop. Their set was a lot noisier than what I had predicted, but made the sound more interesting as well in a way, turning out to look just as mysterious as the music they play is. They also told me they're recording their debut hopefully this summer, so keep your eyes and ears open for these exciting newcomers from Norway's beautiful westcoast. As Eirik (the vocalist) said himself, neither of them had been playing much music before they got together as a band in 2008, in fact many of them hadn't even picked up a instrument in their entire life. This, a long with the rather unusual instruments they use live, is what I think helps colouring the particular sound that is so unique for Lovecult, and indeed unlike anything I've heard before.
Lovecult - Daydreaming
I never really quite understood the Norwegian hype around
Pow Pow until I finally saw the playing live late in 2010, which had me realize that these guys are indeed a lot better on stage than they were on their last year's debut
Last Day On Earth. Don't get me wrong however, the album itself also has its highlights and indeed with the potential of making it big with their synthpoppy sci-fi electronic, that is, if they can manage to capture the same feel as playing live in the recording process. Not a single bad thing is to be said about their live show however, as they can play with such ease and dedication I've rarely seen on stage before.
Pow Pow - The Ark
I had been looking forward to see my definite favourite electronic/experimental act
Kim Hiorthøy all day, but as the venue he originally was supposed to play at closed for some reason, a lot of the shows were delayed because of this — and Hiorthøy didn't go on stage before an hour after what he was supposed to. Never in my life have I been to such a fully packed Blå before and it was nearly impossible to force my way through the relatively wasted and carefree twenty-whatevers, at the time almost wishing I was one of them. A DJ set with Kim Hiorthøy at 2AM is nowhere near the weird and quirky electronic-pop you hear him compose in the beautiful track below,
Skuggan or even in the more electronic
Hei from 2003 — no, this was all about the bass. Even though Hiorthøy's set was still leaning heavily on that particular crunchy and experimental sound of his, one could definitely say that this was more of a DJ set than a Hiorthøy concert at daytime, which was for me (among few) a little disappointing — but I guess I should've known on beforehand.
Kim Hiorthøy - Skuggan
I hadn't exactly imagined Finland's
Uusi Fantasia to look so hilarious on stage as they did night to Sunday at 2.30 AM. With their sound being of the more downtempo and funky electronic style, I therefore found it a bit weird that the whole show itself looking more like a circus rather than a concert. It was on the other hand easy to forgive as Eirik Bøe entered the stage twenty minutes out in the show, and sang along to the beautiful
Barefoot Not Naked from Uusi Fantasia's
Heimo from last year, which made me forget the slight disappointment of Kim Hiorthøy I had felt half an hour earlier. If anything, they were at least energetic on stage (even though bordering more to silliness rather than amusement, in the
Gogol Bordello kind of way), but I can't help to wish I had seen them earlier in the daytime or even on a smaller stage. A weird, but nevertheless good way to end the last day of Bylarm this year.
Uusi Fantasia - Barefoot Not Naked (feat Eirik Bøe)
Hoping that next year's Bylarm festival will be just as good, here's a little flashback on the bands and artists I unfortunately, due to both time schedule and ID restrictions, didn't get to see.
Pascal Pinon from Iceland shows us not surprisingly enough, beautiful and fragile folk pop from the very land where ambient and folk music has a strong influence.
Daniel Adams-Ray on the other hand is a bit in the direction of
Oskar Linnros, making catchy pop music easy to remember but hard to forget, while Norway's own hype
Your Headlights Are On has craftet their own, unique style going somewhere between noise pop and indie rock. I missed Jenny Hval aka
rockettothesky as well as the Danish beauty
Agnes Obel too (now based in Berlin), making mellow and ocean-deep pop music — and, of course the quirky jazz/pop trio
Chili Vanilia with our own NFOP favourite
Synne Sanden in front.
Pascal Pinon - New Beginning
Daniel Adams-Ray - Medan Vi Faller
Your Headlights Are On - When We Collide
Kommode - Houses for Birds
Agnes Obel - Riverside
Chili Vanilla - A Song About Love
Dennis Jr. - Out Of Control
Photography: Tonje Thilesen
For more photos, check out the whole set on our facebook page.
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Not Not Fun's Amanda Brown graciously sent over the second batch of her shiny sub-project 100% Silk, another 12 inch double packed with purest glam disco extravaganza. This time it's London via Tallinn, Estonia songstress Maria Juur aka Maria Minerva blessing us with her blissful Noble Savage, some kind of upbeat Nite Jewel lo-fi disco, dark and sleazy and absolutely spellbinding, something both contemplating and an irresistible call to arms. Slightly cleaner and more on the house side of all things dance is Confectioner Beats by Cuticle, a trio made up of Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell), Darren Ho (Driphouse) and Brendan O'Keefe (Nimby). A-side track Flair seamlessly summarizes the glory days of dance music while keeping it very minimal, only constant echoed synth tweaking illuminating the dry, straight base line. Classic.
Pre-order both diamonds over here.
(Photo)
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