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Ten Things you did not know about Roskilde festival

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

original article here :

The Local Denmark

It’s that time of the year again ! The streets are filled with the tooting of trucks packed with hordes of newly graduated students in the mood for a party. With Northern Europe’s largest festival creeping over the dawn horizon, many of the newly graduated will be joined by thousands of others, young and old, for up to eight days of cathartic chaos that does away with the conformity and structure of the everyday.

In its place, everything from naked runs to tears of ecstasy and indelible crowd surfing moments are sure to normalize that which one would otherwise consider bizarre and even unbecoming.

Roskilde started out as an early 70’s idealist experiment modeled on the ethos of marquee counterculture happenings such as Woodstock and Isle of Man. Since then it has evolved into one of Europe’s giants on the festival scene, joining the likes of the U.K’s Glastonbury festival as one of the world’s most revered gatherings, both due to the eclectic music profile it maintains and the fact that it is primarily volunteer-driven.

Now a swank 43 year old, Roskilde shows few signs of entering into a mid-life crisis, beaming with the very same creativity and cultural sparkle that she aims to inspire amongst the 160’000 plus people that are part of her universe. Here are one or two things you may not know about this beast :

  1. Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller are the reason you’re reading this. High school students at the time, this dynamic duo aided by music promoter Carl Fischer organised the first Roskilde Festival back in 1971. 20 bands played over 2 days, at what was known as Sound Festival at the time.

  2. Orange: Roskilde’s official colour, inspired by the indomitable Orange stage. With space for 60’000, the Orange stage was originally purchased from England in 1978, where it had been used by the Rolling Stones as part of their European tour a couple of years before. 36 years later, The Rolling Stones are set to rock this stage again.

  3. Apollo: Inaugurated in 2012 to cater for the rising demand for electronic music in the modern-day, Apollo is the Orange stage’s humble country cousin, with space for a modest 5000. During the warm up days, this powerful little satellite has been known to wander around different camping areas creating havoc.

  4. Nudity: In addition to the famous naked run held every year, nudity is a common sight at every Roskilde festival, as conformity flies out the window. Dr Hook famously performed nude in 1976, at a festival whose future hang in the balance at the time, on account of some conservative loons who proposed putting an end to Roskilde.

  5. 32’000 volunteers, which is approximately equivalent to the population of Hillerød, rally to make the festival what it is every year. With only 50 paid employees, Roskilde is one of the world’s best examples of volunteer-driven initiatives. The majority of volunteers hail from cultural and sporting organisations from Roskilde and Copenhagen.

  6. We are the champions : As Denmark rejects the European union and its football team wins Euro 1992, word of their triumph reaches the festival, broadcasted in these iconic words at one of the main stages. Unsurprisingly, beer drinking records are broken and total pandemonium breaks lose as the nation celebrates.

  7. Safety pits: Inspired by the well-documented deaths during a Pearl Jam performance at Roskilde in 2000, festival security in Europe tightens. Crowd sections are now divided into pits, separated from each other by steel fences, in order to prevent surging and to aid the flow of people in and around stages.

  8. 100mm in 35 hours. The weather in Denmark is always a gamble, more so at a festival such as Roskilde. As the heavens broke, thousands of revelers were soaked to the skin creating scenes that resembled the trenches of world war one. Some went home defeated but many soldiered on in the muck.

  9. €25.4 million has been donated to charity organisations such as Doctors without Borders, Amnesty International, Support the Victims in Iraq, Save the Children and The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and many others. Who would have thought that dancing the night away for days on end could create global economic value of such proportions ?

  10. Dream city is the name of one of Roskilde’s biggest initiatives aimed at promoting co-creativity and sustainability into the ethos of the festival. This audience-propelled section of one of the camping areas gives people the opportunity to share the uniqueness of their festival abodes with other “dreamers,” in a sky-is-the-limit sort of way.

Tetiur, Vega Feb 2014

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

A fair weather fairytale from the stormy Faroe Islands

Faroese musician Teitur has the unusual ability of being able to connect with his listeners through poetic, captivating storytelling.

His lyrics are the winding tales about a multifaceted collection of people in all walks of life, from the desperate hipster, through to the cell-phone vendor and the merry-go-man at amusement parks. Each character is treated with equal amounts of love and humor in the Teitur universe.

Backed by two cellists and another singer / guitarist, a drummer and a chap who was introduced as “the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, on percussion,” Teitur was at his usual captivating self.

His latest album, Story Music was at the helm of his set on Saturday which also featured a bit of his older material and was almost a carbon copy of his set in Århus ‘Run the carousel’ and ‘Louis Louis’  are but two tracks that were well received.

The former brought a welcome kicking impetus to an otherwise tame concert whilst ‘Louis Louis’ took a cocky stab at the politics of George W Bush when he was president.

The mixed audience reacted with discreet laughter at the political touch, and this was where the politics started and ended on the night.

The rest of the evening featured Teitur’s lengthy banter accompanied by soft-spoken, discreetly placed musical arrangements that echoed with the unique creativity of Faroese musicianship, a lot of which has an almost spellbinding quality to it.

His is a form of musicianship that is replete with warmth and positive energy, elements that have been in short supply locally of late and that, by such virtue, were well received.

An extended three song encore came all too soon for many, most of all Teitur who looked as if he could have played for the entire evening and into dawn. Whilst his show was indeed a credible performance and an enjoyable experience that was shared by a very mixed crowd of old and young, there are some who felt that it was too close a copy of an earlier show in Århus.

This notwithstanding, originality was still an element that was present in plenty insofar as Teitur’s musicianship was concerned. There are well and truly few Scandinavian musicians that can cultivate an identity as well as he does through his anecdotal renditions.

The Range, Ideal Bar Feb 2014

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Ideal Bar, 5 out of 6 stars

I traipsed lazily into the warm environs of Vega’s Ideal bar not really knowing what to expect on Wednesday night. Dark wintry evenings are not the best fodder for even the most ardent music lovers but Ideal bar, the smallest sibling in the Vega family, tends to impress almost every time out.

I got in just in time for opening act Jongpadawan (Pronounced Young Padawan, a reference to star wars), who paved the path for a lo-fi evening with a serving of sautéed bits and pieces that contained a solid electronic foundation, lightly glazed with merry, abstract beat wizardry. For a 21 year old with only a handful of releases to his credit, Jongpadawan proved to be a class act, worthy of a stage at either August’s Strøm or Distortion later in the year , so keep an eye open for him.

Moving back to the main act; The Range, aka James Hinton, waltzed casually onto the stage and got straight down to business with his set, playing a tightly woven sequence of tracks that mixed seamlessly with each other from the get-go. Hinton’s music draws from influences as far wide as grime, hip-hop, and jungle, side-dishes around a main platter of electronic nature. The result is a complex sound, that sounds remotely similar to the surreal composition of underground British artists like Burial fused with infusions of Andreas Trentemøller’s driven experimental forays.

Several songs off debut album Nonfiction were particularly emblematic; ‘the loftmane’ for it’s wicked sampled vocal, ‘Seneca’ for it’s euphoric buildup and the fact that it sounds very much like the work of revered electronic artist Gold Panda and ‘Postie’ for its symphonic piano chords that sound like they’re straight out of a 1930’s Bechstein grand piano in a cavernous hall. Hinton sang along to many of his tracks adding layer upon layer of beats, effects and the occasional turntable scratch for good measure, luring the small crowd onto a bewildering journey through the sound that has earned him a call-up to Barcelona’s legendary Primavera Sound later this year. Equally impressive were the two old school hip-hop tracks that he played towards the end of the show, a humble tribute to one of the underlying influences of his music. Where Britains Disclosure have gained fame through accessible, pop-influenced tunes laden with wonderful electronic influences, The Range has developed a slightly similar style, rooted in hip-hop and woven in contemplative beat work that should see this kid kick it with some of the very best, if his present trajectory continues on the blazing trail it has lit over the last year or so. 

Point Blank, Ideal Bar January 2014

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Original article in this week’s Copenhagen Post

 

5 out of 6 stars

After bearing witness to a mere five minutes worth of performance time by hip hop orchestra Point Blank, the first burning question in the back of my mind was why on earth lively boys from Århus were stuck in the miniature confines of Ideal Bar and not filling the floor at Store Vega. As the concert went on, it became evident that these chaps are surely destined for bigger and brighter prospects in the future, which is saying a lot, considering that they’ve already notched warm-up gigs for the likes of Ice Cube, and France’s Hocus Pocus.

Point Blank waltzed onto the small stage at Ideal Bar sporting smiles and heavily armed with an array of brass instruments with which to lay their mark on the cold evening. Their merry sound is one that is comparable to some of the epic hip hop tracks of the eighties, with a witty modernist touch that features rapid lyrics from their frontman that are not too unlike those employed by rapid rappers such as the U.S.A’s Ludacris. And whilst one may draw all manner of parallels with seminal bands like The Roots or point to their sound being a very Brooklyn- like affair, Point Blank are quick to distance themselves from most forms of classification, with good cause too, for theirs is a sound that is as unique as it is innovative.

Screen shot 2014-02-01 at 2.17.29 AM

theslightlydarkerside.blogspot.com

 

Ideal bar have made considerable improvements to their sound and ambiance, through better insulation and a revamped wall section that contains the sound a bit better. It showed on the night, with the brassy sounds of Point Blank ricocheting stylishly off the wood-finish walls. Ahead of their debut album, set to drop in Autumn, Point Blank’s repertoire is not the most extensive but the few tracks they do have were played with passion, aplomb and Jutlandish humility, three tenets that underscore what they are all about musically. With sub-zero winds and gnarling temperatures lashing at people’s humour, the audience can be forgiven for taking their time to well and truly open up to the night’s entertainment, though it was never a venue that was going to yield wild scenes of merrymaking and chaos. Rather, things were chilled and laidback; a mellow, systematic buildup to a finale that saw Point Blank churn out some of the more lyrically driven tunes in their arsenal as their lead singer charmed his way into the crowd with a series of rapid-fire vocals. Expect bigger and better things from this band, probably the best in Danish hip hop at the moment and for some time to come.

Polica, Lille Vega, January 2014

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Polica better than the last time around

original article in this week’s version of The Copenhagen Post

A solid improvement over their last Lille Vega show and a sign of better things to come (PR Photo)

 

Polica

January 24 at Lille Vega

Synth pop dreamers Polica had a solid if underwhelming debut on Danish soil last summer when they performed at a steamy Lille Vega. Wind the clock forward and plummet down the temperature gauge a good 30 degrees and the Minneapolis quintet are back in town, this time around having grown musically over the past half a year or so.

A welcome blast of brooding bass served by Marijuana Death Squads, the industrially inclined, R&B-influenced warm-up act, breathed life into a frozen audience that quickly warmed to the evening’s entertainment. Whilst solid in their performance, the Death Squads were perhaps too hefty a cocktail to start the night off with, as their high pitch frequencies tore into the thin evening air with a menacing vengeance.

Polica pranced elegantly onto the scene and tamed the chaos, driving home coaxing, organic-sounding synth pop that highlighted the best of lead singer Channy Leanagh’s vocal talents against a backdrop of heavier sounds. From time to time she did sound slightly at sea in the waves of instrumentation, but it was certainly an improvement on Polica’s last appearance at the same venue.

Leanagh’s charm is by and large her greatest asset as a performer and this was ultimately what allowed her to gain the respect and attention of the begrudging audience who fronted their usually icy first impression upon Polica’s stage emergence.

Songs off 2012 album Give You The Ghost were the order of the day, performed with flair, fluency and a remarkably quick wit. The highlight of this was signature track ‘Dark Star’, a number that encapsulates all that is good about Polica: Leanagh’s soft vocals over a firm foundation of synth pop brilliance that sparkles with flares of distant melancholia and elation in equal measure.

The audience warmed to Polica as the show neared its conclusion, charmed no doubt by the quick wit of Leanagh, who reinforced her performance with short bursts of creative banter in between songs. After a short, swift encore Polica exited the stage as they had come, humbly pleased with a good performance on the night. Though just shy of a five star rating, it is pleasing to note how much the band have grown in just six months and fair to expect even better from them in the future.

The year in review: Best acts of 2013, International

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment
  1. London Grammar, If you Wait

The vocals of Hannah Reid are possibly the best of any British artist out there. Cast on a backdrop of minimalist, sparsely spread pop that triggers vague memories of bands like the X.X, make no mistake, London Grammar are the next big band . ‘Wasting my young years’ is the cream of the crop, easily the best song i’ve heard this year

  1. Disclosure , Settle

Myspace starlights, Disclosure are two brothers from Surrey who’ve gone all the way to the top and beyond with their debut album. Theirs is a pop-esque, synth-rich universe that evokes dense euphoric landscapes that’ll be the soundtrack of some of the best times of your life if you let them. Epic showings at Roskilde and Vega this year are a testament to this.

  1. Cut Copy, Free your mind

Australian band Cut Copy are the cool kids of disco these days, fusing a wonderfully vintage disco inclination with nomadic vocals and a lingering synth-kick that runs riot in ones mind. Their previous albums were equally overwhelming, albeit less libertine than ‘Free your mind,’ whose title speaks for itself.

  1. Agnes Obel, Aventine

Denmark is the land of Kim Larsen, Aqua and Agnes Obel. Of the aforementioned, Obel is by far the most skilled singer and the most emblematic of the three. Dark, minimalist and meandering, ‘Aventine’ features the characteristic compelling piano arrangements alongside petal soft vocals that have come to define Obel’s sound.

  1. Janelle Monae, The electric lady

Janelle Monae is sheer class and her second album is everything her last one was not. Spontaneous, elegant and diverse, Monae’s sound follows a typical r & b vocal trajectory spread over a varied, gentle backdrop of beats that give her the space to sing loud and clear. Collaborations with Prince and Erykah Badu strengthen the mould of a solid album.

BEST OF THE REST

  1. The Lumineers, The Lumineers
  1. Rhye, Woman
  1. Black Milk, No poison, no paradise
  1. Jon Hopkins, Immunity
  1. Daft Punk, Random access memories

The Year in Review: Best Concerts of 2013, Denmark

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

The Year in Review: The top 10 gigs of 2013 in Denmark 

1) Sigur Ros, Roskilde Festival, July 6

I didn’t see Sigur Ros, I experienced Sigur Ros. The Icelander’s music is some of the purest, soul-searching music you will find for miles around; a trance-like journey that rekindles deep-hidden fond memories with an edifying caress that no other band can muster. Sigur Ros were shamanic at their show at Roskilde.

2) Charles Bradley & his extraordinaires, Lille Vega, June 17

The Screaming Eagle of Soul rocked Denmark to its core on his encore at Lille Vega this year. For a man in his sixties who only just rocketed to fame, Bradley’s teary, nervy, sweaty, emotional soul trip is the story of a man who made it in America, after decades of bad luck and strife. James Brown would be proud.

3) Crystal Castles, Store Vega, March 2

Crystal Castles pulled off a seismic show at Store Vega towards the end of the winter, a chaotic, cathartic experience that saw lead singer Alice Glass crowd surf her way to what looked like the middle of the audience at Store Vega. I have never seen anything like it before or since

4) Modeselektor, Store Vega, Feb 14

Berlin’s Modeselektor have been making music since the wall came down a good while ago. As driven today as they were back then, the electronic duo are a symbol of the German capital and frontrunners in the world of electronic music. Props for their party-starting credentials and props to Vega for a very well organised show (which included an ‘artist chat’ session in ideal bar).

  1. Chinese Man, Roskilde Festival, July 4

French turntablists Chinese man were on cue at their show at Roskilde Festival, taking the audience on a journey through dubstep, drum & bass, hip hop and everything in between with a prowess that made it seem as if the genre of turntablism has been around since the dawn of time. Witty, daring and exceedingly cool.

BEST OF THE REST

  1. Shantel & The Bucovina Orchestra, Lille Vega, Nov 28

  2. Reptile Youth, Lille Vega, March 8,

  3. Of Monsters and Men, Roskilde Festival, July 5

  4. Tame Impala, Store Vega, Aug 9

  5. Animal Collective, Roskilde Festival, July 4

Cut Copy, Lille Vega Nov 2013

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

Aussies bring back the glory days of acid house

Cut Copy
December 13 at Lille Vega

Free Your Mind. The album title of Australian indie electronic band Cut Copy is as self-explanatory as they come – a casual maxim that holds true through all aspects of their addictive synth-filled, strobe-stroked beat landscape. One of four fantastic, varied albums by the Aussies, Free Your Mind is the coming of age of a band that’s up there amongst the very best in electronic music at the moment, a point that their sold-out show at Lille Vega on Friday did its best to hammer home.

Cut Copy stepped on stage before a crowd more curious than anything else and set the ball rolling with new material off the aforementioned album. The album’s recent release date means it’s not that well known so it took some time for people to warm to the proceedings. Several songs in and material off other Cut Copy albums soon followed suit, creating a sense of familiarity that the crowd responded to with warm enthusiasm.

Not so pleasing however was the crisp, almost plastic quality of some of the sound at times, as the vocals failed to hit the emotional high points that they so often do on their albums. Poor transitions between songs also did their bit to dent the evening’s promise though ultimately there wasn’t much that could dampen the rush of blood to the head from the high points of the show, which came and went with the ferocity of waves on a sandy seashore.

Things peaked midway through and once again towards the end, as the Madchester sound of the late eighties that demarcates Cut Copy’s sound, as some of the most ardent purveyors of the bygone days of Acid house music hit home. Epic strobe-light sessions and crowd surfing at the front of the action accompanied the thundering reverberations on stage, rekindling memories of the days when bands like New Order and Happy Mondays run riot on the airwaves, demarcating what music critics of the day charted as the second summer of love (after Woodstock decades before).

After minds were freed and feet were swayed, Cut Copy exited the smokey stage to raucous applause from an audience who’d been taken back in music history in a show that underlined the credentials of one of the most creative bands around.

The Lumineers, Store Vega Dec 2013

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

The Lumineers

December 9 at Store Vega

Colorado folk rockers the Lumineers gave a clinical performance at a sold-out Store Vega last night. Theirs is a gentle, windswept blend of rock that borrows from traditions of Americana and soft rock styles; a compact rendition that’s easy to sway to and easier still to sing along to.

Gracing the dark stage armed primarily with a mere album’s worth of recorded material off their 2013 eponymous masterpiece, the trio were all smiles as they exited the parapet and shared their music with the crowd.  Popular, catchy tracks off this work such as ‘Dead Sea’ and the merry ‘Flowers in Your Hair’. A warm, enduring cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ followed suit, hitting home with the partisan crowd, and showcasing their skills at playing and interpreting other musicians’ music.

This breezy start was short-lived however, as the momentum from the first string of popular songs reeled, though not for too long. Minimalist acoustic versions of lesser-known songs lifted things, as the cheery, swaying mood was subbed for a more quiet, composed intimacy that saw xylophones played and guitars strummed with a soft disposition, working wonders on the crowd, who were still and approving with the benevolence of kids at an ice cream parlor.

This quiet, simple approach to music is indeed one of the defining features of the trio’s music, which at its silent moments acquires a cinematic, ethereal quality that carries it gently through the air. Things did get louder towards the end though as the Lumineers upped the tempo, capping things off with the unforgettable ‘Big Parade,’ the tune that just about sums up all that is good about this band. The crowd made their presence felt on this particular number, yelling along the chorus and rallying for a raucous call for an encore, which duly followed.

The Lumineers re-appeared without too much hassle and closed the night on the same cheery note, signing off having captivated the audience in the most entertaining of fashions. They are surely a band to keep an eye on and their local popularity has been anything but harmed following last night’s neatly composed and well organised concert which did its bit to banish the grim stillness of the cold December night, if only momentarily, to a faraway corner of one’s mind.

Tricky, Lille Vega, Nov 2013

/ Alan Kortbaek / Leave a comment

November 29 at Lille Vega

Trip-hop is a genre of electronic music spawned in the aftershocks of the UK’s acid house culture of the early 1990s, with significant rooting in the city of Bristol. Fusing influences of hip-hop and electronica with doses of rock for good measure, trip-hop is eclectic, trippy, and experimental in its purest form.

Indeed it was these three tenets that punctuated Tricky’s concert at a haze-filled Lille Vega on Friday night, as the godfather of the genre himself gave a show that didn’t well and truly get airborne but nonetheless offered a distinct musical experience.

Tricky (née Adrian Thaws) was one of the driving forces behind the legendary act Massive Attack, whose music continues to demarcate the most poignant moments of movie soundtracks today, almost two decades after they rose to fame. His forays with Massive Attack led him to branch out as a solo musician, enjoying chart success with albums such as 1995’s Maxinquaye, whose heights he never quite managed to recapture over a consistent tradition of album releases through the years thereafter.

Playing to a crowd predominantly in their 30s, Tricky walked onto the Vega stage sporting his familiar bare-chested look flanked by his backing band in low-lit, smoky confines, emphasizing the shamanic quality that characterizes his live shows.

An eerie, almost intoxicating start found a rather quiet Tricky confining himself to one side of the stage, even turning his back to the audience on many occasions. Tricky elicited a strong response from the audience with ‘Black Steel’, a riveting revolutionary tune off Maxinquaye that seemed to denote a welcome change of pace midway through. This was however short-lived as technical glitches shot down the track in mid air, prompting a switch to another song.

Tricky seemed unfazed by this and oblivious to the world around him in his corner of the stage, surrounded by a maze of swirling smoke and clearly on a superlative high of his own. The audience then joined the experimentation as a good 20 or so frontrunners got the opportunity to clamber on stage for a couple of songs. Come the end, a noncommittal applause for a curtain call was the audience’s way of responding to a dull and unconvincing performance.

Tricky re-appeared and like Shantel before him on Wednesday at the same venue, performed a few good songs to round off the concert, an eclectic, trippy and experimental performance that called for an acquired taste. There’s no doubting Tricky’s contribution to British music nor his talents as a pioneer in electronic music, but Friday’s show left much to be desired and lacked the spark and creativity of his earlier career.