Iceland Airwaves Sunday is started in true Sunday Club style with a small gathering at Reykavik social hub Hressingarskalinn as a bleary eyed but bushy tailed select few gather to recount tales of Saturday hi-jinks and plan the Sunday night final assault over milkshakes and toasted sandwiches as the rain started to teem down outside.
As soon as the clouds fractured open, Clash decided to curtail the live musical hunt momentarily, opting for an on-screen option first. The highly recommended local documentary ‘Backyard’, a film by Arni Sveinsson showcasing a home-made festival shot beautifully in his sun soaked corrugated town centre back garden was our choice. This charming local award winning documentary can’t couldn’t be more highly recommended as an atmospheric showpiece for the talent, the friendship and the quirky approach to creativity that this city and country beholds.
Local heroes, FM Belfast, Reykavik!, Mum, Borko, Sin Fang and Hjaltalin all rock up to play to an assembled group of barely dozens, with each showcased track perfectly delivered musically and shot with a poignant sheen that its production team can be proud of. Knowing Iceland it will have been filmed, produced, presented and edited by one person, and he’ll also no doubt play in 3 of the bands in the rest of his spare time!
A trip to the famed harbour-side fisherman hangout, the Sea Baron, for some lobster soup set us up or a final step into the musical moshpits that are tonight now down to only 2 venues, with most of the bands playing being those represented on today’s film.
Over at Venue, Reykavik! were celebrating the showcase of their new video with a free bar for those gathered with livewire lead singer Boas tightrope walking the stage barrier before throwing himself into the crowd to get wrapped up in a mass of bodies and microphone cable whilst thundering out local classics ‘Recepticon’ and ‘Kate Bush’ at throat wrecking volume. The bearded Borko is up next, treating us to an altogether more melodic moment or two with Continental Love their most epic rose tinted folk offering, and Hjaltalin once again leave everyone on a string laden high as they book-end Clash’s weekend with an uplifting finale of pop covers and folk skewed melancholica.
And so onto NASA to top off the festival with noise-core nutter Dan Deacon winding up the surprisingly boisterous Sunday night audience from his unconventional mid dancefloor set-up. His blitzkreig of bleep-pop perfectly lays the ball up for Iceland’s musical MVP’s FM Belfast, who smash it out of the ballpark, instantly whipping up an absolute frenzy among their hometown crowd of euphoric friends and family. FM Belfast deliver a maelstrom of bassline driven, euphorically sung, insanely infectious electro-pop hooks, which their crowd whoop and hum along to as they bounce, whistle and mosh to THE most addictive electronic pop music of the weekend.
We tumble out into the bleak but crisp night to more rumours of Bjork – apparently she’s playing the completely dark and empty town hall in 5 minutes. Obviously we swerve the expectant mull-around and head straight for one more assault on Kaffebarrin where the earlier Sunday Club of characters and chancers is once again amassed, beaming about a weekend that has flown past in a blur of post apocalyptic wastelands, natural hot pools, jaw dropping coast-lines, and of course one hell of a multi venue city music festival held within one of the most interesting places and welcoming communities in the world. Genuinely unforgettable.
Read more of Clash’s Iceland Airwaves 2010 coverage HERE.
