Çarşamba 29 Ara 2010, 10:44

Summary:
Arcade Fire
James Blackshaw
Baby Dee
Smolik
Get Well Soon
Sivert Høyem
Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson
Yoko Ono

This year 2010 was full of various events, trips, music releases. There was a lot to follow and a lot to enjoy. As I live in a quite remote place of the world in order to get to the concerts of my beloved artists, I need to plan a trip well in advance: allocate time to navigate in various booking sites, by tickets in very interesting ways and of course carefully check and double check accommodation possibilities.

OK, let's start with Baby Dee. I know her as artist for some years now and I love her music and intersesting personality. She is incredibly gentle and robust at the same time. Her music is intimate and beautiful. This year 2010 she re-released A Book of Songs for Anne Marie and had series of concerts in Europe. I selected the concert in Vienna, prepared a trip, needed to change flights due to bad weather conditions, arrived in Vienna, took a taxi to the concert place just to hear that the concert was cancelled :( due to Baby Dee's illness. Honestly, I was more sad about Baby Dee than about my own pointless trip. No big problem! I attended later another Baby Dee's concert in Copenhagen and enjoyed it a lot, bought the CD and it is still one of my favourites in 2010.

Now I would like to tell about the Whale Watching Tour which I visited in Reykjavik. It is a project of Sam AmidonBen FrostNico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurðsson performed in different places of the world. It is music combined of classical, electronic and folk mainly, instrumental and singing, philosophy and entertainment. My first choice was to go and see them in London. This plan was destroyed by Eyjafjallajökull which did not stop its eruption and the flights of the artists as well as my own one to London were cancelled. OK, I made my second plan to go and see them in Reykjavik one month later but even closer to the volcano. It was also closer to actual origin of the Whale Watcing Tour: Valgeir Sigurðsson is Iclander and Ben Frost is currently living and working there. And I did it despite of all kind of unexpected delays and changes of my flight timetables still caused by the volcano ash. In this regard, I would like to specially thank Skonrokk for his support and help. I am sorry that I did not make to the concert of Menn Ársins and did see the photo exhibition of Sigurdór Guðmundsson just through a window glass as it was closed on Mondays. OK, and the huge poster on a building about Siggidori's exhibition was very impressive/atteractive as well. The funny thing is that the photographer about whom I was just telling was actually Sigurður Guðmundsson. I learned it a moment ago! Don´t beat a foreigner :)

I like Yoko Ono. I know that many don't but I do. I like the Beatles and John Lennon too. Yoko is definitely committed. If not to music then to life. And she keeps her promises. Like building the Tower of Peace in Iceland she always celebrates her love to John with performances. In 2010 the performance was called "We Are Plastic Ono Band" and I went to see it in Los Angeles. Although the musical effect of the event was not the highest it was kind of respectable "family gathering" of Yoko, Sean Lennon, Julian Lennon and … John Lennon. And I liked Little Tokyo and Art District of LA.

This year 2010 I finally saw Smolik. We went by car from Tallinn to Warsaw to the concert at Teatr 6 piętro. It was so difficult to find the theatre from a huge Soviet time building with hundreds of different entrances. When we finally found it we all liked the concert. A relatively big band orchestrated by Andrzej Smolik with various singers involved. The music was chilly :) We all discovered and liked the old Warsaw too! Later in the year my friend RobertSpasiuk informed me through last.fm that Smolik released a new album 3. With some tricks I downloaded it and it is really good, believe me :)

I saw Get Well Soon twice this year 2010. It is an interesting German band, one of the few from Germany I think. They are a bit nostalgic with their melodies and stories, and also "hymny". It is important to mention that they probably follow :) ECVP - the European Conference of Visual Perception. I am not a scientist but I usually accompany my scientific husband in the above conferences. Last year 2009 the conference was held in Regensburg and Get Well Soon performed on the ship Ludwig der Kehlheimer a day before the conference. In 2010 their concert in the frame of For Noise Festival took place one day before ECVP 2010 in Lausanne. The band released the new album Vexations in 2010. It is a good one! In addition, I would say that their concerts fit more in smaller venues. Like a concert at the club Mascotte in Zurich that I visited earlier in 2010 was much better received than an open-air concert in Pully, Lausanne.

This year 2010 I fell in love with Madrugada. It is because of my last.fm friend uriah-hp who decided to extend my knowledge and taste of music with some bands. I fell in love slowly and hopelessly. I of course learned that the band does not exist since 2008 but one of the band members: the singer Sivert Høyem still performs. I went to his concert in Hamburg in an old bunker. The concet rocked, it was electric! I bought Sivert's new CD Moon Landing. A lot of good music but not above Madrugada.

Now I need to talk about James Blackshaw. His music is a special phenomenon. It is instrumental and started from 12-string guitar opuscules. I am not sure that it is just music … because it touches and enamours. That's true that I haven't listened to the kind of music before when I first listened to Blackshaw in 2009. For example, in the first concert in Vic I fell asleep each time when he started a new song. Since then, I am a real follower of his acts: new music and live performances. I attended three concerts this year 2010: in Leuven and two times in London. I liked the concert at STUK in Leuven where he played with an Ensemble. I wish to attend more similar type of concert in smaller venues. Blackshaw's new release All Is Falling is a bit surprising: maybe too intelligent and far from the previous ones. For so young artist it is indeed very positive to develop and not to start repeating the same over and over in coming decades. I have heard that he is proposing the next album to be a pop-release. Well, why not?

Arcade Fire has got my First Prize this year 2010. It is because of their wonderful album The Suburbs and the concert in Quebec City at Festival d'été de Québec. It is not only me who has deceided to give them the first prize in 2010 :)

Wait, 2011 is nocking at the door … I need to finish :)