Klive @ Hressó (On-Venue)

Klive's Hressó performance was really great. The guy behind Klive is the same guy who did the Lighthouse Sound Installation that I posted previously. His style as Klive is this nice mixture of electronic sorcery melded with soothing acoustic samples which works particularly well with Klive at the helm. Playing live, Klive had a stellar female vocalist and 4 fantastic brass players who had previously played with Björk.

Klive
On-venue: Hressó
Reykjavik, Iceland
2008, October 15, Wednesday, 20:00

Hressó with stage against the far back wall and the bar directly to the left (out of view):

The Scene:
Hressó has a small concert area which you can't even really see in the above picture but it's basically against the farthest wall which you can see. This is connected to the larger dining area, in the opposite direction of the photo, by a narrow barway (kind of like a hall but with a bar in it-Ok, I just made that up). I was near the end of the barway relatively far back from the stage. So, you'll likely hear people walking around, making weird comments about the binaural manikin, and eating/drinking in close proximity. Take a gander.

(Use Headphones for All Recordings) 
***There is a slight cut out near the beginning of the 1st song-it's not loud and going to make you go deaf, it simply cuts out and then back in. I think I was readjusting a cable after moving the setup.
Klive @ Hressó - Iceland Airwaves 2008 by BinauralAirwaves
Binaural Recording Info:
Microphone Setup: Ultra Hi-Fi Binaural Manikin Head
Master Recording Format: 5.6MHz/1bit Direct Stream Digital

If you're a fan of this, you should check out Klive's CD here.

Aaron

Rökkurró @ Mál og Menning (Off-Venue)

Rökkurró @ Mál og Menning (Off-Venue) - Iceland Airwaves 2008 by BinauralAirwaves

The manikin taking in the scene from across the bookstore before the performance started:

Rökkurró
Off-venue: Mál og Menning (Language and Culture) Bookstore
Reykjavik, Iceland
2008, October 15, 17:00

Binaural Recording Info:
Microphone Setup: Ultra Hi-Fi Binaural Manikin Head
Master Recording Format: 5.6MHz/1bit Direct Stream Digital

This was Rökkurró's first performance of Airwaves and the first official show I heard of the Iceland Airwaves festival. It was an "off-venue" show that was free to anyone, as opposed to the "on-venue" shows which required the Iceland Airwaves Pass.

Off-Venue Shows=Short and Sweet:
The off-venue shows were all around Reykjavik in nice little spaces like record shops, cafes, and bookstores. There were so many concerts happening at the same time in different places that there was naturally a ton of running around to catch all the shows that you wanted to hear. It was impossible to not miss good music since there was so much. It kind of felt like a real world incarnation of hitting "Scan" on your radio and getting all of these little glimpses of different bands in a short amount of time.

I'm used to 1 hour sets minimum in the US with a pretty big chunk of setup time in between bands. However, the off-venue shows were typically only about 25-30 minutes which is really short in my mind. It worked amazingly well though. Many bands had an at least one off-venue show and then an on-venue show. So, sometimes you might have only been able to catch an act off-venue because their on-venue performance overlapped with another group you wanted to see only but had that one on-venue performance. It seemed a daunting task at first but it worked out quite well.

A close up of the band obscured by a cool looking light fixture and tons of other stuff:

The Scene:
Rökkurró had a great turn out and played quite well. This concert was in Mál og Menning, a bookstore who's name translates to "Language and Culture". It's located on the main drag of Reykjavik: Laugervegur. It should be interesting to compare the acoustics/ambiance of this performance to Rökkurró's 12 Tónar off-venue performance (and soon to their Iðno on-venue performance after I post it).

As you can see from the photos, I'm way across the room at the top of the stairs. I wanted to capture the acoustics of the large room by being away from the group and give the sensation of standing in the crowd, like you would have been doing if you had been there.

Some things to listen for:

• The women speaking in Icelandic directly to the left (literally right next to the manikin)
  
• Espresso machine ~8m to the left.
  
• People chating and drinking coffee in the cafe seating area in back and to the left.
• Something I thought was kind of funny happened near the end of Ferðalangurinn where this older woman walked up the stairs and we had this exchange:

She seemed to ask this same question in Icelandic to me and I gave a confused look back and she switched to English...
Woman: How long is this going, do you know that? How long is this going, do you know that?
Aaron: I think about another 20 minutes.
Woman: Ok [snicker], then I'm leaving.

What a hater haha. Though, I guess if you're into browsing books you wouldn't be so keen on tons of people blocking all of the books while they check out a cool concert.

Anyhow, it was indeed a great concert.

Aaron

Photos Are Now Geotagged

I just took advantage of the sleek integration of Picasa and Google Maps to geotag my photos. So, if you're wondering where a photo was taken or you want to take a geographically choreographed tour of my recordings you can. Simply click on the photo you're interested in and you'll be magically transported to the album it is in. Plus there are some additional photos that I didn't post on the blog.

Aaron

PS I would recommend viewing in satellite mode (namely for Iceland)

Finn @ Organ (On-Venue)

Finn was dressed like some type of of medieval troubadour or something. He played a great stripped down set however, consisting of guitar + voice through 3 microphones, for various effects. This song in particular reminds me very much, in chordal progression and vocal melodic/rhythmic/relation to the guitar, of Radiohead's "True Love Waits". I don't think I'm crazy. Judge for yourself.

Finn @ Organ (Iceland Airwaves 2008):
(Use Headphones for All Recordings)
Finn @ Organ - Icelands Airwaves 2008 by BinauralAirwaves
Song/Piece: Unknown (Think Radiohead's "True Love Waits" for the 21st century)
Microphone Setup: In-Ear Microphones
Master Recording Format: 44.1kHz/24bit

Aaron

Correction for The Heir Electric (is really The Airelectric)

This is extremely overdue:

I was very happy to get an email from Karl who is the guy behind what I thought/hoped was "The Heir Electric" and it was great to reconnect. Though, in this email I learned that Karl is in fact "The Airelectric"... a name that came to him in a dream. I can not argue with that. A cool name and even more cool music--it makes me feel kind of bad for proposing "The Heir Electric". At any rate, here are Karl's links so you can check out his great music. Enjoy:

www.theairelectric.com
www.karlpestka.com

Aaron

New Years Resolution... More binaural, less blather.

As simple as that.

Aaron