Iceland Airwaves Flashback - 60s Style

Braveing the soggy weather Thursday night, I had yet another Sixties flashback.

Last week, I was in Iceland. This week Iceland came to me at the Walker Art Center’s McGuire Auditorium in the form of the musical collective known as Múm. It was a very strange affair, even by Icelandic standards: imagine the gentlest, trippy-est flower-power band in the summer of love. The experience that constitutes a Múm concert doesn’t really have songs but, rather, vague refrains, not exactly coherent musical parts, just groups of sounds. And lots and lots of la-la-las. I was in la-la land! At one point Örvar, the lead singer, mentioned that "… we’re really playing a quiet concert tonight… it's OK to go to sleep… " If not for the excellent percussion work by Samuli Kosminen, I might have done just that.



I’d seen the opening act, Hildur Gunðadóttir play at the Airwaves in 2006 with Storsveit Nix Noltes and also with Johann Johannsson's project Evil Madness. Those were better shows. The second act, Sin Fang Bous, was fronted by 'Sindri', whose singing attained, at times, a Garðar Holm quality.


Here is a video from the show I attended: