G! Mini festival,
Faroe Islands
19 July 2008.
At this time of year it doesn’t really get dark in the
Faroe Islands. Because we’re so near the
Arctic Circle, the paltry darkness we’re afforded tends to resemble a weird kind of twilight. So, when you’re rolling in at four in the morning, and actual darkness – like, darkness that you can’t see and that – is nowhere to be not seen, your biology ends up screaming what-the-fuck? at you and edging you back towards the bar. Again.
By the way, the entire preceding sentence is possibly the feeblest excuse for a hangover you’re ever likely to read. Treasure it.
But it’s true the light doesn’t really fuck off round here, so our supposed “early night” of the previous blog actually ended up being a five-in-the-morning job. Hungover? Schmungover.
And thus bollocksed,
The Fly is Shaking Stephens-ing his way down what is apparently Runavik’s town centre (we’re in no state to have our brain scrambled by ‘local information’ this morn… er, afternoon). As we do so, we unwittingly stumble across the G! Mini’s peripheral mini-mini-event. Boys In A Band (yes, quite possibly the naffest name for a band ever conceived) are congregated 50 yards from our hotel and making like Fast Show Patagonians with their tiny guitars and ukuleles on a street corner, while a film crew captures it. They look about as fucked as we do, though they’re committing whatever shakes they might have into their silly instruments with a fierceness that threatens to smash this fragile Fly into itty-bitty pieces. We later discover that Boys In A Band are looking shagged out for very good reason – they’re doing 24 gigs in 24 hours. They’ve even got a few helicopters laid on courtesy of Atlantic Airways boss Magni Arge to cart them about these islands. To our lasting regret, we end up missing the final leg, which is a full-on plugged-in set up at the festival, because a) no fucker told us, and b) we’re in a pub topping our hangovers up with the new additions to our entourage – Hitesh and Craig from 4-4-2 magazine, whose own story of how they came to be here is almost the stuff of fiction.
Way too bizarre and detailed to go into at length here, these chaps have apparently been following a bunch of fanatical
Man
City fans out here for the Blue Mooners’ match with the Faroes. This story has already made the national press as Hitesh starts relating the story, wherein the dozen supporters arrived in Aberdeen to take a trawler out to the islands, only to be told by Captain Ahab that Moby Dick is shagging his missus and if they attempt to sail in these waters, there’ll be more than a whale’s semen gunking about. Later, this group of die-hard drink-harder goons were dubbed ‘The Trawler Twelve’ and ended up having to be rescued by our Atlantic Airways guru Mangi to bring them to the islands. Reporter Hitesh has so much material he’s currently racking his brain about how he’s gonna get this story into the allotted 3,000 words for the mag. Over a few drinks alone, he’s told us enough for a novel or two (‘Harry Potter and the Trwaler Twats’?). Photographer Craig, meanwhile, has got about 300 snaps of 12 pissed-up Blues monkeys to make some kind of coherence from. Cheers chaps.
The Fly at this point thanks fuck he’s a Fly, music and gigs being a bit more pr…
FUCKIN FUCK! Aren’t we supposed to be reviewing a festival here? What time is it? A glance at the perpetually blue sky offers fuck all in the way of clues. Whatever time it is, we’ve got to fucking haul ass. Well, after we’ve finished our really expensive pint. Which the PR has paid for. Only polite innit. Go on, Hitesh, you were saying about barely-suppressed homosexuality…
Saturday’s G! really is more of the festival experience we were expecting. It could be something to do with the fact there are no bomb-shelter detours, though it’s probably more to do with the brilliance of the bands, the general effusive atmosphere… or the fact we’ve got the shits.
Squelching our merry way back to the five-a-side pitch – cos it’s still a bit damp underfoot, right; it’s not
The Fly’s arse – we ensconce ourselves among a much larger turn-out tonight, milling about in front of what we’ve endearingly dubbed the Pyramid Shed. Up on stage, Budam are about to provide us with our first (and not last) encounter with greatness and a true ‘festival moment’. Fronted by what looks exactly like Billy Corgan and a D’Arcy-alike waif sharing vocals, Budam bash out a quite unbelievable noise – a fusion a Faroese-y blues and sky-scraping rock bluster that has the effect of Smashing Pumpkins holding a séance. Indeed, we’re soon informed by a local reviewer (who also happens to be the singer of last night’s highlight Bet You Are William) that frontman Bíu Dam is the offspring of two renowned Faroese actors. And it shows. Prowling about the stage, this big black longcoat with a bald head sticking out of it looks like Uncle Fester doing a shop demonstration for energy-efficient lightbulbs. And you just can’t help being completely engaged by the entire spectacle. Indeed, by the second song, Uncle Corgan has lured a load of his mates from other bands onstage in a foot-stomp hand-clap Faroe frenzy, all orchestrated by the human lightbulb, and the whole place, besieged as it is by frostbite, is illuminated and warmed by an addictive luminescence. Lyrically, however, there are some very dark nooks and crannies lurking about here,
The Fly double-taking at such poetic utterances like: “Bow down and put your hands down on the ground / And I’ll come up behind you with my microphone in my hand.” Eh? Next to us, Hitesh nudges us: “Where’s this going?” And we piss ourselves. Wherever the fuck it’s leading, we don’t turn our back from this crazed genius on stage for a second, and not just because of botty-anxiety – this really is the most compelling rock theatre, and one that also manages to evade the bombastic pretence that normally comes pre-packaged with such dramatics. They even have a track called ‘Snake Charmer’ (or as far as we can make out that’s what it’s called) that is a dead-ringer for that mad LSD ‘Flower’ performance from The Producers. Now, THAT”S OUR HITLER! You just have to obey Budam – they’re fucking spellbinding.
Next up are Orca, but theirs is a set-up that apparently takes longer than your average band (we’ll enlighten you later). So in the interim, we’re all sheep-chaperoned down to the beach for a bit of ‘Sanglota a Sandinum (Vikingur Skipar Fyri)’, which we think is Faroese for (Viking stylee) singalong. On the way down, the sounds of pissed-up Irish shanty ‘The Wild Rover’ being given some large-scale bluster has us double-taking once again, and our compass is all in a tizz. Shit, we haven’t walked that far, have we? Bit of a surreal moment that – but not as surreal as when we bump into aforementioned Atlantic Airways president Magni, who’s singing his arse off on the seafront along with every other fucker. This is the guy who effectively flew us out here and, of course, the saviour of the now-infamous Trawler 12.
The Fly doesn’t get to meet many millionaire airline magnate types (yeah, Branson, where the fuck were YOU at our last Fly Xmas bash?), but we’re pretty sure this is the most approachable, benevolent and downright decent of the lot. When
The Fly informs him of what Hitesh told us earlier – that Man City fans have written a song about him that they’re gonna chant from the terraces (to the tune of the Waterboys and featuring the lyrics: “You saved the whole of Blue Moon”) – Magni beams like a kid who’s just discovered what his knob is for. Um, even though, we soon discover, he’s actually a Man Utd fan. What, questions
The Fly, does he think is gonna happen if the Blues faithful ever get wind of that? “Hmm,” Magni considers with a grin. “I’d say I’m actually a
Manchester fan.” Good attitude, son.
Listen out for the cacophonous strains of the Waterboys from the terraces of the City of
Manchester stadium next season, and you’ll know all about where that came from.
The Fly, eh? What a bunch of roving reporters we are.
And while Magni is up on stage making a speech to the people of the
Faroe Islands (a very warm and softly-spoken man he is indeed, but his oration sounds more like the Nuremburg rally), we head back to the main stage for some Orca action.
And here, the reason for the festival’s intermission becomes evident. See, every instrument adorning the stage has apparently been crafted from junk. Apart from a couple of symbols (a symbolic gesture? Ahem) everything here is a baffling array of bins, bottles and bog rolls (with strings attached) – a Blue Peter piled together bunch of crap, it seems. And so, when the sound they produce from this homemade horrorshow jumble sale resembles angels enjoying the best wank of their afterlives,
The Fly is twatted across the chops with dumbstruck awe. The frontman here is Jon Tyril, the man who organised this festival, and as if we didn’t have enough to thank him for, he and his band very soon have us bursting with unadulterated love. I mean, any singer who looks like Michael Stipe at a festival – minus the simultaneous air-flower-arranging/hands-free-cock-adjustment pantomime – is alright in our eyes. In fact, it’s not long before our eyes are, erm, gobsmacked as our Faroese Stipe-a-like grabs hold of a saw and wrestles from it the sound of Bjork being vivisectioned with a violin bow. Behind him, his mates bash on variously-filled bottles, trounce upturned oil barrels and sweep the stage with a mic-attached broom (they’re literally cleaning up, here). Yo!
Basically, Orca have got the entire island in their grasp, and they make it look so easy. And why not? Charismatic, absurdly talented and possibly the most original band we’ve ever witnessed – what’s not to like? The Faroese around us are beaming with the same sense of occasion we’re feeling, but with an added sense of pride we so want. See, we know what we’re witnessing here (even though we actually can’t logically process it), but the Faroese are all-too-aware of what they’ve got on their hands. Orca are all that the festival circuit and the whole gaddamn WORLD really needs – a band that can make something from nothing and make it somehow sound and feel like everything all at once. We’re well aware of this fact, for sure – and we’re equally aware that it’s gonna take a hell of a lot for the Faroese people to let Orca out of their adoring sight.
Having said that, by the conclusion of G! Mini,
The Fly is just about ready to be adopted by these beautiful and timeless islands himself and their wonderfully vague people. From our initial impressions of doom-laden
Dresden destruction, via mis-constructed ‘festival’ expectations envisioned by
The Fly over-pampered arse, G! festival 2008 – a fund-raiser, don’t forget – has essentially mirrored everything headliners (and organisers) Orca have done – making everything from pretty much nothing. And if they did manage to get enough dough from this mini-event to launch the G! fest proper next year,
The Fly struggles to envisage what outside influence or artist could embellish the sheer warmth (in bollock-clenching temperatures, remember) and unpretentious atmosphere we were afforded here.
And as we file away from G! Mini at, well, fuck knows what time, the ever-present light holds the stunning Faroese landscape in a timeless embrace, while inside
The Fly’s buzzing head, the sounds and sights of this weird and wonderful festival reverberate with similarly perpetual luminescence.
Oh G! There is indeed a light that never goes out.
Stephen Brolan
Many thanks and big love to: Sunnuva, Neil, Adam, Paul, Hitesh, Craig and anyone else we were fortunate enough to encounter.
