Iceland Airwaves

Iceland Airwaves
Reykjavík, Iceland
13, 14, 15, 16 & 17/10/2010

Reykjavík is Iceland’s capital city and a town authored by baby boomers. Fact is, that up until the 1950s, it was really just a small fishing village where only a few decades before some people were still living in mud huts. Today, it’s a metropolitan city and home to sixty-per-cent of Iceland’s population, where, alongside the benefits of independence from Denmark and economic growth, the Boomers were also the first Icelandic generation to enjoy pop music, which has subsequently become just as big a symbol of modernity to Icelanders as bank accounts and their favourite fast-food, the hot dog. It goes without saying, then, that Iceland Airwaves festival is a bit of a big deal.

In fact, it’s absolutely huge. Literally, the whole town goes off; most of the main venues are commandeered by the organisers, and those that aren’t either put on free shows or make some sort of effort. Generally speaking, Airwaves is a kind of showcase festival made up of half national acts, half international ones. Stitch was, that the up-and-coming international scene that’d been booked this year was so strong, that breaking away from it to check the local talent was tough. Early Friday evening at the bookshop on the high street was a good example of that, where Denmark’s PC-friendly techno-soul trio, Reptile & Retard, re-imagined their digital chaos with acoustic guitars and wooden floors…

Following that in a venue called, uh, Venue, the line up of foreigners continued to dominate. Shoreditch group Teeth!!! committed aural terror with house beats, punk-as-fuck attitude, and their tiny lead-singer Veronica running around the crowd, while Carolina’s chillwave icon Toro Y Moi pursued with a distended live band version of his second album ‘Causers Of This’, and Silver Columns glitched aggressively. Current Brit sensation James Blake topped the lot though, shying away from revealing too much of his forthcoming album with a DJ set revolving around bassy 2-step beats and degraded American r’n’b vocal samples.
Everyone else might as well have packed up and left after Factory Floor’s early performance the next day in the huge halls of Nasa, however. There is literally not one other band that can touch them at the moment. Musically they’re nothing but three thieves, constantly in the act of stealing the early synth hypothesising of New Order, the harsh industrial misanthropy of Throbbing Gristle and the sheer weight of repetition from German minimal techno act, Basic Channel. But they are also artists, and their theft is a kind of re-appropriation – a renaming ceremony where everything that’s gone on before them is transformed into the new… and it’s fucking terrifying. Tonight, block walls of percussion beat holes into sonic rhythm while voices drift across the panorama, feeding back into one another until a security guard approaches, throwing a wet towel before they eat into the next band’s set… This is music for another era. Their untitled EP was issued earlier this year with the disclaimer “(Audio Version)”; a title that knowingly suggested, tongue in cheek, that whatever statement they were making could just as well be announced in bricks, paint strokes or black lines from a pen; they’re that important.

Sure, there were some other bands, too. Notable mentions include on-off Swedish stoner dance couple jj; private shows with Icelandic post-rock teenagers For A Minor Reflection and the drummer from the Sugar Cubes; post-dubstep pioneers Mount Kimbie continuing to not be obsessed with how deep they can make bass amps break wind, and Reykajvík’s very own electro pop outfit FM Belfast slaying the closing show. But just in case I haven’t laboured the point enough, there really was only one band this year, and their name was Factory Floor, who are seemingly pissing over anything anyone else can dream up from somewhere way outside your comprehension.