Ok, here's a retrospective diary for the 2008 Europe Tour I had with Animal Machine, Audun Eriksen and Swamps Up Nostrils from November 23rd till December 1st this year.
First of all, here's the dates:
23.Nov: Sound Of Mu, Oslo, Norway
25.Nov: Danz, Regensburg, Germany
26.Nov: "Club Moozak", Fluc , Vienna, Austria
18.Nov: Niu, Barcelona, Spain
29.Nov: "MEM Festival", L'mono, Bilbao, Basque Country
01.Dec: Logiment, Antwerp, Begium
Bonus-concert was played for some sleepy travelers at the Geneva Airport.
Oslo:
The first concert was in my hometown, Oslo, and here S.U.N. teamed up with Cadmium Dunkel and played the first concert with his duo "The S.U.N.C.D. Project", and the tour was officially started. Sound Of Mu is an small art-café which has a big window facing the street so people can see what's going on inside. It's always enjoyable eighter walking by and see what you're missing inside, or being inside watching the reactions from people walking by on the street. It was also the day I got to see Audun's dolls in action for the first time which is always amusing. Animal Maching played a very nice set considering the surroundings (the venue not being the best place to blast off with volume), but with a little-bit of Aatmaa in it it worked very well. Groovy and intense enough, just the way we like it. My own set(s) went quite ok as well I think. I always have a hard time saying anything about the concerts I do myself, but I think it was nice.
Regensburg
Vienna:
From Regensburg we went east by train to Vienna. We arrived quite early, so we decided to eat some schnitzels before we went to the venue. For some reason we decided to go for some of the biggest schnitzels available, so the place "Centimeter" was where we ended up. 2 pieced of enormous schnitzels, floating on a sea of way too much french fries with a huge plate of vegetables on the side. To make a long story short, it would have been enough ordering one portion on the 4 of us. The fourth guy being Ketil Solberg (not Animal Machine which we hooked up with again on the Venue). Ketil was our camera-guy on this tour, helping us keeping the spirit up (or down, depending on his mood, hehe). Well then you should be updated on who we are more or less.
After eating we went to the venue (Fluc) to play at "Club Moozak", meeting up with Mr. Machine and his wife again, doing some sound-check and also meeting the last guy who played (B°tong). The arrangers, fellow artists etc. all very nice people. It was a great place to play. More audience as well which is always a good thing, but hey, the shows with almost no one there are more exclusive!!! Anyway, Audun did a nice show again. This time with a camera filming everything up close so the audience could see it all through a projector. Very nice effect to it! Next up was B°tong from Switzerland, and that too was really great! Lots of exciting to watch equipment being used and also pleasing abstract experimental sounds. Quite ambient as well. That changed fast with Animal Machine's set! Loud, intense and groovy. Even doing an extra set, which I guess no one could complain about. Pure energy, and then it was me. Well, what should I say? I did some gurgling with water and went into some noise. More than that is hard to say, but I liked it myself at least! And to end the night it was Swamps. Unfortanly it wasn't loud enough, but a very nice set. Beats and noises really works together.
Barcelona:
The next day we went early on the train through the beautiful alps to get to Geneva where we was gonna take a plane to Barcelona from the next day. When we arrived in Geneva we found out there was only two hostels in the whole city and a lot of full expencive hotels. The only place with any room for us was a hotel where two of the beds were childrens-beds. No thanks, we went to get some sleep at the airport. But hell, that was one of the worst airports I've seen (I haven't seen that many though) and nothing worked. Loud sounds coming from nowhere (it sounded like we had a train going by us for 15 minues while we tried to sleep), the worst seats I've ever tried to sit in. We didn't have a good experience there...
But when we first got on the plane and over to Barcelona, we got some time to sleep before we went to play. Meeting up with Animal Machine again at the venue after him taking another route that us (lucky him!) we played at this nice art-place that we got booked to the day before. Quite many people came concidering we only had the booking for 24 hours or something, and Audun and Arnfinn (Swamps) played a set together. It worked as well! They didn't have too much time to plan it, but it was nice, and both their sounds got heard. Then me and Animal Machine played a mutated set where I started, him taking over and then finnishing the set with both of us together. And then Swamps played a short ambient-set to end the night. This was the last time Animal Machine joined us.
Bilbao:
Early up the next day to reach the plane to Bilbao. For some reason our paid(!!!) reservations for the plane had dissappeared. They told us that there never had been no reservations for us, so we couldn't take the plane. So we were stuck in Barcelona having to wait 8 hours for the next plane and have to pay for new tickets. Motivation-factor, oh yeah! Anyway, we got to Bilbao and went almost straight away to the venue. An old industrial building where we played the biggest concert at this tour. It was the last day of the MEM-festival and we got to play after seeing a fantastic movie called Les Religions Sauvages accompanied by live music and a performance in Spanish with a naked woman talking about her sexuality with quite strong sexual and obscure films going on a projector in the back. Hard to go on stage after that, hehe. Then I played another noise-set, Swamps a beat-set and Audun his classic circuit-bent dolls-set (but only 5 minutes!!! Maybe his best set, but damn it ended too soon!). It was fantastic to play to a large crowd (also someone wanting to buy some records), and the whole arrangement was fantastic. Nice people and great shows. Bilbao might be my favourite place from this tour. Both because of the people and also the architecture in the city. Highly recommanded!
Antwerp:
The final destination for our tour as musicians. We went by train, night train and another daytime train from Bilbao to Paris and Paris to Belgium. The night train was a horrible experience! Why can't people understand that when we tell them to turn off the oven we mean it. I guess it was 30 degrees celsius and non-humid air. Well well, I got some sleep at least. But we got to Antwerp in the end and met up with our nice arrangers. We went on a small shopping trip and found some 6-seconds-samplers in a toy store. Me and Arnfinn bought 2 each, and Arnfinn and Ketil bought 1 each. Then we went back for to go to the venue. Another art-place, with concrete walls in a dark room where we played. Nice! Not too many showing up, one or two other experimental concerts in Artwerp that day, and for some reason some unknown guys from Norway is not what attracts people, hehe. But there was a boy and a girl coming at least, but they missed me and Arnfinn. Both me and Arnfinn played ambient-sets, and Audun did his best show on the tour I think (hard to compare to the Bilbao-set), and it was long enough as well. We ended the tour with a small concert where the four of us all improvised using the toy-recorders we bought. Not very loud, but indeed interesting! Wrapping up the tour with dignity and probably the best sets from all of us!
Vacation time in The Netherlands:
So we went to Amsterdam to get some vacation as well. 4 days with mainly food and jamming and meeting up with some internet-friends. Nice stuff! Nothing to do with the tour, but we had a great time!!!
To see some images from the tour click HERE
