November 18, 2005
Sigur Rós at The Olympia.
And so to Sigur Rós at the Olympia on Friday 11th.
Despite spotting a reference to the gig back in August, when I was in Damascus, I held off on getting tickets until early September - big mistake as by the time I went to ticketmaster the gig was sold out.
But by hook or crook I managed to get in. Complimentary seats in a box, no less. (Thanks Dave!) Sure there was a big of lighting equipment to the side of us, and we were pretty tight to the left of the stage, but avoiding the equine dentistry is par for the course in these situations.
They opened up behind a curtain (very reminiscent of Kraftwerk that) which was both back and front-lit. A huge roar came from the crowd when it went up during the second song. The mixed crowd were loving it, even the 3 month old baby that a woman in the Circle was cradling (more power to you woman!) who slept through the lot.
The music was quite fantastic, from the quietest of moments tinkled out on one or other of the 9 keyboards on stage right through to the full-on rock-out closer (Popplagið, the closing song on () ) on which the lit curtain came down again half way through. The lack of recognisable vocals puts me on a par with most of the crowd for once; just luxuriating in the noises that these people are making.
Sure the graphics and lightshow weren't up there with Kraftwerk or Bowie (whose are?) but this was about the music, and the music was good.
Next up: Mogwai in January
Posted by Richard at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2005
Gigs: The Europeans are coming..
Two gigs on two consecutive Fridays. dEUS in the Ambassador on Friday 4th followed by Sigur Rós last night in The Olympia.
I'm not overly familiar with dEUS, I do own a copy of their 1999 album 'The Ideal Crash', but the CD spent about 3 years sitting in my desk drawer at work, I only dug it out to listen in the car in the week before the gig.
We were a few minutes late in the door, the beer in Conway's being much preferable to the not-worth-the 20-minute-wait muck they were selling in the Ambassador - so much so that we spent most of the gig sucking back G&T's.
The band themselves, well, they looked the part, and sounded it mostly, but it was a bit uneven to my ears. Some of the slower stuff was verging on the boring, and while the faster stuff really got the crowd going by the end of the gig, I did leave a tad underwhelmed.
Thoughts on Sigur Rós to follow...
Posted by Richard at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)