Noise festival in Oslo

Just a short message today, and far too late to. If you are in Oslo Saturday 7 May, look for the noise festival Støyfest (Norwegian link)! Bring earplugs to the Podium in Hausmannsgate (street address).

The noisy ones are Testicle Hazard (Lasse Marhaug and Tommi Keräenen), Umpio, Ambolthue and The Toft, Vanhala and Maranata with Maja Ratkje.

Lasse Marhaug says he hopes they will be able to avoid all kinds of rhythms and melodies this year (Ballade 5. mai 2011 Norwegian link). 

Lemon Flower

How about Sheer Weight of Traffic´s cover of Ivor Cutler´s "Lemon Flower"?
I like it, and the video too!
The original song is on "Jammy Smears" released in 1976.

Comicoperando 12 May

If you happen to be in London next week, please note the following (stolen from Jazzwise): "Next week on Thursday 12 May at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London there is a special concert by Comicoperando based on the music of Robert Wyatt".

Comicoperando is Dagmar Krause, Annie Whitehead, Karen Mantler, Michel Delville, John Edwards and Chris Cutler.

Nattjazz 2011

If you happen to be anywhere near Bergen (Norway) 24 May - 4 June you should visit our jazz festival Nattjazz.

Any visit is your own responsibility, but here are my suggestions (based on knowledge and guessing):
Scorch Trio and Mats Eilertsen Trio with Harmen Fraanje (25 May), Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus Duo and Building Instrument (26 May), Cakewalk and Koenigsberg (27 Amy), Arve Henriksen Trio and Die Enttäuschung (28 May), Atomic (31 May), Magnus Broo (1 June), Team Hegdal and Ultralyd (2 June), Moe (3 June) and Salif Keita and Wunderkammer (4 June). Oh, and Tortoise are here too!

You may even bring kids to the Bajazz festival for children, and make sure you hear  Crab is Crap feat. Håkon Kornstad (29 - 30 May).

Nattjazz is a jazz festival, but the festival use genre descriptions such as these, to describe the bands: noise groove, progressive guitar jazz rock, gypsy surf, ethiogroove, futuristic drone metall, desert-balkan-bollywood, free jazz blues funk, ethnosentric acid polka and avant-punkblues. So be warned!

Hommage à Syd Barrett

We have had some blog posts on jazz and hiphop versions of Nick Drake songs (here is one), and since I love cover songs, I noticed that All About Jazz reviewed I.Overdrive Trio´s "Hommage à Syd Barrett" (Cristal 2008) yesterday. Or don´t we call jazz versions covers?
I have never heard this band, and not their album yet (AAJ were pretty late too!), but I have checked out some videos, and they sound OK! How about "Dominoes" from "The Madcap Laughs" (1970), to pick one?

Feel free to comment if you know, love or hate (oh - please, be nice!) this trio.

I.Overdrive Trio is  Philippe Gordiani (guitar), Bruno Tocanne (drums) and Remi Gaudillat (trumpet).

First of May with Poing and Maja Ratkje

I already warned the ruling classes about the CD "Wach Auf!", and now it´s here! Maja S. K. Ratkje and Poing have been on a short tour to promote the album, and they ended in Bergen on the 1st of May.

The venue was almost packed with young revolutionaries and an old guy (no names), all of us enjoying the music from Frode Haltli (accordion), Rolf Erik Nystrøm (saxophone), Håkon Thelin (bass) and Maja Ratkje (vocal, flute (?), harmonica). They played most of the songs on the album, and some more. The record is fine, but the concert was really wild. The excellent band did their national anthems, worker´s songs, punk songs and folk tunes with energy and a tiny bit of irony. One of the best moments of the show was without irony tough, when Ratkje and  Thelin did the traditional song "Mining for gold". Beautiful!
The encore was "25 minutes to go", better known by Johnny Cash.

(Sorry about the sound and lights on the video, not top quality, I know).

Shipbuilding

BBC Radio 4 seem to have a program called "Music Group". In one of their broadcasts,  comedian  Stewart Lee, voiceover artist Julie Berry  and author of the novel "One Day", David Nicholls, met to discuss three pieces of music.

"Shipbuilding" sung by Robert Wyatt is one of their choices, and they have got a lot of nice things to say about our man! 

I don´t know for how long, but you may  listen here. 

One of the characters in  David Nicholls´  book even makes a mix tape with both Robert Wyatt´s "Shipbuilding" and "I´m a believer" among the songs. I guess I have to read the book then. The least I could do!

Check out the  the artists on the mix tape here.