HW: OFF: Another note from the north...

[Keith Henderson]

Hej...

(I really find it somewhat amusing that people address you here with a very friendly "Hey!" as if they´ve known you for years...of course, that´s the formal greeting here, but nevertheless it´s quite welcoming.  A couple days ago, I would have written Moi, which doesn´t quite have the same effect.)

So...I´m in Uppsala, Sweden on my way back to Stockholm and eventually Germany/CH.  On Saturday, I saw the Moonshake event (No. 7) in Umeå with Spacious Mind et al.  It was a very nice event, though a bit disappointing as not so many people came.  (The last one drew about 200 they told me, but this one was below 100.)  Also, each band only had 50 minutes to perform on stage, and there were also a few problems with the sound (particularly with Magic Carpathians for some reason...must have been specific to Anna´s guitar amp.)  But I still enjoyed the event greatly and met some very nice people there (and also on the way there), who have very similar music collections to mine.  Spacious Mind played essentially two long pieces, the type of instrumental cosmic jam that they´ve been doing recently, as heard on Live: Volume One, and a brand new CD that they were selling at the show (can´t remember the title).  I got one, and listened to some of it once, and it seemed pretty good.  The
 lineup is hard to figure out, as they have very sparse liner notes, but the main two guys remain Henrik (originally guitar, but now bass) and Jens (keyboards), and the two guitar players are Thomas and Niklas I think.  The regular drummer David (?) wasn´t there Saturday, and they had hired somebody as a replacement.

I stayed one night with two members of the first band, Kungahuset, obviously a local Umeå band.  A very eclectic mix of styles, a bit punkish, a bit psychedelic, a bit goofy, and a bit progressive.  One section of their performance was full of freak-out guitar jamming, which was excellent.  Jerker, the guitarist, plays one of those weird Danelectro guitars that I remember Jimmy Page playing, the one with that strong, piercing sound.  Avarus is a Finnish experimental band that do some pieces with rhythm and some ´sound collages´ which are a bit harder to get one´s mind around.  They did mostly the latter type on stage, and I preferred some of the things that I heard on one of their recent albums.  They have something out on the tUMULt label in San Francisco, which I think is affiliated with Aquarius Records.  Circle have some things on the same label.  Magic Carpathians had a good performance, marred only by the sound quality.  They were just the duo of Anna and Marek from Poland,
 whereas often they have other guests on stage.  A bit of moody drone quality, but the vocals and echoed guitar riffing give the music quite a lot of motion too.  I picked up the newest CD, which I think they did some tracks from.

My visit with Jussi Lehtisalo from Circle (et al.) was a great time.  We spent one full day at his family´s summer cabin on the shore to the south of Pori, and just listened to music and watched strange videos, including some live performance from the old band Haikara.  He and Anna are exceedingly nice people, and Jussi seems to know everybody in the entire town (he´s lived in the center of Pori almost his entire life).  The town is in some ways quite ordinary, but the people have a high spirit, and occasionally some of them like to drink a little bit.  :)  Circle is planning some sort of CD/DVD box set release in the future, of all unreleased music plus some sort of film that they´re planning at the moment.  I gather from Jussi´s interest in art films and such, that it will be a music soundtrack put to some sort of conceptual visual footage, and not a live concert or anything.  Nothing has been started on that front just yet, so it probably won´t appear for awhile.  Also, they are
 going back to southern Germany this summer to play at the 2nd annual ´Faust studio´ festival in Scheer, Germany, with other bands like S/T and the various members of Faust in different combinations (Steven Wray Lodbell from the US I think is coming too).  That´s on August 12-14, and one can check the Klangbad website to learn more.  I´m planning to be there myself.  And I might also go to this Festival de Alambic Electrique in France (west of Dijon) to see Here n Now et al.  That´s July 30-31.

Burg Herzberg´s lineup is now complete, and the one major band that was added is Ozric Tentacles!  They I guess are headlining Friday night, to be followed by Nik & Company as the late-night act.  Should be interesting.  That´s the same time (July 14-17) as that Dour Festival in Belgium that Hawkwind are playing.

Now, I saw Bernhard´s story about the ´fake´ HW announcement for Love & Peace, but now I´ve seen this list of HW dates in Germany/Austria for the same period.  So, are these real?  If so, that would be cool...I could catch some of these as well.  I just visited the ampitheatre at Loreley 10 days ago or so, it would be an interesting place to see HW perform.  Marillion (with Fish) recorded a DVD there many years ago.  Of course, this place was built by the NationalSocialists in c. 1938, so it has a bit of history one might say.

6-11 Markthalle, Hamburg
6-12 Kato, Berlin
6-13 Hirsch, Nuenburg
6-15 Planet, Wien (Austria)
6-16 Metropolis, Muenchen
6-18 Waldbuehne, Wueppertal
6-19 Freilichtbuehne, Loreley

Was very sorry to read about Pierre Moerlen´s death, especially after we just lost another drummer, Danny Taylor, not too long ago.  Man...they´re starting to go more and more every day.

Anyway, that´s all from me at the moment.  Hope to see some of you on the road soon, either at HW shows in the UK, or at other festivals across the planet.

Grakkl (FAA)



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