Well, one things leads to another, and some new friends (Thor and Unnur of Cocktail Vomit and Smari McCarthy) went to see one Emilie Simon. It was an odd show – lots of extremely random midi gear and a fellow who looked a lot like Willy Wonka set around an impish french girl with a highly improbable range of expression. The flow from acoustic to electronic, and the integration of the genres was smoother than I’ve seen before and quite groundbreaking, although the show was in some way a bit high art and less a gig. The glitter of french conceptualism?

But the music was good!

is an audio clip (low res audio off my digital camera) that gives some flavor of what was going on,

is (excuse the black key frame) a video clip of one song (MP4, about four meg)
After which we collectively retired to Sirkus where Thor spun an extremely compelling set. It’s pretty remarkable to hear a set of that quality in what amounts to a tiny dive bar on a large, mostly empty island in the middle of nowhere. The musical culture here is incredible: tight knit community, high standards of both professionalism and presentation expected in even small venues… I think the Icelandic music phenomena is just starting and that set was pretty good evidence of it. Never mind that he’s a really nice man