Great videos: Sivert Høyem - Belorado

Some music videos capture more then the greatness of the song or the artist itself. Here both the song and the artist are premium, but on top of this the video hos captured some kind of essence of Oslo. It's even filmed on the roof of the place where my band used to practice down town. I am sure that was on purpose. Easy to bring music to that roof. It's the light, the colours, the coldness in the air and the mix between nature and city. It warms my heart and make me proud.

Soft, sweet, big, slow, lovely Oslo

It's always a strange feeling coming back to this city that I like to call my home. The moment the train comes out of the tunnel right outside the city, it's like my shoulders fall down from under my ears and I start to relax. It's a little bit like meeting an old familiar friend that floats against me and takes me into it's arms and says "Welcome home, are you ready for new adventures and sights?". For me Oslo is more than anything a feeling, and now it's the lazy, slow, big, soft, sweet feeling of the summer city that meets you.

The feeling also brings with it all them memories I have of this city. The way the light falls on the buildings in March (low and almost like a flash light), the way the cars, trams, buses and people struggles through the first snow, the silence in the city on my way home on a late evening, the empty streets of Easter, the rumble of tourists from all over the world that is a sure spring sign, and the view of the city and all the green of Hovedøya and the leaves in it's parks in the autumn, when the whole city breaths out after a hectic summer. Oslo for me is one of the most beautiful places in the world and equals for me the beauty of the Norwegian mountains I have seen this week.

Some days I hate the random people of this city, but mostly I truly love them.

The mother and the little kid with the dog at Oslo s: the kid looses the dogs lead and walks giggling after it, while the dog goes slowly after the mother, before she turns around sees what's going on and gathers together child and dog and we all laugh together.

The affectionate father with his little kid on a bus that makes a sound like a seagull, which makes us all turn around and the father says laughing:" No, I am not torturing him!" which makes us all laugh.

The bus driver who decides to give us all a guided tour and wishes us all a happy day. The man that at 22 o'clock on Wednesday in February decides to bring a canoe into the bus, and makes us all giggle and smile a bit.

I love it when little things like this happen. It makes me love the people and the city.

I love the nature, the silence and the mountains of Norway. But Oslo, Oslo is my home, where I feel like myself.

Live: Phoenix, Rockefeller, Oslo

I suppose I should not be shocked, but I really am. I expected to wake up this morning with reviews in papers, videos on YouTube or at least one photo somewhere, but none! It's like no one went to see Phoenix last night. But I did, and I know about 1000 others did to. I know people took photos, and I would have too, but I wisely positioned myself in the back after reading a big poster with "This concert will contain strobe lights!!" as I entered the venue. I haven't really had any problem with strobe lights for a lot of years, but the two times I passed out from them in the late 90's are still fresh in my mind :) And yepp, there were strobe lights for sure in this one. I was fine though..

ANYWAYS.. back to the concert. If it hadn't been for the Blur concert in Hyde Park this summer. (I am not sure anything will ever top that), this would have been the concert of the year for me for sure. Part of it can of course be due to the fact that I have wanted to see Phoenix for 5 years now, but it was all I expected. They started off the show with "Lizstomania" and "Long distance call". Very wise moves. We were all putty in their hands by then. What I like about Phoenix and have always thought was what makes their distinct sound is elegance. I mean these people grew up in the same city as the worlds most elaborate and luxury castle was ever built, Versailles. Some of the has to have rubbed off on them over the years. There is no mistakes in Phoneix music. The arrangements are amazing, every musician plays like it's the last night of his life playing, and behind it all this elegant little touch that I think must be french. I have no other description for it. It doesn't even matter that Thomas Mars (vocals) as usual in his blue shirt, have a slight little french accent. It just makes it better and more distinct. The music hits you like a wall of excitement, joy and bliss, before they stop for a perfect second and than goes straight back onto it. Amazing stuff. A statement more than anything is that I that was in the total back clinging to a bar disk and jumping up every now and them to catch a glimpse felt the excitement to the very last nerve. Of course I know the music and so on too, but I was not the only one that felt that way. I am sure.

Oh, yes, and Noah and the Whale did warm ups! It was very very good too. The same perfect balance between quiet and loud and made you just flow away at times

By the time we came to the encore the whole audience were more or less grooving around. Strobe light, yes, but man so many other good light effects too. At one point the light flashes in red stripes over the scene, the next light flows slowly out in a cable that is wired around the edges of all the amplifiers. Beautiful and powerful.

I had read the setlists from the former concerts this tour, because I was so curious, and I had noted to my delight that they played almost all my favorite songs, and they did :) "Funky Square Dance", "Consolation prizes" and "Napoleon says". In the former set lists I had seen that they usually have played two songs as encore, but this concert must have been as special as I thought. They did 5 encore songs including two great acoustic versions of "Everything is Everything" and "Love for Granted". At the end they just kept playing "1901" and it all ended up with about 40 audience members rocking along on stage. It's been a long time since I have felt such joy in one place :) Sigh, it was a good concert. I have a feeling we will see them on a bigger stage the next time :)

The soundtrack of this blog has been this clip from P3-sessions about 5 years ago. It gives you a bit of the energy of them: http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/45821 Yepp there are a lot of clapping at Phoenix concerts :) hehe And they have only gotten better since then.

Here is Mr Mars running around in the audience in Stockholm. I think he did that in Oslo too :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93OrBFnoN_E


Here is a good one from New York this summer that really gives you a feel of the atmosphere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2HCf_CLMl0

Life: Embroidery exhibition and Paris

Two great new news for you people :)

About a month back I applied to be a part of an exhibition that is gonna display a more modern approach to cross stitch embroidery. They call it gerilja embroidery and mix like dirty words with the traditional flowers and cute birds :) I wanted to be in on it from the start, and now I am accepted. Two embroideries will go on the wall of an café in Oslo and hopefully get sold. My plan is to make something with an old like expression for something like "Oh darn" or "What the heck?" or "Couldn't say boo to a goose" That kind of old expressions, just in Norwegian. I now have to plan out the project exactly :) Thankfully it's not due til October, so I have all summer :) I have some thoughts about how to do it, so I will keep you posted.

Secondly, I went to Paris a few weeks ago. The city took me by surprise and I loved it surprisingly much more than last time. I think my photos with comments speak for themselves. I took 460!! They can be found here. I will add more as I find the time, so keep checking back :)

Looking forward to my birthday and to June ;) I will tell you more about that some other time :)

Photo: My Oslo Photos II

Here are two more of my Oslo photos.

This is to great buildings in downtown Oslo:

The National Theatre:


The National Theatre by ~Helenert on deviantART

And The Grand Hotel


The Grand Hotel by ~Helenert on deviantART

Photo: My Oslo Photos I

This is a new series I starting. I will give you one of the many photos I have taken around Oslo and tell you a little about it. I am sure this will go on forever, as I constantly get inspired by this city :)


Blue Paper Light by ~Helenert on deviantART


White Paper Light by ~Helenert on deviantART


This first one is from Stortorget in Oslo, the main squere. I loved the different lights of this place and did my first real shutter speed effect photo. I give you both the colored version and the white, since I can't decide which one I love the most ;)

The video that IS Oslo in the summer... Jarle Bernhoft's "Sunday"

Just found this thanks to a friend of mine. Jarle Bernhoft used to be the singer of the amazing Norwegian rock band Span, but decided to quite a few yers back. Now he's back with his solo album. I think he does rock better, but the voice is still amazing and this video for "Sunday" IS Oslo in the summer. Take a look and you will feel it too.

The whole album is supposedly about his relationship to Oslo. I really know what he means and feel a lot of the same as he says on his MySpace-page:

huba. the idea behind the 'ceramik' project is to give a musical portrait of the fragile relationship between oslo and myself. i constantly fall in love with this town, in spite of, or because of, its lack of identity. oslo is always struggling to be something it isn't, in millons of ways at once. i shouldn't like it, but i do. i have to leave, but it always draws me back. it estranges me, still it's who i am. those paradoxes create the songs, and there are plenty more. these traks are originally intended as hushed home demos, but i thought the aesthetic of suppressed slo-fi energy turned out both defining for the music and, well, cool as anything. and in time now, some of them will bloom into something else. hope you like it. it will take pressure, but no hard impacts with sharp or blunt objects. squeeze it, but don't hit it. wear it on your wrist, but don't lick it.

Photo from Quart festival

Concert
Originally uploaded by pdrpdr87

How to "steal" a festival!

The last decade the Quart festival has been one of the leading music festivals in Norway. A few weeks ago it was though announced that they had to give it all up due to few sold tickets. Lots of great artists were booked like Kent, Justice, Kings of Leon, Death Cab for Cutie and tons more. For some reason people just didn't buy tickets. I attended the festival twice in 2001 and 2002 (I think?) and it was amazing. It was my first real music experience, so one part of me is really sad to see it go. But I do understand why, I think. When I used to attend people used to come straight from Roskilde festival i Denmark and go on to Quart. The last few years Roskilde has started to host their festival the same weekend as Quart and the effect of that had to be noticed I think. At the same time it kind of feels like the program of Quart is a bit safer now and a bit more boring. The former leader of the festival left and started his own festival Hove a few years back and I think that had a lot of influence. When looking at his festival there are a lot more acts I would like to watch that at Quart.

Anyways... Quart is over... Today though we were hit by some very supriseing and amazing news. A couple of people in Oslo has actually managed to convinced a few of the top acts to come to Oslo instead of Kristiansand and made a festival in the middle of the city in less than 2 weeks. They have the city councils support and will be using an area that these weeks are used for showing the games from the European fotball championship. It's an amazing idea!!! It's so fresh that they haven't got a web page yet and the concerts are in two weeks. It will be very exciting to see what they can do in just two weeks with all the left over artists the scooped up from the Quart festivals program. I understand that the people around other parts of Norway most be really pissed at us, but hey!... finders keepers .. :) I think I might go on Thursday if there are any good bands. Going on a trip with the band from Friday to Sundag :) Sun, sea and music :)

Clip from NRK about the new festival (in Norwegian)

Mother and Medieval times

This weekend my mum came to visit me in the city. Belive it or not, she has actually let some friends borrow her house to celebrate their wedding, so she came to stay with me for two days while it all went down. First of all we went on a little shopping spree around the city. I got some nice new black sandals, great purple shirt and came to a very clear realization that I really don't like pattern on clothes. At least I am very picky and know very well what kind of clothes I like to wear. I try not to just choose purple and black clothes after my long period of just wearing these two colors a few years ago. Somehow I am still drawn to them though and still feel the urge to buy more black and purple... I also love green and blues a lot more though, so I guess I am getting better.


Today we decided to attend The Medieval Festival in Oslo. The medieval part of Oslo is more or less reduced to ruins and neglected for a long time but the last years a whole area of ruins have been taken more care of and is no a seperate park. Every August the rock festival Øyafestivalen takes place in the area among all the ruins, but today it was time to remember the medieval times.



On the way over we stopped and had a look at Oslo's new opera-bulding that was just done. I was there in May on my own and was absolutely godsmacked because of the beauty of the building. Really amazed. It was still very very beautiful today. Big and white with interesting shaped and lines and just on the waterfront. It looks like a mix between a gigantic iceberg and a mountain plateau in the winter, that is so white that you feel blinded by the whiteness. Truely beautiful and amazingly so because it's Norwegian :)



































When we got to the Medieval festival a knight's tournament had just started, so we took a look at that before looking around in the general area, filled with all kinds of exciting glimpses into the old days. While walking around it really started pouring down and I got quite wet so I hope that I won't get a cold. Probably not. The weather was so bad that we didn't stay for long and didn't get to see half of what we wanted. It's so typichal: after days on days with sunny weather it really pours down when we wanted to be outside for a day... argh.. I hope to go back next year though and maybe get a bit more involved also? Love the history and the period and it was a great festival.