Trolls & Legends Festival

To start this post, I should give a quick resumé of my intrest, and I will do so using simple words:
Music, Festivals, Traveling, Paganism, Folklore, Dragons (heck, I even have a dragon tattoo, and more planned), Mythology, RPG, Fantasy, Beer, Reading and Gaming.
So, that should more or less cover it, shouldn't it?

This Easter April 22nd-24th, Trolls & Legends Festival in Mons, Belgium will be arranged for the 4th time.
And the theme for the festival: Nothing less than dragons.
So basically 3 days of pagan and folk-inspired music, literature and more in Belgium - a country know for its good beers amongst other things - with Dragons as the theme.
I can only say one thing: Darn that I didn't find out about this before the holidays already were planed and payed for.

It is nevertheless amazing to check the site for the current and past line-ups, as there are a lot of bands focusing on Medieval, Pagan and Folk-inspired music.
One of them, is a German band named Faun. Check out their webpage. They even have this cute MP3-player at the bottom there.
I'll also embed a YouTube-clip from when they perform Egil Saga live, and one without a video with one of my favorite songs named Satyroso.

The ensemble was founded in 2002, and have since then released 6 CD's and 2 DVD's, sold more than 100.000 CD's worldwide and performed on more than 600 venues.
They are released on the labels Screaming Banshee/ALIVE (Germany) and "Noir Records" (USA).

Quoted from their official webpage:

FAUN combines medieval & ancient instruments with modern influences to create an enchanting and powerful atmosphere. The band's performance incorporates many different instruments, including the Celtic harp, nyckelharpa, various lutes, the bagpipes, large Japanese taiko drums, cister, the violin, flutes and even Arabic instruments like dombra, rebab, riq, oud, darabukka and bendir, as well as the melodic vocal section going from solo folk-like and often ambient melodies to chant-like and always enchanting vocal performances with the two female and frontman Oliver s.tyr vocalists combining something truelly magical.. Influences of Celtic folk and medieval music fusing with driving beats draws an ever fast growing crowd of followers.

Enjoy, and perhaps I'll see you at Trolls et Légendes 2012? =)

Dan Colen - Peanuts

So, Thursday evening was the opening of Dan Colens exhibition "Peanuts" at the Astrup Fearnley Museum.
This is his latest and biggest exhibition so far.

I arrived a bit late, so the artist talk had already begun. Curator Hanne Beate Ueland was doing the interview, which was a nice one.
She seemed a bit tense from time to time though, and I got the feeling that she had a set of questions she had to get through no matter what. For Dan Colens sake, he didn't seem all to comfortable at the end of the artist talk, and was rather satisfied when it was over.
But it was an interesting and good interview in total, and we got a good feeling about Dan's thoughts regarding his art.

You can see an interview in two parts at Astrup Fearnley site: Part 1 & Part 2

After the Artist talk, we were informed that there would be a 15 minutes break, where we were welcome to enjoy some wine and mingle, which always is nice of course.

After the break, we were all seated again - well, at least the ones that were lucky enough to get a seat, as it was crowded way beyond the number of available seats.

Then curator Gunnar B. Kvaran held a minor speech introducing the art and artistic life of Dan Colen, and after a while presented Dan Colens good friend Aaron Bondaroff a.k.a. A-ron, the man behind the brand "aNYthing" (An awesome article about him in the NY Times)

A-ron held an awesome speech accompanied by an image reel that was showing in the background. As he said himself, he had asked several friends of Dan Culen to share some images, as he wanted to present the man Dan, and his life, not only the art he makes. The speech was awesome, and I figured that Aaron Bondaroff was a man I wanted to learn more about, as he seems like an interesting guy.

After the awesome speech, he introduced the band i.U.D., which performed two tunes, and in between the two, we were asked to get up on our feets, and closer to the stage, which sat the mood before we headed downstairs to take a closer look at his art.

For the sake of the art, and for the artist, I can only direct you to SLAMXHYPE, and the pictures they have presented there.

I have to say though: I really enjoyed the evening, so thank you Dan Colen, Astrup Fearnely, Aaron Bonadroff, i.U.D. and everyone else that made the evening to be awesome!

Art, and Music

So, today seems to be a great day.

In aprox 5 hours, I'm off to the opening of the Peanuts Exhibition by Dan Colen at the Astrup Fearnley museum in Oslo.
What I have seen of his art so far, is amazing, and I am really looking forward to this

First there will be an hour artist talk where we get the possibility to get a bit under the skin of Dan Colen and his art, which is going to be interesting.

From New York, he has also brought the duo I.U.D. which will have a mini-concert.
I have to admit that I hadn't heard about them before, but after reading a bit about them, as well as listening two of their tracks at their Myspace-page, this is set to be a an awesome evening.

I will post some pictures (if allowed) and thoughts regarding the exhibit later tonight or tomorrow.
In the meantime, you can see some of his art at the Saatchi Gallery

And if you are in Oslo, come down to the Astrup Fearnely Museum at 17.0 GMT+1 tonight.

Here is a live performance by I.U.D. recorded in 2007, enjoy =)