We Aeronauts's Blog

So, we've had a good time so far but last night cranked it up another level. Iceland is officially AMAZING.

I'm sat in our hostel as per usual, except this time it's half one english time and none of my aeronauts colleagues have rolled out of bed yet. Yesterday we did the usual card games in the morning and then bounced into town. Our label mates Pagan Wanderer Lu and Bastardgeist both had other off-venue shows yesterday that we sadly missed due to soundcheck at our official venue- Faktory. 

We arrived at about 4 and played a short soundcheck and it was intensely loud. After this we went back to the BRNLV apartment and hung out with a lovely guy called Ben who works for the Leaf Label, prompting much chat about A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Susumu Yokota and Manitoba. Come 8pm, and after much fast food, we made our way down to the venue where our new friends Yuni in Taxco were playing- they are from the US and make a very nice Vampire Weekend-ish racket.

We were up next so we set up and launched ourselves into the set. There were cheers mid-music a la the Band in the Last Waltz and we had a great time. Distance Learning in particular was a barnstormer. Tim played brilliantly too. 

After us we drank some more rum at the flat and headed back to watch Pagan Wanderer Lu, who delivered probably the most brilliant set I've ever seen him do. All the classics were there and we even had a little dance with him:
 

After Andy finished to rapturous applause it was the turn of Bastardgeist to rock the stage, and they were quite simply astounding. The final song was dazzling.

After they finished we headed to Venue where I was handed a pint by the hottest girl I've seen so far in Iceland. She told me it was a pint of her piss. It kind of offset her hotness a bit! haha. We watched Silver Columns and I loved it but sadly everyone else didn't. Me and Jake were dancing hard but I've never seen Greg look so depressed!
 

We then hit the James Blake set(he was AMAZING) but the group was splintered. By this point Tim/Jake and myself headed to Kaffibarrin- a club set up by Damon Albarn. It was RAMMED, but we met some brilliant people. After we were kicked out we stood in the street for a while with people who worked for Moshi Moshi and Green Man and tried to work out where to go next. Then we realised it was 7am. It's a lot darker here.

So to bed we went. Today, maybe the Blue Lagoon, maybe watching football, tonight: THE JOY FORMIDABLE!!!

Thames. x

 

So to follow on from Thames' account, we carried on playing cards and random hostel games for most of the afternoon, drinking more and more coffee, one round of which was free because we proof read their eco fridge use sign.

 

Tense times with Jake. But who won? To keep you reading, I won't answer this great question until the end.

When Greg and Ads had finally found a way into their flat (no thanks to our ever absent label boss Brainlove) we met up with them in town and hugged some, got nice sandwich boats, and hotfooted it to our first gig. They were still building bits of the venue, but that's ok, because it doubled our audience and we harmonised the shit out of that electric drill. Thames'll talk about the gig itself and Bastardgeist, who were a revelation.

All the collected Brainlove people went on to Faktory to check out the sound system for our gig on Friday and maybe catch some of Johan Johansson, the kingpin of Icelandic electronic music. There was a band soundchecking when we got in, but they kept on soundchecking and it took about 10 minutes for me to realise we were witnessing a revolutionary doom-step set. For one song, balding middle aged identical twins in matching blue tracksuits came out and screamed for a bit. That's when it turned into grief-wave, a genre we plan on exploring on our next EP.

Us not listening to grief-wave doom-step.

We headed further into town, briefly stopped off at screamo show where noone was even moving, and onto an awesome bar called Bakkus that was playing loads of 60s pop classics. Someone mentioned going to a pool hall which sounded better than going to bed, but it turned out "pool hall" meant "rave in the darkest pool hall with the heaviest bass south of the artic circle". 

This got busted by the nicest police squad ever, who actually queued at the bar to talk to the bar staff and completely ignored the long list of people doing coke in the toilet.

And sadly that was that, a 20 min walk home and straight to bed. 

More coffee, more cards, more blogs. 

Chocolate Wade

ps. I won

over to thames

Hi- it's me now! 

I'd just like to add a few things- the show we played was nice. I thought it was the first show We Aeronauts had played abroad but Greg correctly pointed out him and Tallant were billed as We Aeronauts in Mongolia earlier this year!

Bastardgeist were amazing- sounded like a stripped back version of School of Seven Bells. PWL whacked out all the tunes too.

In Bakkus, which was the place they were dropping all the soul and motown, they had never heard of Frankie Valli and there was a fantastic atmosphere. It was exactly what we plan for our club night, Progressively Less Elephant. 

The pool club we went to was incredible, minimal lighting and people drinking and smoking. What Tom said about the Police is completely correct, in England they would have treated everyone like shit, but here when we left, they were just having a chat in plain view with the owner. He'd just spotted a gap in the market and kept his club open when others were closed. We were told by the bar staff that if the police asked, they were charging for glasses and not booze. The whole place reminded me of the bar from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

Anyway, today we're off to town in a minute and playing the first official Off-venue show in the sister hostel to the one we're staying in. There's some good stuff tonight, but more on that tomorrow.

Thames out.