Festival fashion and Primavera Sound Pro-Tips

Here are my remaining Primavera outfits - I don't exactly live up to the Company magazine festival fashion ideal but Primavera isn't really the sort of festival where you can rock a Lana Delray-style flower crown (sadly!).

The other thing about Primavera is that you stand/dance on concrete all night for three days straight, so sensible shoes are essential. A lot of people end up having to buy more shoes 2 days in, but Birkenstocks and Vans serve me well. I think I only ever wear these shoes at Primavera! I might get some Nike Air Jordans for next year. Mmm. Air cushion.

Inspired by Anna from Door Sixteen, My other pro-tips for Primavera are:


- Book your pass early - 2014 goes on sale on Monday!
- Stay in the Raval area. It is cheaper and trendier than Barrio Gothic
- Spanish phrases - "Quisiera comer" and "Perrrito caliente por favor" come in particularly handy for me.
- Avoid the tourist tapas places on La Rambla and got to the cheap ones in Barceloneta
- Cr. de Joaquin Costa is full of great bars
- Spend to save! Go for free-pour spirits not beer
- Check the pre and after parties and park gigs
- Check out a show in the auditorium
- Don't buy beer from the random cervesa guys in the street in Barcelona. THEY WILL ROB YOU.

Primavera Sound 2013 - And there was music!

Another May, another hedonistic two weeks in Barcelona for Primavera Sound festival.  This is my third year visiting the festival, my boyfriend loves his music with the fire of a thousand suns and Parc Del Forum in the last week of May is his spiritual happy place. I lack the encyclopaedic musical knowledge and good sonic judgement but I do like to dance and judge bands.

Goat, Dead Can Dance, The Knife, My Bloody Valentine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were my stand-outs, my disappointments were Solange and Animal Collective. It was such a packed line-up that we didn’t see most of the headliners  such as Blur and Jesus and Mary Chain etc.

Below the cut are all the bands I saw and a line on what I thought of them. I have plenty more to write about Barcelona and Primavera, but we can do that another time.

WARNING: All opinions are arbitrary and snarky and may be revised at a later date! Snarky but informed views can be found here.

Dinner at the Grenadier

 Jeans - Gap, Trench - French Connection, Top - Cos, Hat - AA, Bag - Marc Jacobs

Lightning in Peru

 

Lightning bolt dress - Whistles via a charity shop, Bag - Peru via the textile museum in Barcelona, Jacket - eBay

The post-birthday world

You know you're tragically old and unhip when your boyfriend's parents and your own parents both buy you kitchen utensils for your birthday - especially when it's because you've asked for them.




 My birthday loot this year was:
 - a utensil with a massive, terrifying blade for slicing things very, very thin.
 - an awesome vegetable choppper from Global Knives (made like a Samurai sword).
- A Kubus candlestick - a really classic Danish design by the architect Mogens Lassen from 1962.

I want to make it clear that I had an awesome and very hedonistic party as well. It ain't just domesticity around here. Yet.

What I wore - Istanbul edition

Dress - Oasis, Biker jacket - eBay, Scarf - a gift from Kim, Necklace - Prairie Oats, Bag - Tate Modern

Efterklang in concert at Salon, Istanbul

On our last night in Istanbul we booked to see Danish Band, Efterklang at a venue called Salon in Beyoğlu, which is over the Golden Horn from the old town and is around the area of the Galata Tower and up to Taksim Square.

Efterklang are from Copenhagen and their name (which sort of means reverberation) takes me right back to my Scandinavian Lit classes at university, where our prof - Hans - aways used to go on about the 'klang' in poetry  and I used to have to make an effort to not say out loud that this was a typical, stupid Danish word that nobody could possibly take seriously.

The band is three core members - Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg-  joined by other musicians, including for this tour, Tatu Rönkkö (drums), Katinka Fogh Vindelev (piano, vocal) who pretty much stole the show when I saw them. Tatu got down on the floor and played ashtrays for the encore.  

We'd heard their music had lots of 'world' influences  and that they recorded their most recent album Pyramidia partly at an abandoned Russian mining town in the Arctic circle - (like the start of an indie Ice Station Zebra).  They turned out to sound like a pleasant mixture of The National and Wild Beasts, with the addition of Katinka's opera-ish vocal bizarrely reminding me of the scene with the blue singer in The Fifth Element. 

They had good banter, collected gifts from the audience to take to their next engagement in Rome (CUTE!) and seemed to have a committed, hardcore fanbase present, despite not having played Istanbul for years.  

I will definitely be checking them out on record. I hope what I have heard about their live energy not coming across in recordings isn't true.

 

My favourite thing about the show was that Efterklang's own super fan, Stuart Brookes, who has been following the tour around Europe, got up on stage to bow out with the band.  We noticed Stuart on Twitter when we were in a cafe pre-gig scrounging wifi and it was really fun to see him right there next to the stage having a great time, and then up on stage. I hope they all partied together afterwards.

Here is Stuart's moment: 

 

The venue for our night out was Salon IKSV, a venue a bit like the ICA in London, which hosts exhibitions, gigs, film and fashion events.  Be warned - it was pretty hard to find thanks to a very wrong entry on Google Maps that had us running around nearby streets for ages that seemed to contain nothing but lamp shops and fighty-looking stray dogs. 

The building was a great modern art/marble encrusted town house mixture that reminded me a lot of Sketch in Soho. They even had a neon birdcage installation that I saw a picture of while I was at the Istanbul Modern.

The concert hall itself is small - 400-capacity- and set out on two tiers. The sound was excellent, even upstairs and it had a really nice intimate feeling. Wherever you were you felt close to the action, even up in the gallery, partly thanks to all the regulars who politely asked to sit on the floor in front of us with their legs dangling through the railings. I apologise to one girl in particular who I kept bonking on the head with my bag while I was dancing.

 

The funny thing about the gig was that apart from the language you could completely forget where  you were, everyone had the International Hipster look you can find in Copenhagen, London, NY, everyone was drinking and there was not a headscarf in sight.  I did enjoy the fact that it was on  a Saturday, the headlining band started much later (10.45pm) than they would in London and that everything was buzzing in the area afterwards. Weekend gigs really need to become a thing in London.

The concert was a great intro into the more contemporary side of Istanbul that I want to visit again and explore more of in the future... more on that will follow in my full post on Istanbul.