Never Went South - The Documentary

Monday, 05 April 2010 21:36

I was recently in Iceland (again) to visit Aldrei fór ég suður, the festival in the Westfjords region started by Mugison and his dad in 2003. The name of the event translates as I Never Went South, which immediately tells you something about the independent nature of this area, one of Iceland's more remote (which is saying something).

The festival is pretty unique. In Mugison's own words the original idea was to create an event "that was almost impossible to get to" and had none of the formalities and hierarchies of other festivals. Getting there requires a minimum six hour car drive from Reykjavik or a fairly scary one hour flight, though because of the time of year (Easter) there is every chance the roads will be blocked and the airplanes cancelled.

This is all part of the plan.

If you do make it, you'll find the entire event takes place in a decidedly unglamorous warehouse. A couple of dozen bands - mostly from the Westfjords and Reykjavik - play on a stage fashioned from fishing pallets. There is no admission fee, the audience age ranges from 8 months to 80 and the line up is hand written on the wall (this year it was being written as the first band were playing).

No bands get to sound check. And everyone plays for 20 minutes, whether they're múm or the local male choir (both of whom have played).

My 2007 Drowned in Sound report is here; Or there's this regional overview I penned for the Guardian in 2009.

This year I went back with a film crew to make a documentary. We spent a week shooting the festival and interviewing just about everyone we could get our frost-bitten little hands on: local bands and international starlets Mugison and Olof Arnalds; the odd fisherman; a 75-year-old DJ; some horses (it's true - they do shoot them, or at least we did). We also recorded the beautiful sound of fjord ice crackling away to itself in the wind.

Editing begins next month and we're hoping to have a trailer soon after. In the meantime, here are some photos from the trip...

 

Reykjavik vs. Mugison

Thursday, 01 April 2010 10:45

Hair Relief (Manzine)

Sunday, 14 March 2010 21:19

Here's a recent titbit I wrote on the furtive and possibly made-up phenomenon of 'hair relief' for Manzine, an intelligent and satirical new men's magazine run by British GQ contributing ed Kevin Braddock. I don't normally write for (or rate) gent's magazines but this one is worth checking out (new issue comes with an illustration by the inimitable Ralph Steadman).

 

I am not a mac-wearing beautician-botherer. Let’s just get that out of the way immediately. I don’t head to coiffure shops deliberately in search of sexual ecstasy or sensual titillation. I go, like most men, to get my barnet chopped. But I don’t think I’m alone when I say that sometimes – and it really is only sometimes – there’s an erotic charge underlying the hairdressing experience.

I’m obviously not talking about getting a randy hand-job from some comb-and-scissor wielding temptress. I’m talking about a more subtle type of arousal: a bit of light and loose trouser movement; a mysterious twitching amidst the undergrowth. Like I said, it doesn’t happen often but it did a couple of weeks ago, and in Berlin, of all places.

It was mid-week, sometime after lunch. I walked past the salon and, utterly on a whim, decided to try for a trim. The shop was quiet. There was just one other customer - a plump middle-aged woman sat in a chair, her scalp an iridescent bloom of plastic and chemical paste - and the lady behind the counter, who happened to be a bit of a stunner.

Tall and lithe, she wore tight fitting clothes (all black) that accentuated a wonderfully proportioned set of feminine curves. Her face was elfin-pretty (complete with retrousse nose) yet she had that commanding presence common to many German women. She responded to my presence and request for a haircut with a distracted twist of her mouth as she bent her head to the open diary on her desk.

She nodded, pointing towards the wash-basins at the other end of the salon: “You want wash also?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes. Yes I did. To be honest her nonchalance was already giving me a strange kind of horn. When her gleaming, chatoyant nails dug into my skull I felt hot silvery shivers of sensuality run down my spine. I realised, as I often do at these moments, how strangely intimate the haircut experience can be.

I closed my eyes as her long, thin fingers worked deep and slow into my cranium. I could smell her cheap perfume. My brain locked into the background music, a brittle, glossy combination of writhing beats and clipped, saccharine vocals. My body began to tingle and myriad seductive scenarios ran through my mind. I slyly opened one eye. The strategically placed mirror in front of me duplicated the girl at just the right angle. I could watch her from the side and admire her curves as she worked her magic.

A slight smirk played on her lips, like she was aware of my surreptitious surveillance. The minx!

My breath quickened as her hands started to move down towards my chest. But no, no. It was never going to go that far. Just my overactive imagination. For all its lascivious ambience, this was a hairdressing salon and not a brothel. But the subtle similarities were nonetheless real. The erotic sensation of having a total stranger play intimately with your hair; the thrill of having a female hand gently (but firmly) move your head to the desired angle; the unavoidable dry swallow as a breast lightly brushes against your shoulder.

Clearly hair relief and hand relief are different things. But in the curious realm of gentlemanly titillation there’s something to be said for having someone chopping one out on your behalf.