Mix #25

The new year greets us with another lockdown. 

I'm doing The Guardian's 31 day literary diet, and would recommend as something to cut through the cold monotony. I'm not really one for new year resolutions, I try to fold things in throughout the year. Remember to be kind to yourself as we slug forward.

Mix #25

A playlist I put together last year, but always takes me a while to go through and edit.

New things from Landshapes, Sister Wives, Bill Callahan and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Tony Njoku's remix of Goat Girl (think I prefer to the original), Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood, Katy J Pearson, Hot Chip and Jarvis Cocker, Dry Cleaning, ANOHNI covering Gloria Gaynor, Eartheater, Desire Marea, Alabaster DePlume, Frazey Ford (taken me a little while to get on board with this but really love this one now), Shintaro Sakamato, Special Interest.

Old things from Hiroshi Yoshimura, Mdou Moctar, Mort Garson (more reissues came out last year), Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk, D'Angelo, Fugazi, Outkast, Broadcast, Kendrick, Galaxie 500, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Dirty Three, The Clean, John Lennon.

More Robert Wyatt, Joni Mitchell and Shafiq Husayn. Plus what I would say are the two central pieces of music from 'Small Axe: Lovers Rock' and one more from it for luck. Can't wait to dance to "Silly Games" in a club. I've never really delved into reggae much, but would recommend the playlist from the film as a good starting point. 

 

Paolo Pellegrin

Spending my days watching telly, crafting and going out for the occasional cycle/walk. Would recommend Babyteeth on Netflix

My first trip to Oslo part 2

The glorious sun of yesterday has departed this morning and replaced it with rain. We had plans so my and Sam headed down to Radhuset where the rain came down especially hard, perfect timing for a ferry trip across to Bygdøy (no 91) and walked over to the Viking Ship Museum - we only had time for one ship museum before lunch and decided on the vikings cause you know the history of Norway and all that. Sam lamented that there was no norse god type museum (we couldn't find one anyways) and wondered how good the Fram Museum would have been. 

The Viking Ship Museum had two two very well preserved boats, one not so much plus lots of well preserved wagons and other things these people had been buried with and also a burial chamber. It's not a huge museum but we finished just about on the time we had to leave for lunch so a good size for us. 

Viking Ship Museum

Lunch in question was on a tiny island (Herbern) of the coast of Bygdøy. We waited on a small pier for a small boat to take us over to the island - a very short ride! The restaurant, Lille Herbern, was in a beautiful location - I'd imagine if it hadn't been raining, it would have been even nicer - definitely a place to spend several hours chilling on the swing chairs, watching canoes go by. There was no one else in the restaurant - we had got the small ferry over with one of the chefs - whilst we waiting for the others to find the pier, but the sky started clearing and we could see back to the mainland and start to hear the festival bands as well. 

The menu is small, the food is delicious. I went for catch of the day (salmon) and apple tart, ice cream and an earl grey for afters. 

We skimmed stones for a while and then jumped on the mini ferry - as we got off, there was a smartly dressed party waiting to head over, I think this restaurant was definitely a special occasion place but I'm really glad we went. We walked past the Fram, and got on the ferry back to Radhus. We had a pit stop at our friend's apartment in Grønland. We had a sneaky tequila before heading to the medieval park (Middelalderparken) for day 2 of Øya Festival.

Lille Herben ferry

Fram Museum & Kon Tiki statue 

Opera House (Operahuset)

First up, was Grimes - who sounded a little out of tune in places (not the best time I've seen her anyways). As we arrived so late, it was now turn for today's headliner Kendrick Lamar (smallest headliner of the festival) who played with a live band. 

The festival is quite green, so offers a 1 kroner for each returned plastic cup intact, there were a lot of kids scurrying around collecting for pocket money but two of our friends started during Kendrick and soon enough had 200 cups (the equivalent to about £20 so pretty good). By the time they finished, the exchange point was closed so they put them in the cloakroom (?!). 

The one

How to survive Oslo's prices 

The precious raffle ticket

A further stop at the close apartment where we made toast. The others headed to the RA party, but we took the opportunity for a relatively early night. 

Friday - the sun is out again! We headed to meet some friends and got the ferry from Vippetangen to Hovedøya. We got the long one so went past the other islands Bleikøya, Gressholmen & Lindøya Ost. We headed to a bathing spot and went straight for the water. The Oslo Fjord wasn't too cold to swim in, but took a while for the water to get deep. We had a little chill post dip and got the quick ferry back to the mainland. On our way back to our apartment, we stopped off a weird second hand market on Storgata but couldn't find anything to buy. 

A local bar

Hovedøya 

Second hand market

After some quiet time, we walked yet another route to the festival, this time going through the financial district. I could hear Parquet Courts starting 'Stoned & Starving' as we arrived towards the end of their set. We headed to Goat - a Swedish band I was very excited about seeing live. They were all wearing masks, lots of feathers and even a burka. The show was great - bought the record when we got home. We watched James Blake from the riverside and had an Illegal Burger for dinner to get ourselves prepped for Kraftwerk. I thought it would be a safe bet to go toilet after Autobahn, but then Tour de France came on so I had to run back. When I did make it to the toilet, I could hear Beach House's soothing sounds from backstage - it was a shame they clashed.

Kraftwerk

 

Post festival, we got on a bus organised by the festival for a midnight excursion to the Botanical Gardens. It was the first time, they had ever opened up the gardens after closing and it was lit by candles along the path - very special. We were given a beer and shown into the small house with Victoria Lilys, we then were given some food and sat on picnic tables listening to a Norwegian artist. After getting dropped off back at Sentral, we headed to Sukkerbiten again, this time for Todd Terje. We had some fun on the opera house on our way back. 

All photos my own. 

My 2nd Latitude

A couple weekends ago, I took my sister off to Latitude for her birthday and some fun and games. 

The fun and games got off to a delayed start whilst the British Transport Police worked on a getting a man off Ipswich station's roof for 7 hours - we suggested a tranquiliser dart as we made our way from London to Cambridge to Norwich to Diss......

Eventually, we got to our campsite and quickly set up the tent with a beer in hand - natch. 

We had pretty much missed all the live music by this time but managed 10 minutes of Japandroids and 20 minutes of Bloc Party playing some 'Silent Alarm' hits with lasers - always good. 

My sister wasn't really into Guilty Pleasures the year before so we decided to go to In the Woods, I then wandered over to the Lake Stage where Moshi Moshi were DJing and certainly enjoying themselves. We camped out here for most of their set before I rejoined my sister at In The Woods and it was time for the stages to close and we headed back to the guest bar for more drinks. It had now been officially my sister's birthday for a few hours so we sung 'Happy Birthday' and chatted into the daylight hours.

Changing at Cambridge

De-thistling our tent area

Friday evening

We started Saturday with some mimosas, unfortunately having to sacrifice seeing Dylan Moran over finishing the prosecco. Our friends arrived around the time White Denim started so we had to miss them as well, not going so well on the music front. However, then it was time for Jagua Ma, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hot Chip and Kraftwerk who certainly made up for our lack of progress earlier that day. We started on the vodka around YYYs - who were my 2nd highlight of the weekend - so by the time Kraftwerk were finished - my highlight even if the 3D thing wasn't amazing - we were ready to party hard. We attempted to get our party on at Buttoned Down Disco but had to retreat to the guest bar where tunes were more plentiful. We realised it would be better to hit the hay before it got bright so retired around 4am. 

D's birthday

Kraftwerk excitement 

A good start to a Sunday begins with Bobby Womack, so we happily obliged. We hung out for a few hours, before heading to Temples at the i Arena. I was enjoying their set but couldn't stay till the end as the dust from the woods worked itself into my eyes and nose - worse than tube nose. We watched a good portion of James Blake before packing up the tent and heading back to the train station for a cup of tea, sausage sandwich and our carriage home. 

I feel Latitude is the perfect sized festival for me, it's a great site and perhaps we didn't work this to our advantage this year, but a varied bill of not just music.