wandering architects
journey from Brisbane, Australia through South East Asia to the UK
Haven’t been up to much recently as we are heading off for a couple of weeks in New York and San Fran – should be fun. We had a couple of friends up from Glasgow over the last weekend and turned out as the Adams Family at a southside Halloween do but otherwise had a quiet weekend.
On our return it looks like I’ll be house husband par excellence for a few weeks until my visa clears!
Our penultimate day at Dour dawned hotter and grimier, and dragged us complaining out of our tents at an early hour. After depositing Dave in the local town for an epic (and no doubt smelly) trip to Milan, we chanced upon a shady patch of grass and proceeded to stay there for the next 6 hours till the heat relented (all this exposure to Scottish weather has made us wilt in any form of heat!).
Once we made it to the festival proper, the slums clearing to a wasteland as people packed or abandoned tents on the way our energy levels were pretty low, along with most of the crowd, especially the guy below.
We watched a straight-up set from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, ducked to catch half of 65daysofstatic’s impressive performance (Battles meets Mogwai) before returning an entertaining show by Wilco. Amon Tobin then put on a massive two hour main stage closing set, including early Autechre to lift the energy levels a little. With a 20 min gap until Clark began, the fourth post-2am night began to catch up with us and despite a crisp fun set we (well Seb & I at least – Chhay was till powering on) caved half way through and headed back to the tent.
Monday was as wearying as expected – with packing up and a long return journey via London stretching the day out until 9 pm. The end to the festival was further soured when Seb had his bag (containing passport & camera) stolen from inside the tent – slightly less seriously one of Chhay’s fantastic fluorescent yellow boxing boots was also nicked – although they were is somewhat poorer condition than on the Thursday when we arrived (below).
In line with the best methods of the internet I’m just going to cut and paste from Seb’s latest group email for our day three description (extensive post length, illicit drug use and deity references warning!);
“A hot Saturday was mainly spent eating, playing 500 (you can’t stop Dave when he gets the cards in his hands), working on my tan in my Stubbies – and conserving energy for a big night. But at this point a note on camp hygiene is necessary.
The most dreaded activity was the water run: when our three or four litres ran out, someone had to make the trek through the slums and up to the nearest water station. There it stood, next to the awful toilets, in the middle of a godforsaken swamp which even the hottest Belgian sun could not begin to dry. People were washing dishes and themselves at the troughs with scant regard for water conservation, and a dark brown film of slime spread ever outwards, coating the nearby tents and rendering the path impassable to those without at least shoes, and preferably gumboots (the night before I had ended up ankle deep in filth on the way home). Undoubtedly the hygiene highlight, however, was the woman washing her hair in the trough downstream from two women cleaning out pots coated with tomato sauce.
That afternoon, I donned the swimming shorts and revelled as Dave slowly poured a 1.5l bottle of water over my head, enabling me to rinse the sweat and dirt coating from most of my body. Dave’s impatience was our most valuable asset in the fight for water; a confusing situation in which some people queued patiently while others pushed in, ensuring the queue rarely progressed.
But the real excitement began as we headed in at around 10pm: the authorities were finally attempting to clear a path through the slums! If only they had stationed just one person in each field to protect the paths on the Wednesday night, the whole ugly situation could have been avoided: confrontations between security and angry campers who had been there for three nights and saw no reason to move now; worse, the poor souls who had already left for the night’s music, and who would have returned in the wee hours to find their tents callously cast aside, and a path where none had been before.
It was great news for those of us in the outer suburbs, though.
OK, I hit enter twice. That’s because Autechre are about to enter our little story.
We warmed up with the Notwist, some nice German electro post-rock; after them, on one stage – La Petite Maison dans la Prairie, it was called! – and for one night only, were Luke Vibert, Autechre and Venetian Snares playing in succession. Vibert came on at 11:45 and was every bit as good as last year’s gig at the Prince of Wales where Avalon doesn’t remember talking to me. He played new acid house, breakbeats, jungle, he mixed in Vogue by Madonna and I didn’t hate it, there was even a hint of Aphex’s Start As You Mean To Go On. I was generally failry chilled, although after he dropped Squarepusher’s My Red Hot Car and everyone went berserk I was forced to join a group of drum and bass nutters on the floor and start some silliness…
… and then, from the ridiculously awesome to the sublime, the lights went down and the cleaniest, crunchiest beat imaginable exploded out of the speakers. For one hour, from 1am to 2am in the middle of a huge party – where they should be programmed – Autechre played easily the most amazingly fluid, unrelenting mix of electronic music I’ve ever heard. It was as hard and shiny as any of their new stuff, but with more regular beats and melodies than they’ve put out in at least a decade. The crowd felt suddenly devoid of the anger and macho energy of so much of the festival. Jaws dropped. Halfway in they hit a real sweet spot with a metallic rhythm being sucked into a blender, held down and then spat back out again; the guy behind me let out an ecstatic shout and whacked me on the shoulder. I turned to see him grinning incredulously at me, and I grinned back.
As the set got darker and faster, you could see some old school moves busted out as little pockets of energy burst out. Through the crowd, hand in hand, a group of desperately familiar feral ravers charged forward to help ignite the floor. It was eerily archetypal. I shivered with deja vu. I felt like I was in The Last Battle (as in Narnia) of raves, after the train wreck and the end of the world; that, if I just hung around long enough, I would hear every favourite track and meet every person I’d ever loved, from my old crews to the guy I smoked a joint with on a misty morning on the Melbourne docks.
In other words, it was a perfect hour. I’ve never had such high expectations, and they’ve never been exceeded like that. When the lights came on, I felt like I’d just heard God. For a moment, I completely forgot where I was or what I was doing. It was seriously disconcerting until I remembered that I’d just seen Autechre – and then I was happy but I still couldn’t speak. I missed most of Venetian Snares but I didn’t care.” (photo of post
author + chhay pre-autechre below).
A link to a small snippet of totally underwhelming mono videos from Autechre’s set here & here – not that there is anything to see. The only element of that day not covered in Seb’s report, was the final act of the night – a scary German mc called Otto Von Schirach – who, dressed up in a cape with a giant headpiece on shouting intense lyrics into his mike scared us off after about 20 minutes, and Seb not long after that – he returned to camp with a frightened look complaining that the audience for Otto were all dwarves who were singing along to all of his demented lyrics!
With a downpour overnight – Dour approached real music festival territory rapidly (mud, general filth, mud, crazy people on any number of substances, mud). Luckily the rain held off for the rest of the festival and things started to dry out over the course of the day but it was enough to coat everything in a light layer of stinky brown putrescence.
After escaping to Quievrain a local town far enough way to not have any other festival goers, for some additional supplies, a touch of civilisation and a decent loo, we headed into the main site to catch Hot Chip (above) turning the crowd into monkey’s with miniature cymbals with with same danceable early evening tunes.
After heading back to the tent for some pasta whipped up in true camping style on a trusty trangia we wander back in for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (below) who played a great twilight set on a beautiful evening – one of my highlights of the festival and a much better performance than when we saw them in Glasgow last year. We then meandered over the a new stage that had opened up to catch a bit of a chilled out Bright Eyes who was a little duller than I had expected although with some great made-on-the-spot low-fi visuals.
Seb then introduced us to breakbeat with a set from the UK’s Smith & Mighty – catchy if not really my scene. A brief boogie to Simian Mobile Disco marked them for future exploration before we upped the tempo a bit with some dubstep from Skream which again didn’t really catch me – although I am assured that they have performed better sets in different settings. Seb & Dave stayed on for Wiley but Chhay & I were back to the tent reasonably early to be fresh for the Saturday and the prime reason for us ending up in an obscure corner of Belgium in the first place…
Part 4 day music extravaganza, part high school catch up, three quarters giant trash mound; Dour festival offered much in southern Belgium last weekend. As it was quite epic in scale I’ll break it down into days to try to avoid curing everyone’s insomnia.
After a fairly straightforward trip there (taxi, train, plane, bus, train, train, bus, walk!) lugging two tents, four sleeping bags and four mats plus just enough room for a change of jocks we caught up with Seb & Dave at the site and proceed to track down a suitable campsite using all of our finest scouting techniques. It took 45 min of trudging – including negotiating a ‘slum’ of tents packed wall to wall with no path except over or through (a bit like the photo below), till we found a choice spot without too many neighbours and settled in.
Thursday’s line-up was predominantly electro and a little disappointing – nothing testing any boundaries. We ducked about the site orientating ourselves catching snippets of Bonobo, Kid 606 and Swayzak before settling in for the cheesiness of the main attraction the Wu-Tang Clan (above).
A solid dumping of rain overnight ensured that the festival got an appropriate mud fix, adding a degree of difficulty to negotiating the route from our camp – Chhay’s awesome fluorescent boxing boot’s pristine condition (below) was not to last for long…
With word on the street that summer might finally arrive in Scotland we instead escaped to Stockholm for grey and drizzle over Scandinavia. It was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to catch up with some of the unwashed masses of Australians that seem to be floating about the continent this summer, but although we didn’t catch up with the people we intended to it was still a fun weekend (if a little carbon intense).
We had a fairly low key approach spending most of our time in Sodermalm (above) the former working class area now over-run with bars, cafes fancy home ware outlets and trendy kids clothing shops, not to mention full of ‘hipsters’ according to the locals we met.
We kept our architecture addiction under control with a quick visit to Asplund’s world heritage listed crematorium & chapel (above) which were suitable serene in the misty rain, and a peek inside Raphael Moneo’s contemporary art museum which had a fantastic collection (much better though more conventional than Helsinki’s Steven Holl designed Kiasma even if the building was more sedate).
On Saturday night we continued a theme of catching bands missed in Glasgow by squeezing into a show by Deerhoof (below). Packed full of before-mentioned hipsters (Stockholm has a serious thing for skinny jeans and male annorexia!) it was a great gig, and according to a couple of the audience members we bumped into later, the peak of any Stockholm weekend.
Having peaked early with Deerhof, on Sunday I dragged Chhay along to learn how not to build a ship in 17th century Sweden, before we spent more time wandering in the rain and absorbing the cafe scene before our flight home.
Last weekend, despite forecasts of persistent rain we headed south of the border to the Lake District (of Keats, Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter & Jane Austen fame apparently) for a spot of camping.
With some Ballardian moments at eerie post-modern truck stops along the way we managed to get our tent set up before the meteorologists were proved correct. We were luckier than our friends who were joining us from London – they didn’t arrive until 2 am and in the middle of a downpour.
Our tent was less than 100 % waterproof so we endured a slightly damp evening, including waking up with our shoes in a pool of water. However we had reasonable weather for the rest of the time we were there with low cloud and occasional misty rain adding to the atmosphere.
Testing Claire’s footwear (and endurance) to the limit we completed a small circuit around Lake Buttermere at which we were based on the Saturday, after a leisurely breakfast at the local pub. The views were quite beautiful – Scotland with grass, and there were interesting remnants of quarries to investigate.
On Sunday we skipped more walking opting instead for a more leisurely peramble around Keswick the local touristy town including a paddle on the Derwent Water (below) where Claire practiced her rowing technique.
We took the long way home, via small villages and some coastal towns, enjoying the sunshine till 10 pm
Having tasted the purity of Scandinavia we then ventured back to the somewhat more rough & tumble Berlin. With more rain, graffiti and abandoned buildings it was a different but no less interesting cityscape that awaited us.
We spent a couple of days in the South West of the city including a day trip to Potsdam and the Sans Souci palaces and gardens(above), and a quick sqiz at the somewhat surreal Norman Foster library at the Free University (below) before heading east.
Most of our time was spent wandering the wonderfully textured inner suburbs of Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain(below) and Kreuzberg ducking into cafés or bars whenever the weather turned ugly. It was nice to have limited time pressures having covered touristy things in our previous visit 6 years ago. As there is a huge surplus of accommodation in Berlin there are fantastic re-uses of vacant buildings dotted about the place with beautiful run-down apartments overlooking leafy squares.
We tried to taste a bit of the culture of the city – watching Holly Golightly play at a tightly packed smoky bar as well as visiting a slew of Wallpaper mentioned bars and clubs with our architouring friends – the architecture tended to be great while the music was often crappy house. There was even a design festival on while we were in town to allow us to complete our overdose of design.
Located ourselves on the outer edge of Europe for a few days last weekend – a week too early for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest we learnt to our dismay.
The city itself was fantastic – absolutely spotlessly clean with wide streets and crisp building lines giving a sharp edge to every perspective. Surrounded by water we explored quite a few bays and islands but spent most of our time wandering the streets, checking out new architecture (as we were architouring with our friend CJ) and hanging out in bars & cafés meeting the locals. Each little bay at the end of a street provided a new surprise – bits of working harbour jammed up against luxury residential development, or an eight storey high ferry moored right in the centre of town.
People seemed particularly friendly – in a bit of a ‘why the hell are you here’ sense and we made some great contacts for future visits. The bars and cafes (there isn’t much of a distinction they all serve multiple purposes it seems) were great – quite simple food, very clean understated interior design that made them feel comfortable without seeming fussy.
Architecturally the best stuff we found was at the end of random tram rides (trams are now a requirement for Chhay & my next city of residence, we have decided after this trip) rather than the flashy new buildings in the centre of town.
Aalto’s Finladia Hall (below) was still the highlight however, sitting delicately in it’s context, even if we weren’t allowed inside.
Aberdeen was lovely for a day. The gig on Friday night was an interesting mix of classical piano & guitar with some old school synth action. We then caught up with Claire’s friend and chatted away until about two in the morning. This was fine apart from the 7 am start that she had the next day – necessitating an early exploration of Aberdeen on our behalf. Thankfully the weather was beautiful and the Granite City was sparkling at its finest (we have heard that it is much less pleasant in the grey of winter). After wandering the city for a couple of hours including a trip to the beach and a visit to the medieval section of Old Aberdeen we meandered our way down the coast via a couple of charming spots.
Stonehaven (above) was our first stop – a little fishing village that is the original home of the deep-fried mars bar! We grabbed elevenses at a cute cafe at the end of the pier before wandering down the road to speak to the ghosts at Dunnottar Castle which is sited dramatically on a narrow peninsula.
Late in the afternoon in the deepest heart of Fife we located the Henderson family’s old castle (well large house is a better term really) at Fordell. Now guarded by security cameras and the home of a reclusive Spanish film star we didn’t get past the gates however plans are afoot for the storming and recapture (I have contacted the local medieval society for advice).
Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire absolutely rocked out the Bongo Lounge in Edinburgh later that night, with old skool moves very much the order of the day. A handlebar moustache and Legionnaires outfit completed the picture.
Struggling somewhat after a very long weekend we had a relaxing afternoon at the Tramway back in Glasgow on Sunday, lazing about at the Ballads of the Books gig. A little poetry, some sunshine and a helping of ‘fey indie pish’ (according to our electro-head friend Andy) spent with just about everyone we know in Glasgow was delightful.
Not to be deterred by Monday looming large in the rear vision mirror we squeezed in a late nightclub gig at the styling Optimo watching James Chance & the Contortionists – the white man’s James Brown strut his stuff. Much like James Brown he seemed more dead than alive but despite hair to rival Donald Trump he had the kiddies baying for more.