Time for Those Foggy Mornings

Every year people complain that winter comes suddenly: there's Indian summer and then the freezing winds of the Arctic, and you can't ever really wear your autumn jacket because you're either too hot or too cold in it. I am coming to think that the famous transition period- probably should be October-never really existed. It's simply that there is a point in autumn when temperatures rather abruptly plummet and you suddenly decide, right, so from today on I am officially cold. 

The up side of this momentous event is that it's also the start of fog season-but fog is, of course, notoriously fickle-you never know which morning it's gonna be there, if it's there, you never know if it's going to last long enough to make a pretty picture. And it's not any kind of fog we're talking about here, but Danube fog, which, even if it's there, can occasionally play the trick of comfortably floating along the river, like a humid fata morgana. This morning's fog was, however, the lazy fluffy candyfloss style, just hovering there over the water, feeling quite reluctant about revealing even giant sized buildings such as the Parliament.

Budapest Says No

We don’t always protest, but when we do, it’s because we must. There’s many silly things Hungary’s current government has done, but taxing the Internet is probably the silliest. Not necessarily because we couldn’t live with another 700 forints a month sent to the state’s already greedy pockets, but because access to information for everyone must be free.

St Vincent @ A38

The lady is totally touched in the head- and that’s the most wonderful compliment there is. Why be normal, when you can be better? Musically speaking St Vincent might be an acquired taste- her songs are simply too complex to be liked immediately, but then try as I might, I still cannot get Rattlesnake out of my head since Saturday night.

Her stage presence on the other hand is totally straightforward: she is there in a way very few other artists are- it actually takes a bit of concentration to figure out which track she’s playing, as you’re too mesmerized by the sight of her being so otherwordly and present at the same time. But then she breaks into a guitar solo and the music floods back into your mind-she is so technically perfect it almost comes off as cold, but then there’s a glimmer in Annie Clarke’s eye that makes her prowess so very human.

There was much fanfare before her concert that this would be the best club event of the year- well what else could you do, if you were the promoter, but sell your ware. This time however they might have been right- there are undeniably many strong live acts out there, but very few are so idiosyncratically different as St Vincent- at the end of the line, when you count the performances you’ve seen, of course you’ll remember the one with the girl with the silver hair stagediving into a crowd of adoring male groupies.

   

Caribou @ A38

In this autumn season of many delights, I was about to skip Caribou, but then of course you have friends to pester you into going and there was that 9/10 review in NME which piqued my interest. So I duly started listening to the lavishly praised "Our Love', and it was quite alright. The opening track positively electrified me and I immediately sent it to my ever growing best of 2014 playlist. But then I somehow failed to truly connect to the rest of the album- yet, somewhere at the back of my mind a thought hovered: these might be exactly the type of songs that need to be played on stage to really come alive. 

And I can now confirm that my presumption proved correct- I would even venture into saying that the live version is the true test of electronic music. It's often maligned as machine sounds produced by a knob turning some other knobs, but the better kind connects to some subconscious switch in your mind that can't always be accessed otherwise. If last Sunday Enter Shikari made the boat quite positively rock, Caribou just swayed it a little. But that little was magic.