Scene: Photo Vignettes I

Street Corner Buddha
Skeppsbron, Göteborg
August 29, 2008 9:25am

Musik i Full Fart [Music at Full Speed] v4

This post contains a list of new and notable music I've been listening to of late. Feel free to comment with your favorite songs and artists. I always welcome suggestions for music. To find out more about my musical tastes, check out my profile on LastFM.

Artist links will take you to an informational website (Myspace page, artist website, etc). Song links will take you to a video of the song.

I’ve dug a little deeper into world music for this edition. Some artists are repeat offenders; I’ve previously recommended their music. Enjoy!

Pop
From Australia, Gabriella Cilmi, with a full-throated voice like Anastacia, delivers in-your-face pop-rock on Save The Lies, the follow-up to Sweet About Me. Her next single is Don’t Wanna Go To Bed Now. Pretty smart lyrics coming from a 16 year-old. She's got the voice to back up the bravado. And, finally, in Gabriella’s case, who doesn’t love a good cover of Echo Beach! Also from OZ comes Vanessa Amorosi with her soaring Perfect. Yes, it is. For a sweet redux back to the 60’s pop landscape, there is UK artist Beth Rowley on So Sublime. Canadian singer Esthero is Never Gonna Let You Go. Now, if she could just offer this unreleased song for sale. Swedish rising star Veronica Maggio sings in Swedish, but her voice translates Stopp and Mandagsbarn into mod 60’s-esque pop gems. An Iranian-born Swedish artist, Arash (featuring Rebecca), was all over the airwaves last month with Suddenly. And, then there is Belgian singer Kate Ryan. Her last song (Voyage, Voyage) was pure europop. But not my cup of tea. And repetitive. The same can be said of her new song, Ella Elle l’a. Still, I cannot get it out of my head. The final Pop entry is huge in Europe. I’m not sold, but I’ll pass it along anyway. The Script from Ireland with the somewhat drippy The Man Who Can’t Be Moved. Maybe a new category: schmaltz pop.

Dance
Shine (Ian Carey Mix) is yet another dance song off of Booty Luv's debut album. More grooves to shake things up on the dancefloor. Laurent Wolf (featuring Éric Carter) brings on the euro-dance beats with No Stress (Club Mix). Bellatrax (featuring Sophia May) loses control on I Can’t Help Myself (Sunfreakz Mix). One of those songs where you want to be in the center of the dancefloor waving your arms over your head. Well, I do. On Mike Polo’s I Love U Baby (Extended Mix), I think we get it. Emphatically. I finally jumped on the fun, sexy Lady GaGa bandwagon. Teamed with Colby O’Donis on Just Dance, Lady GaGa may not be able to see straight, but she knows the ultimate destination is the dancefloor.

Alternative
Wow! When I first heard Stop The Clocks by German band Donots, it was like listening to WHFS in Washington, DC back in the early 90's. Ah, the good old alternative radio days. And I dating myself here? Probably. Still, how can you resist a music video with puppies? Someone who caught my attention then is back again: Juliana Hatfield. She teams with Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs on This Lonely Love. The song is a long way from Everybody Loves Me But You or Universal Heartbeat. Her voice and tone has matured nicely with age. From Spain, Amaral puts it out there on Kamikaze. If only Shakira had gone in this direction.

Adult Alternative
The search for the next retro-cool singer (think Amy Winehouse or Duffy) has turned up a young Swiss singer, Stephanie Heinzmann. She’s big in Germany and her voice is spreading across the continent. Check out Like A Bullet, My Man is a Mean Man, and Revolution to get a sense of her talent. Norwegian singer Maria Haukaas Storeng sang Hold On Be Strong in the 2008 Eurovision contest. I missed the performance. As such, I didn’t hear her song until it started flooding the airwaves this Summer. Finally, Irish singer Laura Izibor follows up the promise of From My Heart To Yours and Don’t Stay with breezy, bright Shine. Check out this talented voice!!!

Hip-Hop
In 2007, Norwegian group Madcon remade Beggin’ and garnered success in a few corners of Europe. What a difference a year makes. The song, an amalgam of hip/hop and retro pop, has made its way all over Europe in a big way. Dig deeper and check out their song Liar.

Guilty Pleasures
Swingle Singing. Huh? Say what? In Swingle singing, songs without lyrics are sung using the sounds doo's, boo's, dah's and bah's. It originated out of the 60’s from a group of French session singers led by Ward Swingle. Hence the name. The Swingle Singers have been through several incarnations, but are still around today (sans Ward).


Archive Posts
Musik i Full Fart Volume I
Musik i Full Fart Volume II
Musik i Full Fart Volume III

Ooh, it really makes me wonder...

There was a story at the English language news site, The Local, regarding pedestrian crosswalk signals. The signal (shown above) is manufactured by a Swedish company, Prisma Teknik, and is ubiquitous in Sweden. It is also found in a number of other countries around the world. Be on the lookout for it.

Seems innocuous, doesn't it? A warning light, a figure of a pedestrian, and a helpful hand that points up to the button that should be pressed before crossing the street. But, in reality, the hand actually is a hidden symbol for God. The president of Prioma Teknik states that "We want to show that there is only one way to reach God and that is up and through Jesus." Now that's a subliminal stairway to heaven!

Of course, it is possible that if you don't press the button, but still cross the road, you might end up reaching God a lot sooner. Having said that, I use the hand to guide me to the button every time I cross the road. Heaven can wait!

Parting Shots [Iceland]

The postmortem on Iceland as a photographic subject. In a place with unending panorama landscapes, I ended up taking a a good number of [classical] abstract images. Go figure. Not surprisingly, these abstracts are some of my favorite images from the trip.

Close up of boat docked on land. Red port hole. Orange rust. Flaking white paint. A hint of green through the port hole.

Some type of industrial propeller. Taken as a black and white. Heavy contrast.

Rusted part of shipwreck sitting in a sea of rounded black stones.

Piece of ice with great reflective/refractive light sitting on a black sand beach.

These images were taken with my Canon 5D digital SLR. Photos (and full captions) of the Iceland trip taken with my point and shoot camera can be found here.

Iceland: Fire and Ice Adventure

Iceland is vast. An amalgamation of varied worlds. It's the size of the state of Kentucky (TJ read that somewhere) but seems a million miles from the bluegrass state of mind. Except for the horses. There are a lot of horses in Iceland. They're hardy, like the people. They've survived fire and ice. And live in the great wide open. A visitor sees seemingly endless vistas like this one in the Westfjordlands. Icelanders live it. [click on images to see a larger view]

Getting around this island country was an adventure in itself. We had a Volkswagen Polo as our trusty steed. Manual. Which means TJ drove. And, brilliantly maneuvered across the variety of road surfaces that exist in Iceland. The Ring Road encircles the entire island. And it is paved. At least the sections we were on. But, straying away from the Ring Road is where road adventures begin. Most interior roads are called F-Roads. Rental cars are not allowed on F-Roads. We did not travel on F-Roads. But, we did drive on a lot of roads that were unpaved to varying degrees. Narrow. Occasionally steep. Usually with no guardrails. Like the road shown below. The posted speed limit was always much higher than what we felt could be driven given the conditions. But, not for the locals.

In Iceland, there were two things that stood out in the pockets of civilization. Restored churches and land-dwelling ships. There were churches everywhere...and anywhere. Many were situated adjacent to a homestead in the middle of pasture land. Sometimes with no means of access except to drive up to the adjacent house and park in the their driveway. We did not do this. Instead, we looked for the signposts indicating a church and access. As such, we did not visit a lot of churches. Most churches look like they were just built. Wood, stone and cement. Painted white with colorful roof and trim accents (usually red); though some churches were black. It turns out that many have been restored by the descendants of those who built or maintained the church (back in the day). Picturesque. Maybe that is the point.

As for the ships. Was this how [coastal] communities displayed their connection to the sea? Were the ships simply out of commission after years of sailing service? Had they all been blown ashore in big storms? Probably the truth resides in equal parts. Regardless, it was still kind of unique to see a ship moored on dry land. Smaller boats had been placed in playgrounds. A connection to the sea for young and old alike.

Water surrounds Iceland. And water flows out of Iceland. Water, water, everywhere. Falling. Thundering down to the sea. A land of waterfalls. Some were grand, like Gullfoss waterfalls.

Others were smaller (relatively speaking - note person in photo for scale). You could walk right up to them. And, in the case of Seljalandsfoss waterfalls (below), you could walk behind them.

Iceland is a land between two continents. It sits atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates are spreading apart. As such, it was born of volcanoes. Everywhere there is evidence of current and past geo-dynamic activity. Some violent, some beautiful, some both. TJ and I ventured to a couple of geothermal areas, mainly in South/Southwest Iceland. In one town, you could walk right up to the boiling mud. This was as close as I wanted to get. Still, it made me a bit nervous.

At another, we walked past warning barriers and into an unstable steam field. After a strong earthquake in late May, the activity shifted across an access road. We walked in and surveyed the spread of escaping steam. TJ walked out onto a lookout and boardwalk that had been closed for obvious reasons. Luckily, he only came away with dirty hands.

Other terrain in Iceland is a bit more benign. Lots of old and new lava flows. During the cooling of thick lava flows, fracturing can lead to the formation of hexagonal columns. Known as columnar basalt, these formation are found throughout Iceland. Sometimes, just the tops of the formation are exposed.

In a guidebook, we found some interesting statistics. Iceland comprises a land surface of about 100,000 square kilometers. Of this, glaciers represent 12 percent and pasture land another 24 percent. But, according to this source, the majority of Iceland (65%) is referred to as wasteland. At first, we thought that was a bit of a misnomer. But as we drove high above the fjords or across the moss-covered lava fields, we realized that wasteland was an apt description for this alien landscape.

In South Iceland, the Ring Road cuts through kilometers of coarse black grit surrounded by nothing but an occasional [large] boulder. This is glacial debris deposited by catastrophic floods when Katla, the volcano underneath Myrdalsjokull Glacier, erupted and melted the glacier. Katla has erupted 16 times in historical times; the last time in 1918. Driving on this flat black plane our thoughts turned to disaster scenarios. What would happen if Katla erupted while we were driving? Where would we go? Would/could we survive? We identified a high promontory on the coast that might offer safety. We were only here for a vacation, the farms and houses around us live with this doomsday scenario every day.

This mixture of fire and ice is what makes Iceland unique. But, with the fire, you likely want it small and contained. A hot springs or geyser will do. A violent, erupting volcano. No thank you, please. Yes, ice. Flowing ice. Melting ice. Sometimes, just eating ice. Here I am enjoying some ice that is likely over 1000 years old. Yes, in a sense, I am contributing to global warming. But, it was oh-so-enjoyable.

The highlight of the trip was seeing icebergs lying on a beach. Now, technically, I am not sure if they are still considered icebergs if not floating in water? But that's beside the point. Look at the colors. Look at the size. There was clear ice and coarse granular ice and snow cone ice. There was white ice, blue ice and black ice.

There were small icebergs and large, bigger than TJ, icebergs. It was a landscape like no other I had ever seen. And that is a lasting memory I wish to share with you.

I have posted more photos from our trip on Picasa here. Enjoy!

All photos shown on this post and on the Picasa link were taken with my new digital point and shoot camera. It is a Canon Powershot SD1100 IS in Bohemian Brown and I really like it.

Skyr: The Gelato of Iceland

I hadn't really given much thought to what food marvels I might discover in Iceland. If any, I assumed it would be a fish dish. But, on the Icelandair flight to Reykjavik, they served a creamy deliciousness called skyr. The in-flight magazine described it as a type of cheese product made from skim milk. But, it really fits into the yogurt family. However, in Iceland, they use the product in all types of dishes. So, it's not just a dessert sensation. Regardless, with low fat and high protein what's not to like. Skyr.is is the most prominent skyr product.

The taste is very familiar and, yet, quite different. I am tempted to say that it had a taste doppleganger in Yoplait's Custard Style Yogurt. But, I believe, Yoplait has changed the name (now Thick and Creamy), packaging, and maybe even the taste of that product since I last tried it. Damn those marketing execs!

Fret not, eager Americans, Whole Foods offers this delectable, cultured product in select regions of the country. I can only imagine what unimaginable price they charge for it, but try it anyway. At least once. Hopefully, it won't eat up your entire paycheck. For those of you in the rest of the world (myself included), a(nother) trip to Iceland is in order.

A-ah-ahh-ah, ah-ah-ahh-ah

we've come from the land of the ice and snow

from the midnight sun

where the hot springs flow

Back from Iceland. Amazing holiday. Amazing land. Our luck with the weather continued from the Italy trip. Only on the last two days was it overcast. But, even the clouds proved to be beneficial. We never would have noticed the partial solar eclipse had it been sunny. As far as midnight sun, we missed it by about a month. The sun actually set around 11:30pm and rose at 4:15am.

Our holiday is officially over. So, I will be posting about the Iceland trip as soon as I finish some posts on the Italy trip. August will be catch up month in that respect. Cheers.