Supports: Kruk; Venue: Circolo Degli Artisti, Rome
By: Lara Cappelli
After the recent release of his second full-length “…And They Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness”, Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds is now touring all over Europe to promote it, accompanied by a string quartet.
| In an half empty venue, the three members of the Italian band Kruk entered the stage. What they convey is a mixture of Alternative and Soft Rock with some peaks of experimentalism. When listening the recorded tracks, Kruk music has some kind of Radiohead influence that turns into a way slower outcome when heard in a live situation. That’s because for tonight’s show, their music was reduced to a simple combination of voice, guitars and keyboards, respectively from Marco Biasioli, Alessandro Ventura and Andrea Boccadoro, without any bass or drums. Despite that, those who were on time to see them seemed pleasantly surprised by what the band had to offer, especially the first rows, that seemed to be full of people who were actually there for them. Their shy attitude didn’t really make the difference in the final involvement of the audience though, as the guys hardly said anything at all to the public; their music did that for them instead. Those who appreciated Kruk music enough had the chance to take home their cd that the members of the band were distributing for free after the gig. |
| For those of you who are not confidential with this name, Ólafur Arnalds is a young man from Iceland. It’s quite a challenge to put his music into one genre rather than another: it varies from Electronic to Indie or pure Classical music. When it comes to describe his lives, it gets even more complicated as it’s here that his music comes to life. His shows are generally not only “musical” but visual too, and tonight’s one was no exception: he barely used the lights provided by the venue, and added a personal touch with some light bulb threads and neon lights put on the floor that turned on at music time. All of this factors created a silent and surreal atmosphere that perfectly matched the tone of the music. This atmosphere was so settled, that the silence in the venue was grand and people seemed almost afraid of breaking it by clapping at the end of every song. This fact was noticed by Ólafur himself too, who jokingly pointed out how weird it was to see such a silent audience in Italy. He mainly played the songs of his latest release “…And They Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness”, but let some time for the older “3055” and “Fok” as well. Sometimes it seems that so many words are needed to describe a special thing that it feels like they are almost too many, so one rather uses only one that, as reductive as it may appear, best describes that thing. The word for tonight is breath-taking. I suggest you to have proof of that by making sure to attend one of his concerts whenever you have the chance to, it’s definitely worth it. |
Links:
Kruk MySpace
Ólafur Arnalds MySpace
Ólafur Arnalds Official
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