KLINK & BANK’S FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY: Relevant as Ever

You had to find it at random, but I wandered into one small room to find a menu hanging on the wall was different songs you could order from the band Apparat. They also had quite an impressive collection of old organs in their tiny workshop.

In the large space downstairs, gigantic shapes of drums were on display next to Sugarcube alumnus Sigtryggur, the drummer, with tools in his hands doing what looked like last minute fixing. Next to his space, one could watch a lonely documentary about the loneliest place on Iceland, the lighthouse at Galtaviti.

Mercifully, the drumming began. Steintryggur along with two other drummers lashed at cones and the massive drums. I was on my way into a good trance, feeling the Icelandic aboriginal blood in me boiling with desire to merge with the sound. Close as K & B has ever come to a genuine moment.

However my trance was cut short as four dancers came bursting in with the sort of movements that I don’t know if they irritate me or simply bore me. I found it strange how the dancers always seem to get out of the dance into the role of the model as soon as they caught the eye of the camera. I personally would have liked to only watch the mad drummers; it is so rare you get to focus on drummers. Drummers have always been my favourite to look at, at gigs, so consumed into the music that all level of pretentiousness is impossible. It would have been cool for a change to see the drummers in the foreground and only them.

On my departure, I couldn’t help reflecting on what was noticeably absent from Klink & Bank. On the very same day as the birthday of Klink & Bank was another more infamous birthday, the second year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.