Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
The End of the Highway To Hellvar Tour February 2015
Thx to all the lovely people who showed up at our shows.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Sunday, February 22, 2015
On Tour with Hellvar - Heiða's Diary # 7 & # 8
# 7
Woke up this morning in London, always a
pleasant feeling. We had had a strangely packed day yesterday, with a new
tattoo and a train-ride and London transport and dinner on the run and a jam
session evening and a ride home in the London-by-night, special Franck-mobile,
so bed and rest was extremely called for. 10 o’clock I woke to do yoga,
and had killer breakfast, played some brass instruments and went for a walk.
Kinda hanging around in Crystal Palace, and am gonna get back to Franck’s place
in a minute and start finding my way up to Fulham. Tonight we play in the
Southern Belle, very excited about that.
# 8
Train-ride
from London to Bedford was a trip! Listened to an album called “Ecstasy”, a
solo-album by Lou Reed that is absolutely fantastic, and goes down very well in
a train. Bedford turned out to be quite the rock’n’roll town. We got a great
soundcheck, great soundwoman doing it, and we ended up hearing everything on
stage and having a rocking powerful sound out!!! This helped to make it an
excellent show, and the regulars at Danny’s Bar were even happy. Sold a few
cd’s and T-shirts, had many many nice conversations, laughed a lot. Drove home
in Steve’s van listening to Dub side of the moon, a great discovery. Tonight
Hellvar rocks out in Kettering´s The Old Market Inn
Photos by Franck Alba
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
On Tour with Hellvar - Heiða's Diary # 6
# 6
Leicester on a
Tuesday-night is not the busiest night of the week, so we didn’t really get a
lot of people to our gig. We did get a leatherclad punk in, tho, who loved
Hellvar so much he bought all the cd’s we had to sell, 1 of each, 5 kinds. He
is also coming to Reykjavik on the 31st of July, and I’m gonna teach him
Icelandic. Good gig, all in all, nice sound. Went this morning and got a
tattoo!!! Then took the train to London, and am now sitting with Elvar and our
friend Franck, in his flat in Chrystal Palace. Jam session tonight, gig
tomorrow in Fulham, London.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
On Tour with Hellvar - Heiða's Diary # 4 & # 5
# 4
Indeed a lazy Sunday,
off-day. Only time I went out today was to go to a real English Sunday roast in
a real English family. It was wonderful. I read a bit, listened to a bit of
radio, had a bath and dozed around the flat. Tomorrow we rehearse and then on
Tuesday there is a gig in Leicester.
# 5
Monday, Monday. Not a
bad Monday at all. Woke up to go out for a walk at 09.00 AM. Had made a promise
to myself, after having stayed inside almost the whole Sunday, to explore more
of Kettering, and to find a café I could call my hangout, and where there would
be excellent coffee and good vibes to write. Found it, it is called Cortados,
and has spanish tapas, good coffee, nice tea-selection and great people. Love
my new hangout, actually went there twice today. In between those two times I
went to rehearsal with Hellvar. We added 4 songs to the mix. Now I’m all done
with this Monday, gonna go read a book. See you in Leicester tomorrow night!
Sunday, February 15, 2015
On Tour with Hellvar - Heiða's Diary # 3
I should be cool in a Hellvar T-shirt
# 3
Very
varied mix of things today. After I slept in a little bit I went to the
train-station to buy tickets for London next week. I sat down and wrote some
poems. Had a sandwich, and as I was a good girl and finished my sandwich, I had
a right to some desert (MaltEaster in the shape of a bunny rabbit, v.g.). I
walked up to the old catholic church, and went in to get some proper goth-atmo.
Must have worked because the first thing I saw when leaving the church was a
small group of modern-time goths, with very weird and nice music coming out of
bad speakers attached to someone’s phone. I tried following the group a bit to
see where they would go, but I thought they spotted me so then I went to the
local art gallery instead. Saw an exibit on Selfies, modern and old painting
ones. great one, very well curated and both informative and entertaining. Got
back, changed my chords, van came to pick us up. Loaded the van up, drove to
Northampton /capital of goth in England, Bauhaus are from there. Loaded in,
soundchecked, ate chinese, played,...
Saturday, February 14, 2015
On Tour with Hellvar - Heiða's Diary # 1 and # 2
Heiða's Diary
# 1
From 5 am to
5 pm we were either in a plane or in a car. We arrived at Gatwick
around noon, Andri, Bogi, Elvar and Heiða, and we found our instruments in one
piece, thank you very much! We waited for Alexandra, coming from Stockholm, and
when everyone had pissed and smoked and drank coffee and eaten and smoked and
had more coffee, we left for the first part of the roadtrip….. Costa Coffee and
Marks and Spenser’s are to England what McDonalds is to U.S.A: All over the
highway to Hellvar.
# 2
Woke at 9, did a
radio-interview. walked around Kettering got strings and David Bowie songbook
with chords. Everybody looks nice and friendly and there is a market in the
center and a lot of magic in the air. Northhamtonshire is blowing me away with
beauty and peace. We ate at a nice café up the road, went to a rehearsal
studio, got back, I went swimming and got laughed for showering naked, had
indian food for dinner, went to a very lively pub in which we play a week from
now. Laughed a lot, and got back the first of course. Rest of Hellvar are out
there with all of Kettering doing some crazy things, and I’m quite happy being
back at the house. Super charged day. Now I need a rest.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Highway to Hellvar: The Way It Was and Is
Biography
Hellvar started in 2004 when the founding members Heiða Eiríksdóttir and Elvar Geir Sævarsson (Heiða + Elvar = Hellvar) moved to Berlin to
study philosophy. Heiða had been a singer in the band Unun (the band of ex-Sugarcube Thor Eldon & Dr. Gunni) which released 2 albums: "Super Shiny Dreams" (1995, released in
Iceland one year earlier as “æ") and "Ótta" (Almost morning, 1999), as well as an EP-album called “Bones”
(1997).
Heiða made 2 solo-albums "Svarið" (The answer, 2000) and
a Charles Bukowski-tribute entitled "Sun Fruit Grape Shine" (2003).
Another album "tiufingurupptilguds"
(2003) was made as Heiða & Heiðingjarnir (band members were Birgir
Baldursson, Sverrir Ásmundsson &
Elvar Geir Sævarsson). Material
written for their rock band was rearranged for a drum machine.
Hellvar
became a trio with Flosi Þorgeirsson as bass player, who
plays in the famous Icelandic band HAM. First
project was an art-installation called 'Hellvar – ekki Helvar', that took place in
Keflavík’s SSV-gallery from December 2005 to January 2006, when Elvar, Heiða
Flosi and a video-artist called Sunna Guðmundsdóttir transformed a gallery into
a working recording studio/rehearsal space and lived there for 3 weeks, recording
an experimental album to be released in 10 copies only.
Early
2007 Hellvar became a quartet: Flosi left the band, but child prodigy Alexandra joined on guitar and bass
virtuoso Sverrir was added to
the line-up. Together the two boys and two girls stirred up a cocktail
from electro-indie to new-wave with a twist of lime. Debut album "Bat out of Hellvar" was released in
the end of 2007 and was the first release on the new Icelandic record label Kimi
Records. The band toured in the USA, Germany and China, and then started
working on their next album, adding Ólafur Ingólfsson to the mix on live drums.
The 2nd album "Stop that noise"
was released on Kimi label in September 2011, and later that same year
an acoustic version, "Noise that stopped" was recorded, picking the bands favourite songs from Bat
out of Hellvar and Stop that noise. Around 200 limited edition home-made cds
were made. Now Sverrir left the band because he moved with his family to
Denmark and Haukur of the band Morðingjarnir (The Murderers) replaced
him. Ólafur the drummer had to leave shortly after that and Birkir Fjalar Viðarson, of I Adapt and Bisund,
drummed for a while inspiring Hellvar to become more of a noticeable full-on
Rock-band.
Vocalist Aðalheiður Arna
Björgvinsdóttir came to do some backings for while. She also has a solo project
called Death of a Scoobafish. Baldur
Sívertsen stood in for Alexandra when she was living in Belgium for a couple of
months, and a bandmember of his, Andri
Geir Árnason replaced Birkir, but Andri and Baldur had been together in Hljómsveitin Ég and Monterey, and Andri had been drumming
for the legendary Geirfuglarnir.
In 2014 a lot of writing got done for the next album and by fall 2014
Alexandra moves to Sweden, and Haukur decides to concentrate on Morðingjarnir.
Hellvar becomes a four-piece for a while, with Andri drumming, Heiða and Elvar
playing guitars and doing vocals and Bogi Reynisson joining on bass. His most
recent band has been Sushi Submarine but he was also in two legendary bands,
Sororicide and Stjörnukisi. Genious-musician Hallvarður Ásgeirsson steps in to
play guitars in the fall of 2014. Early 2015 the Icelandic and Swedish branches
of Hellvar unite their kingdoms in United Kingdom, as a tour is booked in
February.
An album is due later that year...
To be continued
An album is due later that year...
To be continued
Thursday, December 18, 2014
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