Nick Miners Photography

An aston­ish­ing live per­form­ance from Icelanders FM Bel­fast at Cargo on 1^st June was the first time I had teamed up with a writer for an illus­trated review of a gig. Read the review on the 405’s new look site here.

The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerken­well is a very small, intim­ate venue where Hjaltalín, one of the most pop­u­lar homegrown bands in Ice­land, played a set at the start of their European tour. I went along to take some pic­tures, and also to enjoy what was a very well received and very enter­tain­ing per­form­ance. You can read my review at The 405.

On Wed­nes­day night (2^nd March), I had the immense priv­ilege of shoot­ing the second of two nights where Icelander Ólöf Arnalds played at the Vor­tex Jazz Club in Dal­ston, Lon­don. I had inter­viewed her by email before­hand, and you can read the inter­view, along with a review of the show, at The 405.

I’ve been to loads of places in 2010, as reg­u­lar fol­low­ers of this blog will be aware. Here, for those who are new, and any­one else who might be inter­ested, is a selec­tion of shots from each of the coun­tries, cit­ies and counties I’ve been lucky enough to visit.

On Thursday night (18^th) I went down to the Lex­ing­ton on Penton­ville Road, to watch (and pho­to­graph) three nor­dic bands at the monthly Ja Ja Ja Nor­dic event show­cas­ing new and unknown tal­ent from Scand­inavia. The first one I went to, in Octo­ber, fea­tured Icelanders Rökkurró (who provided the music for my Ice­land video), The Deer Tracks, from Sweden, and Norway’s Low Fre­quency in Ste­reo. It was the first live event I’d been to for a long time and I thor­oughly enjoyed it. A few weeks later, Hjaltalín, one of Iceland’s most pop­u­lar bands, played at the Hox­ton Bar and Kit­chen, and at both events I’d seen people wan­der­ing round unchal­lenged with their cam­eras, so I decided I’d give it a go myself.

The set opened with Lára Rún­ars, an Icelandic singer with a strik­ing hair­cut, and a taste for poppy bouncy tunes. I was stood at the back of the room by the bar, which was raised above the mosh pit, mean­ing I could use the 300mm lens to get some close-​​cropped images of Lára as she twirled and yelped with her hair fly­ing in all directions.

Next up were the most pop­u­lar band of the even­ing, Niki and the Dove, a three-​​piece from Sweden fea­tur­ing vig­or­ous vocals from singer Malin Dahl­ström over elec­tronic bleeps and beats, remin­is­cent of The Knife. For this per­form­ance I moved closer to the stage and switched to my 105mm lens.

The set ended with Cham­pagne Riot, a Dan­ish two-​​piece fea­tur­ing a vocal­ist and a laptop. Behind the per­formers two girls stood, one drum­stick each, bash­ing some retro 1980s style elec­tronic drum pads, but as all the sound was com­ing from the laptop I got the feel­ing they were just there for effect. The floor had emp­tied by this time as most people appeared to have turned up for the Swedes, mean­ing I had more free­dom to move in front of the stage for more angles.

I will def­in­itely be doing more pho­to­graphy of this kind in future, hope­fully at ven­ues where the light­ing is a bit more var­ied. It’s cer­tainly one of the best ways to mix up two of my favour­ite activ­it­ies, and my only regret is I didn’t start doing this much, much sooner.