Living water healing spirit
Life flows from these soothing rivers
When you're plagued and feeling thirsty
When life stings and shows no mercy
Here you'll always find relief

Music and poetry come together in Asgeir’s work, a masterly achievement in my ears and a promise for much to come I hope. Well, the poetry is actually his father’s, who is an Icelandic poet. Asgeir translates it into English (or not) and creates the music, which can be typified as having roots in folk, with a dreamy electronic stage. His music ends end up in several of my favourite playlists, especially the ones I like for a photo walk, so I thought: let’s see him live. This week Asgeir was on tour in The Netherlands and I went to see him in Rotterdam.

Camera along
I read that the concert was going to be seated so I took my ‘larger’ Fuji X-T3 body along with with the 56 f/1.2 mounted and 23 f/2 lens in the pocket of my hoodie.

I shot everything in jpeg with raw back-ups. I’ve not used the raw’s! For those not used to Fuji camera’s: they have amazing in-camera film-simulations and settings that make beautiful jpegs, both color and b&w. I wanted a relatively hard b&w look with some grain and tiny bit of paper colouring, so I selected my settings for what I call is a “Tri-X push” look. It’s like I’ve loaded a film and will shoot the entire event with that look, one that I see when I look through the viewfinder of the mirrorless camera. And it makes the post-processing so quick, more a matter of selection.

The streets of Rotterdam
Walking from the train station to the concert in a very windy Rotterdam. Some impressions:

The intro act - Lian Ray
Lian Ray is a French songwriter who recently exiled himself to Amsterdam after a decade spent battling his demons in Berlin. He excels in honest, nocturnal pop songs with an emphasis on dark romanticism. I was lucky to sit in the first row and was able to compose some frame-filling photos:

Asgeir
The new album “Bury the Moon” was just released this month. The story is that he withdrew with his piano and guitar to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to write the music (I can connect to that, loving a nature-retreat on a regular basis). and now I know this, I can kind of hear it in the music with some of the texts and sounds representing nature. I’m a huge nature fan, so liking it more and more!

On stage the performance was top. Asgeir himself sits calmly behind his instrument, singing vulnerable poems while he and his band behind him make a mix of sounds that do great all big on a stage. He added some songs in Icelandic to great enthusiasm of the audience. A memorable evening of music, photography and poetry. Moments like these… just make me thankful!