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A year ago, at the large Oslo music festival called By:Larm, my friend Veronica and I sat down at our favorite kebab house to take a break from an endless line of concerts. We ate our falafel, had a photo shoot (a weird tradition we have at Parthenon kebab), and then looked closer at the festival program once more. In this one hour spot we could choose between a whole lot of concerts, but we didn’t know any of the bands at all. So. We just picked a name that sounded weird. And this was the concert with the Icelandic band Hjaltalín – which ended up being the best concert experience I have ever had.

We have attended two more concerts with this wonderful band after this love-at-first-sight meeting. One of these was localized in the Norwegian mountains and involved tents and large amounts of water falling from the sky…

Me and Veronica to the left waiting for our falafel – unaware that we are about to meet the love of our life, Hjaltalín, at their John Dee concert.

Two Hjaltalíners performing at the Vinjerock festival. And our camp site filled with happy campers welcoming the long lost sun in the Jotunheimen mountains.

Now I am counting the days until Hjaltalín will be back in Oslo again; at Revolver Wednesday February 3rd. I listen to their beautiful album Sleepdrunk Seasons all day, watch their YouTube videos, I hum along, and get the warm fuzzy feeling inside. And instead of me rambling on about how fantastic this band are, you should check it out for yourself on MySpace. And watch their beautiful music videos:

Traffic Music. I love this animation style. Made by Hermann Karlsson.

Traffic Music (acoustic version). I just had to show this one too.

Unfortunately I stepped on the red carpet to the Norwegian Crown Prince tonight. That wasn’t very popular amongst the police. But as you can see in the photo, we were quite a crowd at the opera house in Oslo, and I believe showing our support for the people of Haiti was more important than royal carpets this time.

Lots of artists contributed to this evening called “Dugnad for Haiti”. The act I enjoyed the most was when Ingrid Olava, Thom Hell and Lars-Lillo Stenberg sang Beatles’ song Because. My Mom “discovered” the great sound of the band Minor Majority, and the voice of Noora Noor, which is fantastic. If you’re into soul music, anyway.

For me both Thom Hell and Minor Majority are the sound of fall 2004 when I just moved to Bergen to study – and Bergen broke all records when it comes to rainy weather. I handled the rain by staying indoors listening to nice music. Thom Hell’s album “I love you” is definitely lovable, and I just have to list some of the songs from this album, because I want to share those amazingly beautiful pop tunes (links to Spotify): Mourning Sun, So You’re Leaving, Tired , Some guy, Why Do I Feel

But back to the victims in Haiti – call 820 44 001 to give 200 NOK to the Norwegian Red Cross, or use this account number: 8200.06.08331. Or choose another help organization from this list.

Going to The XX concert tonight at Garage. After I have seen the movie Precious at Filmens hus. Which is after I have spent 3 long hours at the hairdresser. Hopefully my curly new do will look smashing, because I refuse to run home in tears and miss tonight’s concert…

Saturday night I discovered two new things at once. 1) Cafe Mir – a cafe that has been in Oslo forever (or since 1994), but that I still haven’t visited for some reason. Now that I finally did, I know I will be back soon. It was discovery number 2) Mathias Tjønn, that sent me in the right direction. Or his release concert, anyway. Great concert. I particularly like the song “I Wrote a Book and That Means I Can Do Anything”. Here is a portion of the lyrics from that song:

I like the timetable
because it keeps me up to date
about what will happen where and when.
You see it’s like a map of time
except it’s not
because a map will tell you where things are
but time won’t stay in place.

Which leads me right to a discovery I did yesterday that includes timetables, maps and other nice things – with lots of clever words wrapped around them. Read my blog post about this discovery, The Language of Graphics.