I am sitting down to write this with that great title looming over the page and Alike filling my ears with its magic and I feel like I am about to knock out an award winning script to the greatest film of all time. Unfortunately for us all I am actually about to write the usual badly phrased nonsense that I have become acustomed to. This whole bit of writing is based purely on the fact that I have been recently flooded with inspiration after an evening in the company of Efterklang.
Inspiration is totally the key in all of this, I mean, I havent been inspired enough to buy a poster after a gig since I was 16 and though I may be currently going through some kind of mid-life crisis, I left the gig with my poster, the Parades live album and a mass of uncontrolable insight into my future. As there were two elements to the evening, so to, there will be two elements to my review. You see how this works! Genius. First off
Sitting on the cold stone floor, watching An Island projected onto a sheet seemed to be the only way to watch this beautiful film, as if the hard screen of a cinema would destroy the fragile integrity of it. The basis of the film is Efterklang going back from whence they came, the little island of Als. There, they play in a variety of settings with the aid of the local community helping make their big sound even more replete. Filmmaker Vincent Moon is the man behind the camera, bringing the down to earth people of Als to the screen in an engaging and honest way as possible and from Moon’s reputation he would seem the obvious choice for something such as this. The film was absorbing and transported you into the local community in an unobtrusive and friendly manner. Like the music of Efterklang themselves, sometimes when you felt that you didn’t quite understand what was going on in the movie, it would suddenly all click and you would be transfixed once more.
I ducked out of a filmmaking class early to see the film, with the excuse running around the back of my head that it would be much more beneficial to see this than to sit and listen to someone talking about film. I was not dissapointed in any way. What M. Moon showed through the piece was that it was not essential to capture the best shot, to frame things and keep edging away at it to create the perfect vision. What he showed me with An Island was that it is far more important to capture the moment, the emotion of the subject rather than a stylised view of it. Some of the filmwork was what you could consider ‘raw’ it put me in the room with the band, made me feel part of it all, make me feel Alike.
The film showed Efterklang at their finest, surrounded and playing along with people of all ages and walks of life. Even those who thought they had little musical aptitude were encouraged to join in with great effect. Balloons were burst in time, newspaper crinkled to add texture to the songs, to enrich them and spread Efterklang’s love of what they do. Watching them on screen, playing a song with an old school gym full of children I began to see that this was their pinacle, their drive to make music was for reasons like this. There didnt seem to be the urge to make the big money, buy a fast red car and dick around with the glitteratti, Efterklang are in the music game to see how much enjoyment they can get out of making music and sharing that joy with other people. The film was an enriching experience and lo, my thoughts on the matter were more than compounded by
The gig.
Almost from the second they stepped onto the stage you realised that these were good people, nice people. The music was phenomenal. Such richness and texture that you could see the same gig again and again and notice something different each time to appeal to the music geek within. The multi-instrumental aspect made for an outstanding edge to the performance, but it wasnt just that they kept pulling out new instruments to add just that little bit extra to the song, it was the fact that they did it, with pure passion and a massive smile on their face. The harmonies in the singing are so complex and perfectly weaved that this on its own would be a joy to listen to without all the other layers of perfection to bring the greatest live sound I have heard to my ears.
However though the music was incredible, it was not just that which was the source of my great levels of inspiration, it was the band themselves, their attitude and they way they go about their business. Though playing the bass and not singing is not traditionally a ‘front man’ position, Rasmus Stolberg stood his place right at the front of the stage, drawing the crowd into the Efterklang family with his welcoming and open smile to the point that after a couple of songs I felt that I had known him for many years. The whole band were obviously happy to be there and I dont just mean happy to be in Glasgow, but happy to be on a stage anywhere in the world, doing what they love to do. You could see the genuine love and enthusiasm for each song even though they must have played them all hundreds of times in the last year alone. So many smiles were exchanged on stage, points and smiles being exchanged as the songs wove their way through our consciousness. Casper Clausen danced and sang and played the drums all at the same time, lost completely in what he was doing. Nobody is the top dog in this band, everyone is there to complete and escalate the sound into its perfect state and with this there appears to be no ego, just love.
Peter Broderick has been the puppet master behind most of the music that has deeply affected me over the last year and then suddenly there he was, this musical genius type, just dancing about, lost in happiness, loving his job. And it is this that I take away, it is this that has brought the bubbling joy of inspiration to my belly. Why do we do these things? Picking up a pen or guitar or paintbrush is not a means to making money, it is a means to being happy, to make something that you enjoy, that you love and when I see my An Island poster this is the message that I will read from its simple scene.
The announcement that this was the last tour that Efterklang would be doing for some time just compounded everything that An Island had said to me. Here was a band with an internationally acclaimed album and now a film to go with it. If ever there was a time for momentum building, for scaling the giddy heights of superstardom, it is now. But instead Efterklang choose to go their seperate ways, leave a lull instead of pressing onwards so that in a few years when the time is right they can come back and do all this again at the same level, do what they love, not what other people think they should love doing. In my virtual way I shake each of them by the hand and thank them for reminding me what the act of creation is all about.
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