Norway’s Numusic Festival, which takes place in Stavanger, is shaping up to be a very interesting few days of music this autumn. Just confirmed is a performance by Ólafur Arnalds in the grand surroundings of the city’s cathedral (pictured above) – as the Quietus can tell you when we hosted a gig in an old church in Oslo last year, the Norwegians do music and churches very well.
Say the Festival organisers, "With his delicate and classical melodies, his background from metal bands and his constant goal to erase, or at least blur out, the edges between classical music and pop/rock/electronica, he is an utterly interesting attribution to the festival’s line-up, and at the heart of Numusic’s programming."
Arnalds joins a line-up that already features the likes of GusGus (our friend Phil of The Stool Pigeon describes their live show as "absolutely awesome"), The Orb, Lindstrom, Monolake, Mad Professor, Body/Head, Emika and Lemaitre, with more to be announced. The festival, now in its 13th year, takes place between September 26th and 29th in venues including the cathedral and the Tou Scene brewery.
Norwegians have long excelled in making music that doesn’t heed boundaries of genre, something that the Numusic organisers say their aim to stress with their booking. They’re also looking outside music and booking artists for the 2012 Festival, including Erik Sætre Jørgensen, a photographer who documents Stavanger’s booming oil industry. For more information, visit the Numusic website and, while we’re on the subject of Mr Arnald’s, read Wyndham Wallace’s brilliant review of And The Have Escaped The Weight Of Darkness here and Simon Jay Catling’s interview here.
