The clock is ticking and the SPOT Festival 2016 is approaching fast. As a little warm-up we’ll give you a few Q&As with some of the participants from the international music industry on their motivations for travelling to Aarhus.
Si Hawkins (UK) – Music journalist at Clash Magazine.
Clash Magazine is a multi-award winning music magazine that launched to critical acclaim in 2004, combining underground and mainstream music genres that includes fashion, film and entertainment in it’s subject matter.
Clash Magazine has visited the SPOT Festival many times before – how many?
I have actually lost track of how many times I’ve been over here for Clash now – it must be five or six, maybe seven, and the festival has evolved quite a bit since my first time.
What do you and Clash Magazine get from your visits here?
For me, it isn’t Spring until I’ve been to SPOT: that walk from the hotel through Aarhus to the festival site is one of the highlights of my year. It’s the sun, the town, but mostly the expectation: SPOT has given me some of my most memorable music experiences over the years, and even turned me on to music that I didn’t realise I liked. I didn’t know I dug hard rock until I saw Kellermensch at Voxhall in 2009 (top picture).
Do you have any special agendas for this year’s festival?
No, I always come with an open mind. I definitely try to catch the one-off ‘events’, like the Portuguese Man of War at Your Rainbow Panorama in 2014, and the underwater music show last year, but a lot of the most enjoyable shows are people you just stumble across unexpectedly – The Bongo Club last year, Deathcrush in 2013, and First Aid Kit practising a song in a car park in 2010. That was pretty cool.
What is your opinion on the current Danish/Nordic music scene?
It’s always really healthy from an indie, pop and electronica point of view. What I find particularly interesting at SPOT are the more diverse strands of it – music from Danish immigrant communities, for example. I really enjoyed the Thursday night event last year in which artists from varying communities were thrown together. I’d never met a Palestinian nose-flute player before, and didn’t expect to meet one in Denmark.
Are the networking possibilities and seminars at the SPOT Festival part of the reason for your participation in the festival?
I’ve made some of my best friends and most useful contacts at SPOT – and some of them were British. I do a lot of travel journalism now, which mostly came about due to someone I met in Aarhus in 2010. I did my first ever panel at SPOT and I’ve since been invited to speak at different festivals I’d never previously heard of, due to meeting people here. So it’s useful for journalists too, from a networking point of view.
How would you characterize the festival? As an experienced visitor.
SPOT is unique, partly due to Aarhus itself, which has become one of my favourite cities in the world. But chiefly due to the ever-evolving program here, and the great newer venues – it’s cool to have outdoor stages again. It always seems sunny at SPOT, even when it rains.
Kellermensch photo by Lars Rune Jørgensen.
