SPOT Festival is without a doubt one of Good because Danish’s top favorite Danish music festivals! This year it proved once again, that it’s the place to be if you want to know what’s new and GOOD in Danish music.
Good because Danish was represented by a trinity of power girls at SPOT Festival 2016, and each of them – Arletta, Jasmin and Vero – enjoyed and saw many cool shows. But as always, also at this year’s edition there were a few highlights that stood out and are still on our minds. Check them out under our video with impressions of SPOT Festival 2016:
Kentaur
ARLETTA: For the second year in a row, my highlight of the festival was the mesmerizing show of Kentaur. The concert was played at Store Sal of Musikhuset in Aarhus and the atmosphere of the room fit the music perfectly. Kentaur played a magnificent show and was rewarded with standing ovations from the audience.
The whole weekend in Aarhus was filled with good concerts though: The Awesome Welles played a really solid show, with news songs that made me look forward to hear the next album after a great debut. Rock music is still alive and vivid in Denmark (which was also proven by 11th Street Kids). The audience at Kill J‘s show really went crazy and had an awesome party (me too!). Ida Wenøe & The Silver Cordscharmed local venue Atlas with an intimate, cozy concert and showed a whole new face of her music while playing with the band, not solo. The cherry on top of my top SPOT16 concerts was EXEC with a melancholic, wonderful performance, showing that all you need for a beautiful concert is a good musician/entertainer and a piano.
I already can’t wait for SPOT Festival 2017 and more great Danish music of the highest quality!
Silvester
JASMIN: SPOT Festival is for me not so much about extensively cramming and frenetically following a personal schedule, but much more about going with the flow and figuring things out on the go. You’re in for a bunch of surprises if you do it that way. Surprises like Silvester!
There’s constant name dropping going on in the Danish music scene and if you listened close enough you couldn’t miss the mumbling about new trio Silvester, who played the Limbo showcase during SPOT. There you could quickly see that this tip had already done its rounds: the cozy venue at Godsbanen was PACKED but even though I assume the fewest could actually clearly watch the show, the most happily stuck around for the whole set. Playing music that’s hard to label but easy to get hooked on, Silvester made it not only to the top of my SPOT16 highlights, but also my personal to-keep-an-eye-out-list!
There are also a few other names worth mentioning, such as The Entrepreneurs who are always a safe bet for an absolute rocking show. Or Copenhagen-based Norwegian sweetheart guns with her dreamy indie pop. Or Palace Winter who played a great, confident show in full venue Voxhall and delivered my perfect personal SPOT finale!
Girls in Airports & Slowolf
VERO: My SPOT 2016 was extremely positive. All the concerts I have attended were of great quality, which makes it extremely hard to choose a special highlight. Pale Honey, Axel Flóvent, Alex Vargas and The Entrepreneurs did an excellent job, and I completely share Arletta’s excitement about the new album by The Awesome Welles. I was also delighted to see how much more controlled and self-confident Peter Wangel became on stage compared to the first time I saw him live last summer and he really delivered a great concert.
However, the greatest surprises this year came firstly from Girls in Airports, who totally captivated a fully packed Atlas (I was actually lucky to get in as they had to refuse people at the entrance!) with their experimental jazzy-folky-rocky-dreamy ambient sound and an incredible charisma on stage, which is not given to everybody, especially when there is no lead singer!
Secondly, hats off to Slowolf, who delivered an outstanding show under SPOT and threw the biggest party with several special guests performing and his own 11 years-old son playing the MPC under the entire concert.
In short, we are not worried for the future of Danish music.