G! Festival '11

It's difficult to say this in short since this event is close to my heart.

Tomorrow morning we're heading to the 2nd music festival this summer. Roskilde in Denmark was first and now comes G! Festival in the Faroe Islands where I am from.

The G! Festival is located in the village of Gøta on Eysturoy. Gøta is the neighboring village of Leirvík where I've lived 16 of my formative years.

Main stage on the beach. Photo by metro.co.uk

To put it short G! Festival is an amazing festival. I have been a part of it since the beginning and I have so many awesome experiences tied to it. I was also involved in the music collective GRÓT from which G! Festival grew out of. GRÓT was founded in 1998 and began to arrange concerts and make stuff happen. For me GRÓT made a lot of things seem a lot less impossible.

The G! Festival was held for the first time in 2002 when it was only a one day festival. I have performed at the festival with various line-ups (as keyboardist for the bands Gestir, Marius, Petur Pólson and Högni and thrice as a solo act) in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 and will also be performing this year on the electronic DJ stage Grundin/Ground Zero.

Grundin/Ground Zero. Photo by metro.co.uk

Familjen (SE) performing at Grundin 2009. Photo by MOMO

Thursday night at 03:00 I will be playing the closing set under my üBERNöRD moniker and saturday night at 23:00 me and my girlfriend will open the stage. We call ourselves Sugardaddy & Honeypie. Since 2010 I have also been working at the Grundin stage as stage manager. I did not perform at G! in 2002 and 2010 but did work at the festival. So yeah. I am quite involved with this festival.

Good times at G! Festival

The festival line-up is cool and eclectic. Since the festival has somewhere between 5000 and 10000 attendees we're not talking colossal budgets and therefore not colossal budget style bands. Which is totally ok. There's a lot of good stuff to see + hear anyways.

This year's headliners are Scottish pop rockers Travis, Swedish prog/groove extreme metallers Meshuggah and legendary American gospel act The Blind Boys of Alabama. Other notable international acts are Mugison (IS), Fallulah (DK), The Tennessee Mafia Jug Band (US) and Movits! (SE). Among the Faroese headliners we have ORKA, Petur Pólson, SIC, Týr, Budam and Högni. I'm also looking forward to see upcoming bands like Guðrun & Bartal, The Mirror Men, Hamferð and Gipsy Train.

Camping below the misty mountains. Photo by Jens Kr. Vang

Unfortunately the Grundin DJ stage has had two cancellations: Cypress Hill founder DJ Muggs and Danish electro duo Fagget Fairys were to be perform but had to cancel. But we will be putting everything into making it a special experience nevertheless and if you ask me the line-up still looks to be promising a great party: Sexy Lazer (IS), HumanWoman (IS), DJ MrGillis (SE), Lorney Ashley (UK), Brynjolfur, Herr Gott, Swangah Dangah, Sugardaddy & Honeypie and üBERNöRD :)

Good times in Gøta! Photo by Serge the Concierge