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Festival News: IB Expo 08 Update

Posted on Sunday, October 19 @ 01:00:00 UTC by nightowl

Isildurs Bane report on IP Expo 08: With just under a month left to go, we are very proud and happy to reveal the final names that will take part in IB Expo 08.

First of all: Valgeir Sigurdsson! Born and raised in Iceland, Valgeir Sigurdsson is a music producer, composer and recording artist. He studied music in Iceland and graduated with a Tonmeister degree from London's SAE College. Valgeir has been honing his craft in the recording studio since finding a home in a small basement studio in Reykjavik as a teenager, and has since gone on to collaborate with a broad range of local and international artists. Valgeir has worked all over the globe but is primarily based in Iceland where he brings owns Greenhouse Recording Studios and releases music on his own Bedroom Community label.

From 1998 Valgeir worked extensively for Bj?rk, a collaboration resulting in 4 albums (Selmasongs, Vespertine, Medulla, Drawing Restraint 9) including 2 film scores and numerous other projects which Valgeir was involved with in varying capacity, as engineer, programmer, mixer and sometimes co-producer.



In 2005, after finishing work on Bj?rk's score for Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 film, Valgeir found that it was time to strike out in new directions, focus more on his own writing and set up a boutique record label, Bedroom Community. Since then he has also produced and engineered albums for Will Oldham (under his Bonnie "Prince" Billy moniker), CocoRosie, Maps (nominated for a UK Mercury-award in 2007), French chanteuse Camille and Norwegian singer/songwriter Ane Brun (featuring IB's Linnea Olsson on cello), as well as signing to Bedroom Community and collaborating extensively with classical composer Nico Muhly, avantgarde electronic musician Ben Frost and folk singer Sam Amidon.

In September 2007 Valgeir released his first solo album,Ekv?libr?um, which features performances from many of his past collaborators, but this time in settings that are very much Valgeir's own. Ekv?libr?um has received wide critical acclaim since it's release and Valgeir has toured Europe and the US to promote the album.

In 2008 Valgeir composed a score for Mannavei?ar, a four-part TV series set in Iceland, produced Oren Lavie's song for the Walt Disney film The Chronicles of Narnia II and has been confirmed to score the Icelandic film Dreamland. Recording projects include albums with artists as diverse as Kronos Quartet and The Magic Numbers as well as several projects for the Bedroom Community label.

And then, Mick Karn!

After thinking hard and long about this year's IB Expo, we came to the conclusion that we really wanted to gather people together that we knew could work really well together. And who better than fretless bass wonder Mick Karn to groove with Pat Mastelotto, put a unique bass stamp on Valgeir's music and add some serious low end to any music thrown at him?

For those of you not familiar with Mick and his music, here's a very brief introduction.

Mick Karn has played bass with David Torn, Terry Bozzio, Bill Bruford, Japan, Rain Tree Crow, Kate Bush, Natacha Atlas, and Mark Isham and a long list of others. On top of this, he has released a number of groundbreaking solo albums.

Ask any bassist who their favourite bass players are and they will probably include Mick Karn. In fact, many of them will have taken up bass as a career solely due to his unique style of playing. Recently referred to in Japan as "the God of bass guitar," his influence within music is undisputed, changing the way bass is heard as well as played for generations to come.

MySpace - www.myspace.com/mickkarn and http://www.myspace.com/mkspacecollective

Last but not least, you will get to hear and see Luca Calabrese (trumpet), Chistian Saggese (classical guitar) and Isildurs Bane!

Get your tickets from Biljettcentrum in Halmstad by phoning them on 035 12 02 00. Add the prefix for Sweden (+46) and delete the first zero if you phone from abroad, in other words: +46 35 12 02 00.

In addition, IB also announced that all IB albums now available as downloads. After several false starts, we can finally announce that all of IB's back catalogue - including the out of print album The Voyage: A Trip to Elsewhere - is now available as downloads from the following services:

Amazon - www.amazon.com
iTunes - www.apple.com/itunes/overview/
Securycast OY- shop.tune.fi
www.cdon.se
www.cdon.no
www.cdon.dk
www.cdon.fi

[Source: Isildurs Bane]

Posted in Festival News