Sounds of Skegness

We've been in Skeggy since Tuesday and the place is quite frankly nuts. 'Fun Pubs' aka bars that don't charge for their discos, karaoke and are tolerant of children cover the sea side resort aggressively competing for punters. The music in this environment is pumping and brash.

To help you hear Skeggy I leave you with a local D.J.'s musical list of the top ten tracks dropped here this summer. This list is complied by Miles, a quiet unassuming and talented emerging DJ. I'm happy to report Miles launched our Seas Club on Thursday at the Marine Bar playing an energetic yet subtle set.



Sounds of Skeggy - Top 10

Steve Angello and Laidback Luke Ft Robin S - Show Me Love

David Guetta Ft Kelly Rowland (Laidback Luke Remix) - Love Takes Over

Dizzee Rascal (Laidback Luke Remix) - 'Holiday'

David Guetta ft Akon (Ricardo Mash Up) - Sexy Bitch & Day N' Night

Black Eyed Peas Vs Sydney Sampson - I Gotta Riverside

VV Brown (Dave Brown) - Game Over

DJ Asset & DJ Milovz - Just Dance

Lady Gaga - Eh Eh ft Willy William (Club mix)

Lady Gaga - (Jody Den Broeder Club Remix) Love Game

DJ Chuckie - Let the bass kick

Bendiks

DJ Mini Moist Aka Bendiks joined the club last night to accompany the gorgeous visuals from Restofen & Brun. Known for her love of all things Detroit / Korean Pop / Japanese Pop / Gothic this Tromso chick has got a style of her own.

Below is a taster of the tracks she played...

Blackbelt Anderson – Sandoz
Kinky Foxx – So Different
Theo Parnish – Going Downstairs
Stvdio – The Beach (Todd Terje Remix)
Oasis Collaborations – Oasis Thirteen (Shadow Ray)

SEAS club talks music in Tromso

Over the past couple of days we've been in the effortlessly cool youth centre Tvibit here in Tromso running a webcasting workshop. And here are the results! In our webcast presenters Erica Restoften and Deirdre Melvin discuss the Tromso music and cultural scene and interview local music professional Aneta, who runs the Insomnia electronic music festival, and dj Josef Bamma, who's currently busy remixing Royksopp.

Black/North SEAS Club discusses music in Tromso from Jenny Harris on Vimeo.

Live Music - Seas Club Wednesday

Wednesday night is Live Music night at Seas Club in Tromsø Kunstforening. Playing on the Black / North Seas theme we showcase two very different musicians both working on the periphery of Jazz and improv.
Turkish contra-tenor Nuri Harun Ateş fills his favourite songs with oriental soul will perform an intimate club set. This will be followed by Scorpio Killer (Øivind Nygård) an electronic musician from Tromsø, Norway. Øivind is also a member of an impro-drum and bass/electronica act together with musicians from the exellent Jazz-band DripP: Drummer Jon-Eirik Boska and bassist Torje Helland Graff.
Doors Open at 9pm

Seas Club...Tromso

In Victorian times Tromsø earned the moniker ‘Paris of the North’ but not for obvious reason of architecture, oh no, it was so called because the ladies of this artic circle outpost were wearing the latest fashions before the rest of Scandinavia. Today the adage still holds true and despite its diminutive size and remote location Tromsø oozes style and an eccentric musical palate.
This week Seas club is cohabiting in Kunstforenig with Anna Lise Steneth’s enlarged “The Kiss and Waste Project", the official festival information centre and the Seas Canteen & Bar. This neo-classical building was designed by Lars Solberg as a museum in 1894 and therefore can hold us all effortlessly. It’s a welcoming informal place and most importantly has extremely thick walls and is set back from the sea so we can make as much noise as we like! Tomorrow to lunch Seas Club we’ll be joined by Georgian VJ and film director Wato Tsereteli from Tbilisi and Tuesday of local VJ’s Elizabeth Brun & Erica Restoften will join us to sprinkle their magic over our eclectic playlist.

Åpningsfest i festivalsenteret.Foto: SEAS Tromsø/Arthur Arnesen/fotofilm.no

Heading North

We flew into Tromso yesterday over some of the most stunning mountain scenery I've ever seen - all jagged, jutting rock, islands and water, water everywhere. We got the guided tour from the taxi driver on the way to the hotel, which is the first I've stayed in with a stuffed polar bear in the lobby! Then it was out to see the Turkish theatre company Tiyatro Oyunevi row into the port with their atmospheric performance of Waiting and onto a bar for catching up with the SEAS crew and sipping (eye-wateringly expensive) beer very slowly indeed.

SEAS Club kicks off on Monday so we've had time to find out a bit more about our latest location today. Surrounded by mountains, Tromso bills itself as the gateway to the Arctic and you certainly get the feeling of being very north indeed. The sound of the ships' fog horns punctuates the overall quiet and calm. The sun disappears on November the 20th for a couple of months and apparently children get time of school during deep winter as it's so difficult to get up in the mornings.

We visited the Polar Research Centre today, watched a great panoramic film about Svalbard, sat in a pregnant polar bear's lair and read lots of depressing facts about pollution and global warming. The Inuit people of the Polar region have one of the most toxic diets in the world through no fault of their own; toxins are stored in fat tissue and most of their diet is made up of fatty mammals and fish.

Tromso is a student town so there are lots of very cool bars and cafes, although we'll probably need to take out a mortgage to do any kind of bar crawl while we're here. But we get the impression that the Norwegians like to party so all bodes well for SEAS Club!

Photos from SEAS Gothenburg

It's been a fantastic week for SEAS in Gothenburg. As part of the Club we started a collection of images related to SEAS - see above.

If you like to add some of yours, simply tag your flickr images with "blacknorthseas" - the cloud is sorting all the rest...