Explosions In Paradise

25.5.2011

After 4h of sleep it was time to leave Ireland. Never would I have thought that going back to The Netherlands could be so depressing. Or was it going back to reality, which depressed me? Didn't even feel that excited to go to the concert in the evening. Just wanted the ash clouds to cancel our flight and crawl back to bed and sleep. It was even more tempting to travel back to Finland and be in the forest.

But all I could do is hope that Explosions In The Sky in Amsterdam would cheer me up. Yes, that was my Facebook status update. And no I didn't mean bombs, although some of you thought so. I meant THE BAND from Texas. Here I can realize how my writing teacher was right about reading out loud the stuff you write, because it just can sound different than on paper.

Have I told you already how much I hated travelling to Amsterdam, because it took so long? Well, only 2 hours max. That would be the same as from Jyväskylä to Tampere, but I've gotten so used to the half an hour train trips already that I'll probably go crazy back in Finland. But during the trip thanks to Tea, I got to taste Swirls ice-cream for the first time. Some Dutch thing that you can just pick all the toppings yourself and it was so good!

Arriving to the former church venue Paradiso, we only saw the end of the supporting act, which I think was a good thing; according to Linda who we met up with after the gig, it felt like he was playing one same song for half an hour, but at least the visuals were nice.

by linda

 The main act Explosions In The Sky is an instrumental band, whose music I got to know through Linda sometime in January. Some might say the music is depressing or something of a war movie where the hero runs for his friend. But actually I find it to be quite hopeful; something you could listen to at a beach when the sun is going down. Or as a compromise we can call it happily melancholic; a feeling I found while listening to a song my Italian flat mate linked me last autumn. The video is really lovely too, please have a look.

The gig itself, what can I say other than great. It's something you have to experience and create your own emotions yourself. I wasn't able to get great photos, nor are there good videos of the gig on YouTube, but here's a good pic taken by Linda from the balcony. And the live video is one of my favorite songs of theirs (sadly didn't play for us) and taken from another gig, so you could have some kind of moving image idea of them playing live.

It did cheer me up.