한국공연을 만족스럽게 마치고 돌아간 욘시팀이 공식 홈페이지에 후기를 올렸습니다.
영어전문과 번역본을 함께 올립니다.

tour diary #5

December 1st, 2010

jónsi’s manager john best is spending some time on the road with the band as they tour asia, here is the sixth installment of his tour diary

november 29th, 2010 seoul, south korea

sorry to the rest of the world, but seoul, s korea just came from nowhere to take top spot in best audience ever stakes. we thought ferrara was good, with its coordinated confetti and hand-held flares back in the summer, and salt lake city knocked our socks off when we were expecting, well, i don’t know we were expecting, but certainly not thinly-veiled hysteria. and now seoul. who’d a thunk it?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

i guess the signs were there from the welcoming committee at the airport with the really professional printed banners…in somewhat, um, stilted icelandic! (the printers in s korea do a smashing job, people). peter, our tour manager, joked that he’d bought the “fan package” for s e asia to make the *talent* feel better about himself, but this was a degree or two above rent-a-crowd. after that though there was little indicate major devotion nestling in bosom of the populace. our short sorties from the intercontinental into the anodyne streets nearby were undisturbed by acolytes or indeed anyone. the major talking point was the sheer quality of the hotel breakfast.

when we got to the ax club in the afternoon there was a small phalanx of mostly female fans across from the front door, who jostled politely at the sight of the merch, but nothing out of the ordinary. even as the set commenced the mood was, if anything, more than usually reserved (sometime the politeness of asian audiences can be misinterpreted as lack of interest by some sensitive artists), although the large number of people wearing home-made crowns a-la-doddi was noted with pleasure*, as were a further three icelandic banners thanking jonsi for (finally) coming to korea. and then, slowly, unbidden whoops of encouragement began to accompany jonsi’s every move away from the mic or vocal flourish, growing in confidence and intensity as the set progressed. this is going well i thought, standing next to sound man jelle weaving his usual sonic magic, whatever the size, shape and construction of the venue.

and then at what we presume was a pre-ordained point in around us – the moment where the band flip from the acoustic piano-led version to the full-on club-banger rendition – most everyone in the crowd started launching paper airplanes towards the stage. there seemed to be an endless supply of these slowly accreting on the stage in an origamic drift. i picked up some of the many that had fallen short and smiled at the message “sorry alex…i love your boyfriend”. there were others too, printed with the “drip” motif from the artwork and snatches of lyrics, and all in a variety of colours. there was even one huge one, maybe close on a metre long, that made it to jonsi’s feet only for him to hurl it inelegantly back into the crowd.

looking at one in my hands now, i can see this intervention was coordinated by the “official south korea sigur ros fan community http://cafe.naver.com/sigurrosfan“, so thanks and more power to that august organisation. it was appreciated. what was especially appreciated was that every single tip of every single plane had been carefully folded under and backwards to avoid the danger of having thousands of sharp, albeit paper, projectiles hurtling around a confined space. this was the source of much wonder and joyfulness backstage afterwards, with the band pondering the infinite tendresse of a people unwilling to risk putting out jonsi’s one remaining “good eye”. or maybe korea’s just become a risk-averse, litigious nation?

and it’s not as if that was the end of it, no siree. from then on the whole gig was ramped up to another level, the party atmosphere culminating in grow till tall when crate loads of confetti and spray snow were unloaded at another planned juncture. the band were clearly having trouble concentrating, with jonsi singing in the wrong mic and alex and ulfur missing notes to throw planes back into the crowd. it was all-in-all pretty special, and we are pretty sure no-one’s going to manage to top it this year. i mean japan and iceland you can’t do any better than that…can you?

* we found later that one fan was responsible for making all the crowns seen in the crowd so special jonsi shout out – ho-oh! – to whoever that was

다른 나라에게는 미안하지만, 서울/한국이 갑자기 나타나 최고의 관중 부문에서 정상을 차지하게 되었습니다. 우리는 모두가 준비한 색종이와 손에 든 불꽃이 어우러졌던 이번 여름의 페라라에서의 공연이 좋았다고 생각했어요. 그리고 솔트 레이크 시티는 전혀 은근하지 않은 광란의 상태로 – 우리가 기대를 하지도 않았는데 – 우리를 정말 깜짝 놀라게 만들었죠. 그리고 이제 서울, 누가 생각이나 했을까요?

생각해보면 매우 전문적으로 인쇄된 배너 – 음..조금은 과장된 아이슬란드어로 쓰여진 (여러분, 한국의 인쇄업체들은 굉장한 실력을 가지고 있더군요) – 를 가지고 공항에서 저희를 맞아준 팬들을 보면 그럴 기미가 있었던 것 같아요. 우리의 투어매니저인 피터가 우리의 “탤런트”의 기분을 더 좋게 하기 위해서 아시아 “팬 패키지”를 샀다고 농담을 했지만, 일부러 동원된 군중들보다는 수준이 다른 것이었어요. 그렇지만, 그 후에는 많은 사람들의 헌신을 알아챌 수 있던 것들이 거의 없었어요. 인터컨티넨탈 호텔 근처의 조용한 거리들을 돌아다니면서 그 어떤 사람에게도 방해 받지 않았고, 당시 우리의 주요 관심사는 훌륭한 호텔 아침식사였어요.

오후에 악스코리아에 도착했을 때, 공연장 정문 앞, 머천다이즈 장소에서 예의바르게 자리를 잡고 앉아있는 대부분 여성 팬들이었던 소규모 그룹이 있는 것을 보았죠. 그렇지만 평상시와 그다지 다르게 보이지는 않았어요. 그리고 많은 사람들이 직접 만든 왕관 – ‘도디’가 기쁜 마음으로 말해준 –을 쓰고 있었고 욘시가 (마침내) 한국에 와줘서 고맙다고 아이슬란드어로 쓴 세개의 배너가 걸려있기는 했지만, 공연이 시작되었을 때 분위기는 보통때보다도 더 많이 조용하다고 생각했어요 (아시아 관중들의 예의바름은 몇몇 민감한 아티스트들에게는 관심이 모자른 것으로 이해될 때도 있어요). 그리고 나서, 천천히, 마이크에서 멀어진 욘시의 모든 움직임 혹은 보컬이 고조에 다다를 때 예상밖의 환호의 함성이 터져나오기 시작했고, 공연이 진행되면서 자신감과 강렬함이 점점 더 커져갔어요. 공연장이 어떠한 <SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibr