Smerz at Strøm Festival 2018

Smerz is a Norwegian duo making electronic music that straddles many genres from pop music to crazy stuck-inside-a-dream sounds that defy making sense. There are influences of course, but Smerz really does sound very much like Smerz and not much else. Use the Spotify link at the end of my blog post and listen for yourself.

At Strøm Festival 2018 Smerz played live on the final evening and this was just a brilliant concert all around. One of those concerts where every item clicks and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Great music and performance, great sound, great visuals and of course some wonderful lasers courtesy of the best laser-pusher in Denmark, Laserfabrikken.

I think their live show was around 45-50 minutes long. It felt much shorter than that to me. I had been looking forward to this show all day long, and since I also work for Strøm and is the foto-boss of our wonderful volunteer photographers, I had been at the venue for 9 hours already when Smerz went on at 1am. I was not really tired though, just anxious for the main event to start. I get really psyched and a bit nervous just before a show starts, and then once we are live I am (usually) so hyper and in the zone that hours become minutes. When I look at these pictures, I feel just a few minutes passed between the first and last. But that is when you know it has been a bit of a magic event. When you get lost, in the zone, and inside the zone time is different.

Back to the pictures! All of them made on the Fujifilm X-H1 with Fujifilm 16mm and 35mm F1.4 lenses. Listen to the latest Smerz release Have Fun on Spotify LOUD and then dive into my pictures from Smerz Live at Strøm Festival 2018. I also highly recommend reading this interview on Pitchfork.

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