Over the past couple of days we’ve been in the effortlessly cool youth centre Tvibit here in Tromso, Northern Norway, 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.

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 Arctic 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.

SEAS Club is back on its travels and has sailed into the port of Tromso in the very north of Norway. Surrounded by mountains, Tromso bills itself as the gateway to the Arctic and you certainly get the feeling of being very north indeed.

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! Today to launch Seas Club we’ll be joined by Georgian VJ and film director Wato Tsereteli from Tbilisi and Tuesday local VJ’s Elizabeth Brun &a Erica Restoften will sprinkle their magic over our eclectic playlist.

We’re also running webcasting workshops over at the local youth centre Tvibit so hopefully you’ll get to see some of our work by the end of the week!

Summer Sundae Weekender’s over for another year, but we’re still on a high.  What a fantastic weekend!  Not only did the weather do us proud, more importantly we had a really great programme of artists this year in the Phrased & Confused tent, and the overall quality was awesome.  A real highlight was the four new commissioned pieces – all the artists raised the bar this year and produced some amazing work.  Beth Jeans Houghton and Ross Sutherland also proved particularly popular with festival-goers, according to the latest feedback from the E-festivals forum.

We had lots of great audience contributions to the Phrased & Confused tent – workshops with some of our poets, and fridge poems a-go-go.  We’ll be posting more video and photo soon but in the meantime here are our daily Summer Sundae Podcasts from the festival stage which should give you a flavour of what we got up to.  Check out Joshua Idehen falling through his chair in Episode 1 (we’ll be sending it in to You’ve Been Framed!)

Episode 1:

Click To Play

Episode 2:

Click To Play

Episode 3:

Click To Play

We’re finally coming down from our Fertilizer festival buzz, but luckily we’ve had lots of love from audiences about this year’s good s**t from Poland to keep us pepped up: “It was bloody brilliant!” “Killer show!” “I love Polish jazz”.
Want to re-live the atmosphere? Check out our podcast with the touring trio of Sing Sing Penelope, Jacaszek and Contemporary Noise Sextet and our short video interview with the amazing Pink Freud.

A big thank you to all of you who came to see us on tour or in London – you made our artists very happy. A massive thanks to all the artists too, it was great to have you at Fertilizer! And thanks too to our funders: Arts Council England, Sound and Music, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM), not just for their money but for their all-round support in helping us deliver the festival.

As far as the future is concerned, we’re already plotting and planning in true Fertilizer style, keeping our ears to the ground for the latest underground sounds. We’ll keep you updated with our plans, but in the meantime if you have any suggestions for future Fertilizer outings, please do get in touch. Let us know if there’s good s**t anywhere in particular you’d like us to check out and bring back to UK. This is not a competition; there are no prizes to be won – but you might end up seeing your dream festival come to life and how cool would that be?!

We’re really excited to be able to commission four spoken word artists to create new material for this year’s Summer Sundae Weekender in Leicester (thank you Arts Council England!) Each commission is worth £1000.

We’re looking for new work which responds to the question, Which Came First, The Music or the Words? and which will appeal to a music festival audience.  Summer Sundae takes place between the 14th and 16th August and the deadline for applications is the 22nd May. If you’re interested in applying you can check out the full application details at www.phrasedandconfused.co.uk

Fertilizer 2009… Good S**t From Poland is nearly upon us!! And here at the Fertilizer HQ we’re busy putting together the final touches, ready to hit you with a plethora of underground sounds and leftfield new music. The venues are booked, the artists have their flight tickets and we’re ready to go with this year’s festival in London’s East End.

The mash up of sounds and influences has to be seen (and heard) to be believed this year as we bring you everything from the finest Polish hip hop, to electronica, post rock psychedelia and even an orchestra of tiny instruments. To find out more about the acts showcased this year check out their biogs on our website. And for the first time we’ll also be spreading good s**t across the UK as the Fertilizer tour bus heads for Norwich, Bristol, Oxford, Liverpool and Gateshead for a series of very special shows featuring Sing Sing Penelope, Jacaszek and Contemporary Noise Sextet.

Plus thanks to Sound and Music this year Fertilizer has been able to commission a unique British Polish Jazz collaboration between Pete Wareham of Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear fame and Poland’s prog-jazzers Pink Freud. Pete is at the heart of the new breed of improvisers who effortlessly blends rock, electronica and beats with Jazz which makes him the perfect partner for Pink Freud who epitomise Gdansk’s tradition of improvisatory drawing on a truly eclectic range of influences, including jazz, rock, folk, jungle and drum’n’bass, making them one of the most interesting and spontaneous jazz groups we’ve come across in recent years.

Pete has been out in Poland to practise and perform with Pink Freud and you can follow his time over there through his regular updates on Twitter. The guys will be playing 2 exclusive gigs during the festival the first at London’s Cargo on Wednesday the 13th of May and then at Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds the next night, Thursday the 14th.

And this year it’s easier than ever to keep up with everything Fertilizer. Why not become our friend and receive exclusive updates on the festival, read interviews with the acts and be in with a chance to win some goodies? You can also join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

I’ll leave you with our first in our new series of the Fertilizer Phrasebook, which aims to equip you with all the phrases you’ll need to have a good time at this year’s Festival:

No. 1 - Zatańczymy? – which means ‘Shall we dance?’

After its sell out success last year the hub are once again working with our friends at International Pen to produce The Insulting Cabaret. The event is a key part of Pen’s fantastic free the word festival.

This year the Insulting Cabaret takes place at Southwark Playhouse on Friday 17th April starting at 10pm. Once again the cabaret contains a potent mix of authors, comedians, musicians and poets. This year the line up includes Catherine Millet, Christian Jungersen, Inua Ellams, Luke Wright, Karen king Aribisala, Lee Stringer and Perunika all musing on the evening’s theme of Heaven and Earth.

You can find out more about the festival through its blog – freetheblog.typepad.com – and the playlist for the -Insulting Cabaret at insultingcabaretbannedandblurred.blogspot.com

Tickets priced just £6 are available from Southwark Playhouse on 0207 7407 0234 or online at www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk