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photos by Clive Little

Whilst I was out in the Arctic I was really concerned about the amount of energy we were munching up just by being there. I brought this up at one of the discussions, and one interesting response was from Marcus Brigstocke.

He pointed out that you can waste hours worrying about whether you’ve left the TV on standby, but one thing that can really affect the planet is what you do with your money.

If you put your money  in a bank who don’t tell you what their ethical policies are, you have no way of knowing what kind of companies they are investing in. You could be funding weapons deals, oppressive governments and doing all kinds of damage to the planet.

It had never occured to me.

Recently, during an appearance on BBC Radio 3 programme The Verb, I was described as multi-lingual, able to speak many languages including Arabic and Aramaic.

I was slightly bewildered as this is not true, but the interview had already moved on before I had a chance to interject.

When I got home my wife pointed out the source of this mistake: an entry on wikipedia. The error is actually ‘referenced’ to an interview with Foreign Beggars on the community run website ukhh.com. If you read the original interview you can see that the Beggars are clearly joking (Pavan claims to be able to speak 83 languages and Metropolis says he has a ‘degree in Klingon’).

It’s one thing to have something said as a joke on a website, but I find it quite unnerving to then hear it presented as fact by a respected broadcaster like the BBC.

Makes you wonder how much of the media’s ‘knowledge’ has been researched from similarly unreliable sources?

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Snow

ice

a selection of Greenlandic staple dishes

dried whale-meat. tasted chewy and meaty, slightly fishy. was ok but kept ‘repeating’ on me.

Not sure what these little dried fish were called. I am a big fish fan but these were so chewy!

Graham (founder of treehugger) tries his best to look enthusiastic

raw seal. tastes of blood. and fish.  the blubber is cold and flobby. i quite liked this but it was too much for most.

dried haddock - i ate loads of this!

raw seal liver. yum.

Most of our group found the Greenlandic food overwhelming… the local kids thought we were hilarious for making such a fuss - they’d walk past and grab a handful of whale to shove in their mouth.

They also served us melted iceberg… the purest water i’ve had - frozen for over 10,000 years.

The view from our cabin on my first morning in Greenland

Me in front of the glacier. (Look closely to get an idea of how massive the glacier is - check out how tiny the people are as they get nearer)

‘BERG!

View from our dinghy on the way to the gig

Performing with KT Tunstall, Robyn Hitchcock and Jarvis

Old-skool sunglasses in local museum

after a while you get used to the wonkiness of living on a boat

We went to the BBC for Radio 4’s Loose Ends.

Recording in the studio

A mini- Vocal Orchestra - Neo, Bellatrix, me and Billy

Afterwards we went to the pub with Clive Anderson and Bill Bailey. Loving it.

Over the final couple of days on board the Cape Farewell trip to the Arctic, everybody on the boat seemed to be extra excited. We only had a little bit of time left together, and suddenly it felt like we all wanted to get as much done creatively as possible.

I’d been chatting with Leslie Feist about messing around with choirs and weird recording spaces (we tried to make a recording in the emergency lifeboat but it was snowed in!). Jarvis had brought a collection of lo-fi equipment, including a tiny battery operated amplifier the size of a pack of cards, a JVC mic that felt like a toy, a miniature battery powered electric guitar, and his piece de resistance, a toy turntable that played real records. (He also used the turntable in one of his many disko dj sets. One of the highlights of the trip was with Marcus Brigstocke and Jarvis, DJing from our iPods for the dancing voyagers until 4am most nights).

Shlo and Jarvis

Anyway, I was in the bar listening to an impromptu piano performance from Ryuichi Sakomoto (amazing guy, he’s an Oscar winning composer but was still happy to put his hat on backwards, don some shades, and take part in the beatbox battle on the last night!). Suddenly I was grabbed by Leslie and Jarvis, and taken up a cabin upstairs where they had set up all the lofi gear. The following jam ensued. We decided to name our newly formed super-group the Arctic Lofi.

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jarvis Cocker. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

More images of crew members and their activities

Cabin chaos (representing the general state of the boat). Matt Wainwright edits video for the website hours before we leave the Grigory Mikheev in Kangerlussauq. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

Shlomo prepares for the world’s first Arctic beatbox battle. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

Ryuichi Sakamoto with Sam Collins. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

KT Tunstall’s guitar signed by all the gang. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

Some audio of Vanessa Carlton, KT Tunstall, Robyn Hitchcock and myself jamming in the ship’s bar before playing at the local hotel bar in Ummannak later that evening.

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