Quickly summarized: Five days and nights of music, incredibly well mannered audiences and great bands! Øya Festival 2008 is now a thing of the past, but the people behind has every reason to feel pleased with the festival that kicked off with a massive club night Tuesday. 30 stages scattered around the capital of Norway, Oslo, presented around 100 bands, and walking around you could get the feeling that more or less anyone able to utter “Yeah, so I’m in a band…” had been allowed to play.

With that many bands and stages you have to wonder why you needed no less than three different programs and a city map to collect the most important pieces of information: Who, What, When and Where. I never managed, so I left it up to chance, a few MySpace visits and a couple of recommendations form some locals. One of the latter was genre-surfing pop-anarchists in Kakkmaddafakka who’s been building quite a following in Norway. Watching them live you get why: They are just excellent entertainment! I seriously doubt that I would enjoy an album with the Bergen quartet in its entirety, but live they will get any party started.

Before heading to check out one of the most hyped artists Norway right now, Matias Tellez, I had a couple of chance-sessions. One good in country-balkan outfit The Captain & Me and one bad in indiepop twin-duo Road Movie, who was marginally less interesting than dust (was at the venue to check out Icelandic experimental pop artist Kira Kira, but a change in the schedule fucked my logistics). Matias Tellez turned out to be sort of in between. Rightfully hyped for his great pop tunes wrapped in funk, latin, the 1960s and tight Franz Ferdinand/Arctic Monkeys-style guitars, the live setup with just guitar, bass and drums made the music come across as yet another version of the aforementioned UK greats rather than his own.

That aside his songs still stand. As did the Norwegian crowds. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a more quiet audience, with nothing more than their heads bobbing and perhaps a foot thumping when the music played (but sounding their appreciation in between songs). Even the – yet again – magnificent live act Kaizers Orchestra didn’t really get people going and that pretty much says it all. I was told that Øya is a quite expensive festival which means the average age of the audience is higher compared to other festivals, and a long with the facts that concerts finish at 11PM sharp plus you need your own oil (or a very understanding bank) to afford getting suitably drunk, this probably serves as a reasonable explanation of the crowd behavior. Oh, and the sound was often not loud enough, something that otherwise excellent shows by Sigur Rós (ISL) and Supersilent suffered from.

Someone who didn’t suffer at all was trio Elephant9. From the beginning with a Hammond groove that made you expect Jim Morrison appear on stage to the end of their funk-jazz explosion of a set (a distorted Fender Rhodes is just one of the greatest sounds in the world!), they were mesmerizing in their musical ability. Also kudos must go to piano-pop maestro Thom Hell, singer/songwriters Moddi and Jose Gonzalez (S), excellent DJ Disk Jokke, indiepop princess Ingeborg Selnes and not least Casiokids, who created a fabulous micro-universe with their very catchy, naïve poptronica and a fascinating take on the big screen (half of the visuals were done live from backstage). Plus, of course, the people responsible for making Øya Festival 2008 such a great experience!