Part of Hull’s year-long tenure as UK City of Culture, North Atlantic Flux was a kind of mini-Meltdown celebrating East Yorkshire’s deep-rooted Nordic connections with a rich smorgasbord of eclectic sounds and eccentric characters. Perhaps inevitably, despite a broad menu of Scandinavian and Yorkshire performers, North Atlantic Flux heavily favoured artists from Grant’s adoptive home of Iceland. Humberside’s thousand-year trading history with other North Atlantic port cities was woven into the festival programme. Packing out the cavernous vaulted interior of Hull’s Victorian-era City Hall on Sunday night, John Grant played a rapturously received selection of barbed ballads in pared-down, piano-driven arrangements. North Atlantic Flux also bade farewell to Gate No 5, a ramshackle nightclub on Hull’s insalubrious industrial fringes.

Source: The Times May 02, 2017 15:59 UTC