What better way to celebrate Midsummer than with a brand new netrelease? Regular readers should know by now that I'm a huge fan of noiserock - give me jagged rhythms and so-called "angular" guitars and I'm stoked. Denmark's Imagine I Had Hands, a band I did a mp3 feature on not too long ago, is exactly that and I've been into 'em from the very first moment I heard them. Like many other Danish acts mining similar territory such as Barra Head and Lack, the sound is more harDCore than midwestern nihilism. Think Dischord, not so much Touch & Go/AmRep. When I saw the band was giving their new 4-track EP away on myspace, I jumped at the chance to throw my weight behind 'em too. Good music deserves to be heard. So what are you waiting for? Check out the lead track "Captive" and, if you dig it like you should, go and get the other three.
Imagine I Had Hands - Captive
Imagine I Had Hands are done mixing their new EP "Work" and have posted all four tracks on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/imagineihadhands
It was only a week ago that Imagine I Had Hands lost their drummer, but they're already found a replacement and his name is Simon Lockenwitz Stefanski.
Promising Danish act Imagine I Had Hands have a new demo track posted on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/imagineihadhands
Saving the best for last, our third and final featured demo act this week is Imagine I Had Hands. Instead of me telling you about them, I've decided to let mainman Adam McCormack speak for himself.
How did Imagine I Had Hands come to be and how has it evolved?
The whole thing started when I found myself without a band after leaving Dublin and my old band Sylvan to move to Denmark. I just began to record some idea tracks on my girlfriend's laptop. When I eventually discovered MySpace and created an account for the project the songs got a good response, so I decided to try forming a band. I really missed playing live and I thought the songs would work well in this context. I met Jens Højland, our bass player, at college and I knew our drummer Casper Ubbesen from when I lived in his hometown. The line up was complete by late November of last year.
Since then we have been going over some old home recordings and trying to figure out what will work and what won't. A lot of the songs turned out quite different when we played them as a band. We have just begun to write songs together at rehearsals. We plan to record a couple of these new songs with Jakob Hvitnov (Barra Head) this week actually. We are quite excited about them. I think they are a little more aggressive and urgent sounding.
How did you hook up with Jakob?
Recording with Jakob came about through our contact with Play/Rec. The guys at Play/Rec have been really supportive in helping us get this band going which is really flattering as there are so many amazing bands on that label. Its nice that they consider us worthy of their support. Anyway, they recommended Jakob to us and we had heard his work on the Play/Rec "Five years" compilation so we were delighted that, when we asked him, he was up for it.
We're still in the process of recording, but so far so great! Jakob is a very skilled engineer and in producing our music he has really had a lot of influence on how the songs have come together. Perhaps just as importantly he is a really cool and easy going guy. The atmosphere is very relaxed which makes things a lot easier and of course makes for better results. We are delighted with how things are sounding and we are excited about working with Jakob more in the future.
So what's next for the band then?
Next, we gotta play live. We are not quite veterans of the road yet with only two gigs under our belts so we are in desperate need of live experience. Our next gig is on May 9th in support of The Paper Chase. We hope to play throughout Denmark this year. We are also looking into playing some shows in my home country of Ireland during the summer and perhaps Germany later in the year. We will probably start thinking about a debut album towards October/November. By then we will have been together for almost a year so the timing would be nice.
Imagine I Had Hands - Dead sailor
The label Jezus Factory has a new comp available for free/donation download featuring quite a few Scandinavian artists such as The End Will Be Kicks, Imagine I Had Hands, Halph and more: http://www.jezusfactory.com/