Tag: Mp3s
I think it's safe to say that Timbuktu is Sweden's biggest hip-hop artist. Biggest, but not necessarily the best. Isn't that often the case? I don't say that to bag on Timbuktu aka Jason Diakité 'cuz he's obviously a talented dude, but c'mon now - this is pop music. A big part of the reason it's so successful is that it's got widespread appeal. Challenging or groundbreaking, it is not.
The new album "Oberoendeframkallande" is decent, but the stuff I've always liked best from Timbuktu has been with his live band Damn!. Sadly, there's only one track which features them, "Vibb aktuellt". As a drummer myself, I love the drumline-style beats, especially when they break into cadence. The funky Stevie Wonder keyboards are pretty hot too. Good, undemanding tunes perfect for a hot summer day.
Timbuktu - Vibb aktuellt
I can't help it. I see an album cover like this and I immediately brace myself for some weak MOR bullshit. That's usually what you get with a headshot of a pretty face. Maybe some watered-down country at best. However, as I'm sure you can surmise considering I'm posting about it today, that is most definitely not the case. Christel Alsos is a Norwegian singer/songwriter with the restrained elegance of Sophie Zelmani and the angelic intonation of Jeff Buckley. On the other hand, her voice is a bit darker and huskier than either of them, so sometimes she gives off a slightly more soulful vibe. All the more reason that I'm incredibly disappointed her duet with fellow Norwegian artist Thomas Dybdahl appears to have been removed from YouTube.
I don't listen to many of the chart-topping Scandinavian artists because I want to; I do it as a public service, because I feel I have to. Let me tell you, it can be dreary. Sometimes, such as when I discover someone like Christel Alsos, it's totally worth it.
Christel Alsos - What you gotta do
This week Jonas Appelqvist gets the Bear Quartet post:
"Ny våg" was released in 2002 and it's a dark and introvert album consisting of just nine songs. Only three of them have actual singing lyrics attached (yeah alright, actually it is four songs, but "Trust island" only consists of Matti repeating "Luleå, Kil och Helsingborg", the three cities from where the members of BQ descend) and the rest of the record is more or less instrumental stuff with the kind of twists that are so typical for this band. Ironically enough, I have decided to highlight the opening track, "Euthanasia" that is in no way instrumental and does not have one single trace of Alexandra Dahlström reading a poem over it to destroy it. Fact is, it's just a solid rock song. ´Take two riffs, one for the verses and one for the refrains. Add drums driven almost beyond recognition and haunted lyrics ("Drugs anyone/for the pain for the fun/so I'm a monster really/well guess who spawned me/it was you and you and you and you and you") and there you have it. 1:29. Perfection.
The Bear Quartet - Euthanasia
Dark Tranquility has a new album out, so I figured that it would be a great time to revisit one of their classic mid-90s records to see how well they hold up. As for the new record... it's okay, I guess. While I agree with Richard that it's somewhat of a return to form (the last few records have been pretty weak, to say the least), I have a hard time getting all that excited about it. I can handle the subtle keyboards and even the clean singing, but the modern metal recording style drives me crazy! It's so overcompressed and lacking dynamics. The guitars all have that horrible, overused Mesa dual-rectifier tone. No matter how the good the songs are, I still can't listen to it.
1997's "The mind's I" was my first exposure to Dark Tranquility. It came out at a time when I was purchasing anything and everything that came out the Gothenburg metal scene and for awhile, was one of my favorite new records. Of all the mid-90s melodic death metal from the era, it's certainly a top-10 contender. However, DT was always kind of an also-ran compared to the likes of At the Gates and In Flames. They were always a bit more pretentious and more likely to take risks, often alienating fans. I'm all for band evolution, but 1999's "Projector" was not good. What I like about "The mind's I" and this track in particular, is the clean, organic sound. Two guitars, drums, bass (which you can actually hear quite cleanly) and vocals - no useless overdubs, no excessive production tricks. The musicianship is impeccable, too. Put on headphones and check out the way the hard-panned guitars interact. The solo is killer as well - it leads perfectly into a powerful bridge in which singer Mikael Stanne sounds absolutely anguished, even if the lines he's singing are total gobbledygook. This is exactly what got me into Swedish/Scandinavian music in the first place. Every once in awhile, it's good to remind myself why.
Dark Tranquility - Tongues
Guest post today from Mr. Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson with a track from Yamon Yamon:
Music has always had a relationship with the changing seasons, soundtracks that follow nature's ambling course through the year. Summer necessitates music with an overabundance of energy. Autumn and winter often find us lost in slower, darker songs as the year comes to its close and we ponder our relationship with the passing time. Spring is a period rebirth, thawing, and new life, and we chose our music accordingly.
Often this relationship with seasons requires the creation of mixtapes drawing from a number of sources, removing songs with a certain feeling from their usual context and combining them with similar tracks. Or sometimes we intensely listen to records that seems to embody the time of year, bands with a distinct sound – upbeat or down-tempo, sunny or glacial, and so on.
Yamon Yamon's EP "Finales" is an exercise in emotional malleability, ever present and vibrant no matter what the season, the mood, or weather. The layers of music present a different face, an alternate tapestry of meaning as our ears listen for those emotions that seem so necessary at the time. Periods of darkness expose the vast, atmospheric guitars and a vulnerability in Jon's voice. The sunlight streaming through our windows brings a mature form of happiness to the forefront, explored in "Days like television"; that emotion which is well aware of life's ups and downs, and remains constant and buoyant when we are drowning in one of life's many challenges, and never lets us slip too far under the water.
Yamon Yamon - Days like television
The Psyke Project's 2005 album "Daikini" was one of the year's best releases. At ~70 minutes of unrelenting brutality, the only real complaint one could level at it was that it was too long for one sitting. Their new record "Apnea" just came out recently and... it's disappointing. They still possess a potent mix of contemporary metalcore and crushing doom, but the formula has been needlessly tampered with. Instead of purely raw, glass-gargling vocals, there's now bits of clean singing and that horribly clichéd sing-speak thing that so many other metalcore bands seem fond of. Sorry dudes, but that sucks. One of the main reasons that "Daikini" was so awesome is that it had none of that bullshit. You used to be unique, now you're yet another metalcore band in the pack.
On the other hand, there are definitely some powerful bits spread throughout the record. They haven't compromised all of their greatness, they've just buried them a bit. The ending of "Physical romance" with the "I was so scared / I was so terrified" screaming is a fantastic climatic moment. The way that frontman Martin lets his voice break at the end is a perfect capper, too. "Apnea" may not totally floor me as a whole, but it's okay as long as they continue to deliver the punishment every so often.
The Psyke Project - Physical romance
The difference between the "Reader's companion" version of the Moonbabies track "At the ballroom" and the final album version are very subtle. It gives you a good idea of the kind of studio wizardry that Ola Frick is capable of, but it's not the full story. Prior to receiving the approved song that ended up on my comp, I was sent two other mixes, the first being drastically different from either of the ones made public. It's still very much the same song, but the arrangement is much more sparse and heavy on the snare backbeat. It makes me hopeful that someday they will put out a collection of demos and outtakes because I'm sure it would be fascinating. As for my favorite pick of the litter, I must bow to the band's sensibilities and agree that the newest, full-album version is by far the best. It's such a lush and gorgeous piece of pop beauty. I daresay it's almost perfect, but I suspect that Ola could still whip up an even better take that would blow me away.
Moonbabies - Take me to the ballroom
Tigerbombs might come off like a Finnish carbon-copy of Caesars/Caesars Palace, but they sure one-upped those dudes by enlisting Klas Åhlund's ex-wife Paola to help out on their new record "Thing that go boom". Otherwise, the sound is more or less the same: revved-up organ-driven garage rock with a definite retro/lo-fi vibe. It's fun stuff, perfect for the onset of summer. Original? Naah, but neither were Caesars either.
Tigerbombs - Shaking the tree
Parasol's Jim Kelly once again graces us with a song for our weekly Bear Quartet post:
Released in 2000, The Bear Quartet's "My war" was all about the austere, the sepia-toned, an album that really flirted with bleakness, especially the very very mellow quatrain of passionate acoustic ballads at the album's core. With "My war" the band further unveiled its inner-Neil Young, continued to explore its inner-Morrissey, while purposefully outing its inner-Radiohead. The album finds the band at their most willfully perverse ("What I hate"), at their most celestial ("I'm walking out"), and their most brilliantly realized ("I don't wanna"). Although hidden at the tail end of the album, it was the second single, and one of The Bear Quartet's most gorgeous songs to date. A living breathing beautiful piano driven charmer, among their very lushest, with lyrics about getting away from it all, or wishing you could...
The Bear Quartet - I don't wanna
Another Friday, another Labrador Records-themed guestpost. This week it's Simon Tagestam's turn:
Before [ingenting], Christopher Sander was (in) a band called Chasing Dorotea (nothing to do with the fantastic Swedish lo-fi indiepop band Dorotea) who released a self-titled album in 2002 on Labrador Records. Unlike [ingenting], the lyrics are in English and the music is slower and less happy-go-lucky. "Crackin' up" is a sweet love song that lyrically is quite reminiscent of [ingenting] (despite being in a different language). It also sounds like something Kristofer Åström could have recorded (a compliment, of course). The rest of the album's in a similar vein and highly recommended.
Chasing Dorotea - Crackin' up
Is this roleplaying or speaking from experience? No matter, I like the first-hand narrative regardless of where the inspiration came from. Somehow I doubt that The End Will Be Kicks frontman Niklas Quintana is the asshole in question, sleeping around with other people's boyfriends and such, though I suppose that anything is possible. As for being old friends with Satan, well yeah - that I believe.
The End Will Be Kicks - Ass of a friend
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
Our second demo band of the week is Giglinger, a Finnish act that desperately wants to be Big Black. Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially since they don't fall into the trap of attempting to ape Steve Albini's dystopian lyrical style. So that leaves you with a pair of shrill noisy guitars dueling over cheap, machine-made drum beats. It's pretty easy nowadays to create quality drum loops with even the most basic equipment and applications, so I appreciate the artistry of sticking with such clearly outdated sounds. It fits the style well and the addition of a few short synth lines on this particular track is bonus. Aside from obvious issues of originality, I like this a lot.
Giglinger - The prime suspect
I'm taking the next few days to talk about demo music. First on the chopping block, Norway's Shoot the Breeze, a band I first covered over a year ago. Their latest recording isn't much better in terms of actual sound quality, but the music is totally solid. I imagine that some folks might feel silly getting down with such unabashed arena rock, but don't let it get to you. Sure, it's clichéd, but remember that they call it "classic rock" for a reason. I honestly believe that these guys could do well if provided with a proper recording budget - that's really the only thing holding them back at this point. The songs are good and the performances are strong. What else do you need? Nothing.
Shoot the Breeze - Higher ground
"Helpless", a song that sounds exactly like it should. It's a sublime piece of frail, fragile beauty. The subject matter is depressing, but I like to think that the melody of the refrain offers a sense of hope for an otherwise untenable situation.
The Bear Quartet - Helpless