The long way home

After a hectic summer, various examples of ups and downs, a majority of ups fortunately enough, I am back to haunt these pages with updates on what I think would be rocking to share with you. For this coming back update post I will compile my list of the most positive musical happenings from my POW:

1. Roskilde Festival 2006, especially the performances of Roger Waters, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Death Cab for Cutie, Kanye West, Matisyahu.
2. Robbie Williams at Parken. What a grand show, everybody and their neighbours were there. And we all had to take the same train home.
3. Muse in Montreal. The show was delayed due to gallons of rain that decided to pour down on our scarcely clad bodies 20min before planned show start. The mosh pit became a mush pit.
4. Tina Dickow at Århus Festival. This time around, the rain actually made the show even better than it should have been.
5. Matmos at Voxhall. If mental illness had a sound it would sound like Norwegian warm-up act Lesser. In the non-cool way. She seemed to think it was innovative to laugh witch-like into a vocal distorter. Matmos on the other hand did a great down-to-earth set, in which nothing was missing but simply one thing too much: harpist Zeena Parkins.

4 days of goodies

FINALLY! The moment we've all been waiting for arrived today. The final line up for 2006's Roskilde Festival was announced. If you're not going to be there yourself, here are the artists I plan to see that will make you green with jealousy:
Animal Collective (US)
Arctic Monkeys (UK)
Cabrüera (BRA)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (US)
George Clinton Parliament/Funkadelic (US)
Death Cab for Cutie (US)
Deus (B)
Bob Dylan (US)
The Editors (UK)
Figurines (DK)
The Five Corners Quintet (FIN)
Franz Ferdinand (UK)
Free Hole Negro (CUB)
DJ Grazhoppa's Big Band (B)
Guns 'n' Roses (US)
Kaiser Chiefs (UK)
Lis Er Stille (DK)
Marie Key Band (DK)
Matisyahu (US)
Morrissey (UK)
Ed Motta (BRA)
Phoenix (F)
Placebo (UK)
The Raconteurs (US)
Shout Out Louds (S)
The Streets (UK)
The Strokes (US)
Veto (DK)
Rufus Wainwright (US)
Kanye West (US)
Roger Waters (US) - performing "The Dark Side of the Moon"
Jenny Wilson (S)

Sounds good doesn't it? Now all we have to do is pray to the weather gods.

Voluntary self-combustication

Another weekend has passed, and this weekend I spent, in part, in the company with both Danish synth-rockers Spleen United and Canadian indie-pop band Stars. Live Århus-based Spleen United they meet expectations with heavy bass sound and colourful illumination and the gig being the last on their nation tour, ending in their home town clearly added to the energetic outlet that was poured all over a sold-out Voxhall. Again the venue proved to be holder of one of the best acoustics in the country.
Same conditions were the challenge of Montreal-based Stars, who guested the city on Sunday. Lead male singer Torquill Campbell stated that it may have been the best acoustics the band had ever played in, making it the ideal circumstances for them to prove their worth. As a complete contrast to Saturday's explosions of red, green and blue, the quintet chose a more sparse setting for their melodious and enthusiastic tunes of everyday semi-philosophical takes on life.
In the flesh, Stars' sound isn't far off from the impressions you get off their latest album "Set yourself on fire" from 2004, one key difference is the disappearence of the kind of boring electronic composition which is found through some tracks off of the album. Live, the songs become warm and passionate, which big parts of a song bidded off to synth and keyboards often fail to offer.
It's for certain that after a well-played concert like that, Torquill Campbell was right in his assumption that he may be a bit of a Dane "but without the self-doubt maybe". Stars are a good and personal live band, and with the almost incredibly overwhelming applauding support of an almost filled venue, who would more than happily have clapped their hands red for a second encore (an attempt was in fact made), lets hope they will come back for more. So we can.

My girlfriend's video montage from Spleen United: WMV or MOV

Listen to samples from "Set yourself on fire"

Dead Heart Bloom

So about 2 weeks ago in the midst of my quest for new music on myspace.com I got a message on my account from a profile with the mysterious name of "Dead Heart Bloom". A representant for the band or even the band itself wanted to send me their demo as they could see I do radio. Turns out the band is an absolutely amazing and delicious mix of Beck and Antony & the Johnsons. Sinister and mysterious arrangements added dooms day sounding vocal and poetry. Songs about dispair, a suicide, of feeling insignificant, of saying goodbye to the world actually becomes enjoyable for both the dark of mind and the interested in a well-sounding mix of experimental rock songs (driven mainly by bass and keyboards as vocalist and man-behind-the-music Boris Skalsky is a former controller of the said instruments in his old band Phaser) with added string orchestra.

Best of all, the album is free of download from the band's website so check it out.

gimme a b! gimme a loc party!

ADMITTED! Been rather slow on the updates lately, but I've simply been lazy. There, the jig is up, now let's move on to something much more interesting and suitable.

Bloc Party are touring, where I do not know nor do I care, but fact is that they are spicing up their set this time round with new tracks that are to be recorded shortly and hopefully released on a new album just as soon. It is therefore my pleasure to give to you all, a link to all the new cool songs. Quality varies from file to file as they are of course bootlegs, but they are nevertheless worth a listen if you are a fan. Follow this link to But She's On Fire's blog where all the files are available for download. Enjoy!

Too much of something

SO this weekend offered the previously mentioned Mew concert. This band has been playing together for the past 8 years or more, which makes them very talented musicians of course. Over the past couple of albums, most noticeable might be their latest "Mew and the Glass Handed Kites" from last year, the band has developed this mysterious sinister fairy tale-like universe wherein children turn into animals werewolf style, and cats dress up like Napoleon and play the violin. These images are used as inspiration for press photo shoots, CD booklet layout, website design and video montages at their live shows as well as music videos. This idea may have been brought to the working table by the hallucinations that the good ol' ganja have infused into the band members heads I don't know, but the case is that this image of Mew as an almost freak-wiccan cult is saturating every facet of what these guys do. This is necessarily bad, but what impression I was left with after Friday night's concert was that this band has to be careful not to become too stuck in their image. Sometimes music has to speak for itself and maybe Mew are aware that some of the basic elements of their songs vary very little so that they feel a need for a different and more far-out video montage on the back dropping of the stage in order to seperate one tune from the next. The show was kicked off with "Special", a personal favourite and probably the song from the latest album that stands out as the most differently sounding compared to the rest of the tracks, which worked really well live and "Am I Wry? No" felt like being placed inside of fireworks with the showing of a gigantic exploding fire-y sun on the back dropping appearing with each chorus. This was all very nice but the rest of the show slowly went down hill from there and became monotonous, all that changed were the lyrics and the back dropping display (animals with instruments, porcelin dolls with tiger heads, a dancing bear, rabies wolves). Audience members started calling for "Comforting Sounds", the band's masterpiece and euphorizing 8 minute track from 2004 album "Frengers", even before the band had ended the real set, proving that other than yours truely were feeling rather bored and just wanted to skip dinner and cut straight to the dessert. The track was served as the only(!!) encore song, and the concert was over.
In the wardrobe section I overheard some people assessing the idea that the band had been playing to a tape, because of the lack of improvisation and over-all similarity between live and studio versions of the songs. Ladies and gents this is not the kind of impression you want to leave your fans with after you've just poured 10 gallons of sweat on the stage. I am hopeful, however, that this band will keep evolving and maybe next time round offer something completely different and perhaps a little bit more refreshing after 5-6 listenings of the album still.

Video montage of the concert experience to be found HERE

"Lost in the woods? What do you mean?"

"You'll be screaming like a white lady"

I've been an avid Prince fan ever since Julia Roberts were singing "Kiss" in the bath tub in "Pretty Woman". To me Prince is hip movement for the ears, in fact he even makes me wanna wear purple nylon body suits or change my name to a weird symbol for 7 years. Whether I would convert to become a witness of Jehova is somehow doubtful, but it doesn't change the fact that this man, no taller than a 5th grade school boy, is a musical genious.
Prince's days as the absolute primary deliverer of floor fillers stretched from 1982-1993, but I heard from my burning shrub this morning that he is indeed making his way back. Now this isn't something that I just predicted all by myself, but with the release of "Musicology" in 2004 and especially the succes that spun off the title single something told me, and a lot of people, that the prince had indeed fought his way back claim the throne, and with the ex-king of pop in exile in Bahrain, what should be in the way of a new coronation?
The new single from the forthcoming album with the mysterious title "3121" is called "Black Sweat" and after numerous listenings over the past week, I do believe we have a winner. The tight production and minimalistic instrumentation in deed causes black sweat on the dance floors (there's no bass, but big emphasis on the drum line similar to the tune "housequake" from 1987 classic "Sign o' the Times" which in 2004 obviously must have inspired the producer Pharrell Williams of mainstream pop hit animated by Gwen Stefani "Hollaback girl" released in spring 2005).

Judge for yourself, full length video to be found HERE