Various...

It's time to remove a few names from the "to-do-list".

I've been listening to I Am John, I don't know how many times today. Don't know exactly why either, but for some reason it has caught my attention (once again) and is now stuck in my head (and refuses to leave).
+ I Am John

New single Halleluja! by [ingenting] must be as close to pop perfection as you'll ever get! From the forthcoming album Tomhet, idel Tomhet, which is now available for preordering.
+ Halleluja!

Talented Danish youngsters Tetris = Therapy has announced that they'll start re-recording their old material as well as record a few new songs. 6 older tracks are free to download from BandBase.dk.
+ Big Tasty

Champagne Riot is no longer a one-man project and should now be labeled a band (or trio to be nitpicking correct). Will be interesting to see if the full line-up will be on stage on Sunday.

Lovely UK indie pop band The Cavalcade has three new tracks streaming at Myspace. The 3 tracks are included on the band's second EP the Edition 59 EP, which will be released August 5. If you haven't guessed already, only 59 copies of the EP will be printed.

Remember...

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Northern Portrait and Champagne Riot are playing at Lille Vega on Sunday.
+ Champagne Riot - Scandinavian Warfare
+ Champagne Riot - Heroes of our Time
+ Northern Portrait - Crazy
+ Northern Portrait - I Give You Two Seconds To Entertain Me
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Everything With You
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Young Adult Friction
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Come Saturday
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Kurt Cobain's Cardigan

The Boombox Hearts...

In these times and days, where bands have to work incredible hard to earn a breakthrough and even harder to make a living from their music, breakups are inevitable. But still I couldn’t help being a tiny bit sad, when Oliver North Boy Choir decided to call it quits earlier this year, as I had fallen quite in love with the band’s dreamy electronic pop music universe.

Now two of the three band members are back writing and recording songs, as Ivan and Mikkel have launched the first of two new band constellations, The Boombox Hearts, where Ivan writes the songs, sings and plays the guitar, and Mikkel takes care of the bass. Regarding the second constellation we’ll have to wait a few more months before any songs will be put out, but accordingly roles will be reversed (Mikkel in charge of writing, singing etc. and Ivan playing the bass) and the lyrics will be in Danish, which I personally think could be very, very interesting. Obviously it needs to be mentioned that both constellations will (and already) feature several other band members, which is especially evident on the track Torquay # one, where a young lady named Ida (that's all the info I've got) does the singing.

The first two tracks published by The Boombox Hearts are lo-fi and stripped down demos, but nonetheless quite intriguing and definitely promising that even greater things are in the making. Off the record (and very hush, hush) I’ve had the privilege to listen to a few earlier demos, and I guarantee that I'm not making this "great stuff in the making" up just to be nice.

The band claims to be playing a mix of 60ies pop, melancholic lo-fi, country and indie (and say they are sorry, if they don't), and though I’m not really sure whether they actually do (the lo-fi part aside) or don’t, I’m definitely sure that I like it!
+ Extras, when you're ready, please
+ Torquay # one

An official band photo has yet to be published, so I've decided to use the photo from the facebook fan page, though it was probably picked, because they had to post "something".

Bjarke Niemann – Champions of the Wild Side...

The artist’s name might not ring a bell, but if I add that he’s more known as the one fronting Spleen United, you hopefully have some kind of idea, what were dealing with here. Champions of the Wild Side is not the first sign of a solo career in the making, but a result of his participation in the MixToVerdener (mix two worlds) project, which has been set up by Danish Radio P2, Danske Bank and BandBase.dk. Every month a sample from a classical piece is picked by a jury and made available from the MixToVerdener website for everyone to download and remix. This month’s sample (I believe) is taken from Pictures at an Exhibition by Russian composer Modest Mussorgskij and aided by this and a sketch for a song already written, Bjarke Niemann has produced a fascinating and melancholic track. Spleen United fans might find it a little too poppy and not quite faithful to the band's trademark darker sounds, but I can only recommend that you give it some listens and let this beautiful piece sink in. Then it won’t take long before you’ll be hooked!
+ Champions of the Wild Side

Vice & Beauty...

Tobias Winberg keeps publishing new tracks under his Death Valley Sleepers alias at a fairly nice pace, and during my recent holiday a new baby named Vice & Beauty saw the light of day. And scanning through the many, many mails I’ve received the past two weeks, I was pleased to find a copy of the track including the permission to share it with the lot of you. The band (or one-man project if you like) has the past year or so turned into one my favorites, and new songs are approached with excitement and a little nervousness. So far each and every song we’ve laid ears on has been of ridiculously high quality, and I guess it's only fair to be slightly concerned whether or not this string of amazing tunes can be kept alive. However there’s absolutely nothing to worry about (for now at least), as Vice & Beauty follows ever so nicely in the footsteps of previous songs sounding like the “usual” 60’s inspired mix of The Velvet Underground, JAMC and The Raveonettes (how many times have I written this?), but does so without things becoming even remotely tedious or repetitious! It really is time for a proper release now; isn’t it?
+ Vice & Beauty

On the radio this morning...

moi Caprice always seems to be getting plenty of radio airplay, so the band's lack of commercial success remains somewhat puzzling. But the band soldiers on and yesterday the boys announced that they are in the studio recording new stuff. Plans are that a double CD singles collection will be released sometime this fall and should contain 14 singles, 9 re-recordings and 2 brand new tracks. Was planning to post this piece of news in a separate post, so The Town and the City being played on the radio this morning came in very handy indeed!



+ The Town and the City
+ Drama Queen
+ To The Lighthouse
+ Riding in Cars With Girls

Every morning when eating breakfast the radio is on, and from time to time it does happen that some really fine stuff is aired, thus helping to make the start of the day a good one. The “On the radio this morning” posts are an attempt to make your start a good one as well!

Holiday is over...

...and I’m back home (and at work) again. We took more than 700 photos, so expect some scenic snapshot to be added later today to accompany this post. As always the weather is a crucial topic, when opting to spend your holiday on the Danish west coast and it sure wasn’t as great as last year. But then again; it wasn’t nearly as bad as two years ago, where it pretty much rained for a fortnight. Summed up we had a good time and saw plenty and did lots and lots of stuff, and had very little time for relaxing and “doing nothing”, which to me is the perfect way of spending your holiday. I had brought a few CD’s with me, but found no spare moment to listen to any of those, though we did tune in on P3 when driving around. Especially cool hearing Sunshine by Ginger Ninja being aired a few times, and hysterically funny trying to teach the kids to pronounce the band name, which sounds rather close to gibberish, when uttered by a 3 year old.

Returning from two weeks absence is always quite stressful as the mailbox is jammed and all your favorite blogs have been updated 14 times or more. So far I’ve only checked a few of the mails and blogs, but have already found plenty of blogpost worthy stuff, so I imagine finding things to write about and music to post won’t cause any problems for the next week or two. Updating should resume tomorrow...I hope!

Nothing but music - the endless post?

This is an ever changing and (hopefully) expanding list of some of the songs I have mentioned before in this blog or simply stuff I have found somewhere on the web that I find interesting, but have no time to write about. All files have been found somewhere in cyberspace (and NONE of them have uploaded by me, so I cannot help you with any requests you might have - just keep returning and something new might pop up), so they will be available until the artists, record labels, fans, whatever decide to remove them. Thanks to a few readers, I've just finished yet another round of cleaning up (actually I'm doing this more or less all the time). But please leave a comment if some of the links are no longer working, and I will do my best to remove them as quickly as possible....

If you are interested in finding even more songs than the ones I have listed below, these links will provide you with lots and lots of free AND legal mp3's - I really hope you'll enjoy the list!!

* Badman Recording
* Bad Taste Records
* Barsuk Records
* Beggars Group USA
* Better Looking Records
* betterPropaganda
* Cityslang
* Cloudberry Records
* Eenie Meenie Records
* Force Field PR
* Friendly Fire Recordings
* Go, Jukebox!
* Hush Records
* Indiecater
* Indiepages
* Insound.com
* Jade Tree
* Jagjaguwar
* Joyful Noise Recordings
* killbeat music
* Killrockstars
* Labrador
* Last.fm
* Lujo Records
* Magic Marker
* Matador Records
* Matinée Sounds
* Merge Records
* Misra
* Music From Denmark
* Music Is My Girlfriend
* Parasol
* Plastilina Records!
* Pox World Empire
* Radarmaker
* Secretly Canadian
* Series Two Records
* Shelflife
* Sick Room Records
* Slumberland Records
* Songs I Wish I Had Written
* Subpop
* Supertroels
* We Are Free
* What Are Records?
* White Whale Records
* Wonderland Records
* Yellow Mica Recordings
* To be continued......

Have decided to remove all links and instead start rebuilding the list...this is just the beginning...

+ The Antique Toys - Joey
+ Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running
+ Asobi Seksu - Walk on the Moon
+ The Ballet - In My Head
+ Beach House - Norway
+ Belle & Sebastian - Come Monday Night
+ The Big Pink - Dominos
+ Blue Foundation - Enemy
+ The Bridal Shop - For Seas
+ Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
+ Celestial - Lake Como (Remix)
+ Champagne Riot - Scandinavian Warfare
+ Choir of Young Believers - Action Reaction
+ Club 8 - Western Hospitality
+ The Enright House - Darkwave = MC Squared
+ Every Move A Picture - Signs of Life
+ Fanfarlo - Finish Line
+ Faunts - It Hurts Me All The Time
+ Gentle Touch - Smedby
+ Get Well Soon - 5 Steps / 7 Swords
+ Heligoats - Heat Vents
+ [ingenting] - Halleluja!
+ Interpol - NYC
+ JJ - Let Go
+ Jens Lekman - The Opposite of Hallelujah
+ Loch Lomond - Wax and Wire
+ Mikrofisch - The Kids Are All Shite
+ Mixtapes & Cellmates - Soon
+ moi Caprice - The Art of Kissing Properly
+ The Monday Photo - Alies (No Tomorrow)
+ Moto Boy - Blue Motorbike
+ My Favorite - Burning Hearts
+ Okkervil River - Black
+ Otter Petter - Winter Days
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than The Stars
+ The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than The Stars (other in conversation remix)
+ Phantograms - When I'm Small
+ Play People - Goes Out
+ The Poems - Ballad Of A Bitter End
+ Project:Komakino - Civility
+ The Raveonettes - Last Dance
+ Sad Day For Puppets - Again
+ The Shape Of The Earth - Alone In This
+ The Sky Drops - Swimming With Fishes
+ Spoon - I Turn My Camera On
+ Karin Ström - Hon Som Älskade Dig
+ Sofia Talvik - What Happened On The Bridge Today
+ TempEau - Mädchen aus Greifswald
+ Tetris = Therapy - Seasick
+ The Thermals - Now We Can See
+ Those Danicing Days - Toxic (Britney Spears cover)
+ Tower of Foil - Shaping The Sky
+ Twig - Helen of Troy
+ Ultrachorus - Words Kept Talking
+ John Vanderslice - They Won't Let Me Run
+ Chad VanGaalen - Willow Tree
+ Viola - Neon Lightning
+ Chad VanGaalen - Willow Tree
+ Voxtrot - The Start Of Something
+ Warm Morning - Disconnected
+ The William Blakes - Running Up That Hill (Kath Bush cover with Spleen United)
+ Windermere - Trailer Park
+ The xx - Basic Space
+ Yeasayer - 2080

It's that time of year again...

So for the next two weeks I’ll be nowhere near a computer. This means no blog updates, no emails read or written, no concert tickets purchased and no new music discovered. So this will be the last batch of news, music etc. for a while.

Castello, better known as the frontman of The Holiday Show, is currently working on his solo project and demos of 4 tracks are currently streaming at Myspace. This is a little too close to “dansk pop” for my taste, but nonetheless I’ll pay close attention to how this develops.

Danish trio Spion impressed me quite a lot two years ago with their fine EP Tynd Is. Especially the title track was an amazing piece, and arguably featured some of the finest drumming this side of Mew. The band has recorded 4 new tracks, which are currently streaming at Myspace, but unfortunately they don’t quite reach the glorious heights of previous recordings.
+ Tynd Is

In a comment posted yesterday Danielle recommends Compute (a project masterminded by Ulrika Mild, but the live version features Liechtenstein lead singer Renée) and compares it to Kraftwerk and The Knife (but judge that yourself). But I do find the songs quite appealing despite being absolutely no fan of The Knife.
+ All Walk By

Italians My Awesome Mixtape are offering their new (and bloody fine) EP Other Houses as a free download to help promoting their album How Could a Village Turn Into a Town, which will be out on 42 Records in September.
+ Me & The Washing Machine

Shorties...

My head feels like a boiling kettle right now, so I’m not sure if I can post anything that will make sense to anyone (do I ever?). So I’ll just stick to one of these shorties posts today!

The music of one man band (that expression is plain stupid, but I cannot think of a better one) Kites With Lights, who’s responsible for the fine New Order cover I featured the other day, is rather uncomplicated indietronica/electro pop, but still worth checking out.
+ The Weight of your Heart

Occasional contributor Rodolfo has launched his own blog; Hidden Treasure.

The Matinée Recordings news page has been updated, but basically (and unfortunately) the news is that there isn't all that much to tell.

The Moto Boy website has a new look and to (perhaps) celebrate this, the Regina remix of Young Love is free to download.
+ Young Love (Regina remix)

Download two tracks by Danish "super"-group Ghost Society at RCRD LBL. Will be interesting to hear if this is any good?

The new album by The Raveonettes will be out 6 October and will be called In And Out Of Control.

Indonesians Sunny Summer Day has a lovely new track named In Summer Time streaming at Myspace. Beautiful indie pop and obviously recommended by J.A.

On the radio this morning...

This does sound a lot like Keane. Doesn't it?



Every morning when eating breakfast the radio is on, and from time to time it does happen that some really fine stuff is aired, thus helping to make the start of the day a good one. The “On the radio this morning” posts are my humble attempt to make your start a good one as well!

Yeah...

I’ve never been the sharpest tool in the shed or the fastest one out of the blocks. I’m certain that several older posts will reveal that I’ve “discovered” things long after it was discovered by just about everyone else. The most recent example is Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which I’ve passed over again and again, primarily because of the massive hype surrounding Karen O and her two compatriots. But the past weekend the band played at Roskilde Festival, and since numerous people (including various radio hosts) were literally going crazy while looking forward to the concert, I thought “what the heck”; let’s check it out. So I grabbed It’s Blitz from the pile of CD’s (you know; I did actually buy it a long time ago, but just never really listened to it) back home, and through the first 3 listens so far today it’s been a surprisingly positive and refreshing experience. Actually it’s been such an uplifting experience that I decided to order the band’s to other albums as well. And just to keep my credit card busy, I ordered the Florence And The Machine debut album too, in a weak attempt to (hopefully) keep myself somewhat up-to-date, by giving this over(?)-hyped name a listen, before it becomes old news.

Speaking of Roskilde. The reviews of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart concert at the Festival weren’t positive at all, giving the band 2 respectively 3 stars out 6. I hope they fix whatever was wrong, before the concert at Vega on 2 August.

It does seem like Jonas didn’t go see TPOBPAH after all, despite all my recommendations. Apparently the Elbow concert blew him away completely and drained him for whatever little energy he had left. But “luckily” it seems like he didn’t miss out on something fantastic anyway!

A New Order tribute album called Ceremony, where proceedings from the sales will benefit the Salford Foundation Trust’s Tony Wilson Award, will be out some time this fall on independent label 24 Hour Service Station. The album will include 2 discs with cover versions of several New Order classics plus a third disc dedicated to various cover versions of the band’s first single Ceremony. Two sample tracks are now free to download, and one can only dream that the rest will be equally great! And to keep the Roskilde string alive; I saw none other than New Order performing live at Roskilde in 1984(!).
+ POCKET feat. Shaun Robinson & Tracy Shedd - Sub-Culture
+ Kites With Lights - Dream Attack

On the radio this morning...

It is indeed a beautiful morning!



Every morning when eating breakfast the radio is on, and from time to time it does happen that some really fine stuff is aired, thus helping to make the start of the day a good one. The “On the radio this morning” posts are my humble attempt to make your start a good one as well!

Water and more...

The heat has been almost unbearable in Denmark the past few days, and I cannot recall that I’ve been drinking this much water ever before. Hopefully the happy people attending this year’s Roskilde Festival are following my example and drink lots of water and not just beers. Beers are good and pretty fucking close to being the most essential fluid on the planet. Except on warm days like these where it’s dethroned by water on the top of that list of essentials. The last time I attended a festival (this one back in 1995) I had the greatest Thursday drinking (lots and lots of) beers in the sun, but paid the price and spent the entire Friday in the tent totally hung-over and dehydrated, which meant I was too exhausted to stay up to see Bon Jovi! Hang on! 14 years later I suddenly realize that this wasn’t the biggest sacrifice after all...

Stick around for more ramblings, tunes, news, mailbox findings etc...

Did you remember to download the Rikers EP I mentioned earlier today? It's awesome!

The William Blakes has announced that the band will be playing a couple of live dates at this year's Pop Montreal Festival. This has to be one of the most interesting new constellations (in this case prefer this term rather than "bands") coming out of Denmark the past few years and hopefully they'll be well received by the Canadians. I’m rather confident that the band's music, which I've previously described as something like "Arcade Fire meets Talking Heads", will appeal to the North Americans. Plans are that the trip should include one or more Toronto dates as well. So if I have any Canadian readers; go see them!
+ Violent God
+ Running Up That Hill (Kath Bush cover with Spleen United)

Paul Rijnders of Anything Box shares his remix of the track The Breakaway, which happens to be a song recorded by his own solo project Goodbye July.
+ The Breakaway (Kult Litre Remix)

I've just started to read a few promo mails and listen to some songs. There's plenty to choose from!

Here's something quite interesting. Liverpoolian trio Bagheera has sent out their promo mail to a large number of music blogs (remember to always use bcc), thus securing that it will be considered spam by most mail hosts. I always take a quick look at the spam mails before deleting, and somehow this caught my eyes. The band itself believes that their music will appeal to fans of Grizzly Bear and Yeasayer, but since (shame on me) I'm not all that familiar with either band, I cannot really say whether that's true or not. But the band's 4 track EP Hollow Home is really interesting and quite challenging, and definitely something I need to take further look at, sometime soon!
+ Old Machine

Have forgotten to mention that Boxstr.com seems to (finally) be working fine again! Getting a little value for my hard earned money!

The single Back Out On the Streets (Savages) by Americans The Armed Forces does sound somewhat like The Cars, so despite being infectiously catchy, it can hardly be labeled as highly original. But the band's album release strategy is definitely quite unlike something I've seen before!
+ Back Out On the Streets (Savages)

I've just downloaded the Liechtenstein debut album Survival Strategies In A Modern World and have found out that it's not even 23 minutes long? Blink and you'll miss it, but wouldn't be surprised if it's f*cking fabulous! Listening and yup! This is good stuff!
+ Roses in the Park

Rikers - Easter Eyes EP...

Canadian duo (which now seems to be a quintet) Rikers has finished the recordings of their first EP and has generously made it available as a free download from their website. The 5 track Easter Eyes EP has (according to the band) taken longer to record than originally planned, but as it turned out the end result was definitely something worth waiting for. Every track is a dynamic piece of indie rock dominated by the great melody, chiming guitars and the haunting lead vocal of Ryan Kennedy, which all combined sounds like the perfect mix of lots of other bands. However it does somehow seems rather pointless to begin listing all of those (more or less obvious) influences, as the band more than anything sounds like Rikers and not like a rip-off of some other band(s). I doubt very much that a better and more intriguing EP will be thrown your way for free this year, so grab it while it’s there, because it shouldn't be long before various labels come knocking at their door.
+ Anywhere Else

On the radio this morning...

Actually it was on the radio yesterday morning, but nothing of interest was aired today, so instead I'll post this one, which I really should have posted yesterday, which I did not, because I was too tired to even think of posting anything.

Even though The Head on the Door was the band's 6th studio album, I had never really cared much about The Cure, but In Between Days changed that in an instant. I still recall watching the video for the first time sitting on the couch in my parent's living room thinking how much this sounded like New Order (what did I know back then?) and in the most childish way (despite being well into my teenage years) staring totally fascinated at that green face. Needless to say I immediately rushed out and bought the 12" single; that really was what you did in those days!



Every morning when eating breakfast the radio is on, and from time to time it does happen that some really fine stuff is aired, thus helping to make the start of the day a good one. The “On the radio this morning” posts are my humble attempt to make your start a good one as well!

An Ostrich in Wonderland...

One of my few readers has left a comment and asked if I could re-upload the Ostrich track Wonderland. I originally posted it way back in November 2007 and back then I wasn’t really sure whether or not it was meant to be a Christmas tune. Still not sure, but the band has okayed that I share it once again, so here we go. Speaking of Ostrich; a new fabulous track named Prepared To Fall is now streamable at Myspace. Still impatiently awaiting the duo's first release on Cynical Minds Recordings.
+ Wonderland

Another fine track streaming at Myspace is the brand new Almost Gone from Grand Avenue. Taken from the band’s 4th album, which I believe will be out some time this fall judging from the tour dates.

Finnish duo Viola is giving away the track Shimmery Summery (Sha-La-La Love), which is yet another song you really should add to that ever growing summer soundtrack.
+ Shimmery Summery (Sha-La-La Love)

This young lady doesn't seem to realize how truly fortunate she is. She claims to be "bored while Stefan is recording", but since the Stefan in question happens to be Stefan of Nothern Portrait, this actually means that she's a first-hand witness to the recordings of the Northern Portrait debut album. No, no - I'm not interested in being Stefan's next girlfriend (among things, it would require rather extensive sugery), but I'd still give a lot to be able to follow the process and hear those new songs before anyone else!

Fine Danish blog Blaa Vinyl has been added to the blogroll. A good read, but you probably need to understand Danish to fully appreciate it!

On the radio this morning...

Waking up with the sun shining and this on the radio. Only thing missing now is a cup of coffee!



+ Enemy

Every morning when eating breakfast the radio is on, and from time to time it does happen that some really fine stuff is aired, thus helping to make the start of the day a good one. The “On the radio this morning” posts are my humble attempt to make your start a good one as well!