We are soldiers, we have guns, on tour.

Lovely Swedish Lo-fi indiepop entourage We are soldiers, we have guns (label mates of also ever lovely Social Services) are going on a north European tour. Would definently recommend anyone near any of these listed cities to drop by and lend them an ear or two if you got the time.

12/feb: (Germany) Hamburg, Astra Stube
13/feb: (Luxemburg) Luxemburg, d:qliq
14/feb: (Netherlands) Groningen, Vera
15/feb: (Netherlands) Dordrecht, Café de Vrijheid
16/feb: (Germany) Siegen, Vortex
17/feb: (Germany) Hannover, Cafe Glocksee
18/feb: (Germany) Frankfurt, Clubkeller
19/feb: (Austria) Traun, Spinnerei
20/feb: (Switzerland) Baden, Herbert
21/feb: (Germany) Leipzig, UT Connewitz
22/feb: (Germany) Berlin, NBI

If no time, then settle for this video and a link to more of their soothing music thru myspace.

We are soldiers, we have guns - Me vs. time = Fixed game.

Visit Stereo Test Kit at for more on the band.

Winter Took His Life

Photo by: Mattias Fredriksson

So christmas was over just like that..... oh well, its freakishly chilly outside (again), and i feel like recommending something warm and toasty for the cold. So... meet Gothenburg girl Susanna Brandin aka. Winter Took His Life. Once again, as in the almost endless Swedish cases of amazing in the shapes of such newer girl names- Lykke Li, El Perro Del Mar, Promise And The Monster, Britta Persson and beyond, one could wonder how there could be any room left for further greatness. But, fear not, Winter Took His Life found herself a quiet prosperous little picnic spot only a heartbeat away.

Her wonderful debut album- You know what it´s like to be alone and shut down, came out last year and can be found at Bless The Press. So if you (just like me), didnt get on the first one in time, there you go. It would be a shame not to follow up on this fantastic girl from the start.

WTHL's myspace can be found here.

Paddington Distortion Combo

The ever so super fantastic swede- ex. Bear Quartet member Carl Olsson and his brilliant solo project Paddington Distortion Combo, just announced his new album, set for release February 23rd 2009. There is no mention of a definite album title, though the following four song titles will be present on the upcoming release- -White mans clap, La La, Birth Defect and Defätismus.

So, if youre generally silly to the bone concerning Paddington or just excited about uplifting lofi kiddy electro combined with 80's kitsch/trash and swedish sub-suburban indierock "one man style". You gotta a wonderful surprise coming up in 2009.

Also, here's a cuddly live clip from a PDC show this summer at Potatiskällaren (The Potato Basement) in Luleå (north Sweden).


The video is part of a 4 piece liveshow recording, that is to be found here.

Snöras

Take a mountain (no particular mountain). A real nice, tall, skyscraping piece of heavy set stone, with roots tied deep into the core of our planet. Picture the sharp top of it, along the rotation of earth, tearing a big evil rift in the sky, forcing the universe outside to bleed in galactic proportions of flaming cold snow. Bathe it in the memories of your favourite war, backlit by a neat sunset... and there you go. A somewhat more just meaning of the word avalanche applied to its norwegian equivalent in the shape of a band called Snöras.

Snöras is indeed a beautiful and highly recommendable Norwegian hybrid of great moments in both vibrant hardcore and melancholy mathrock. Their second album Plague Waters came out late september (start october) to very wellearned reviews both in commercial and underground press. The album is released by Fysisk Format and is out on both cd and vinyl. Prelisten songs and find links for purchases (itunes/physical record) here.




Snöras - Lucid River. Download (rightclick+save as).

First David Bowie, now Springsteen?

Photo by Joa La Rock

Swedish indie postrock sensation Jeniferever, is undoubtably a fascinating and honorable nordic encounter in more than several ways. Ever since their lovely ep Iris, the magnificent album Choose A Bright Morning, and latest the Nangijala ep, a soaring well saturated post-pop sensation have stretched its cuddly arms around the lengths of time and impressed almost every attentive owl standing by. Though stranger phenomena are constantly lurking by the coasts of Jeniferever. Last year the band pulled a daring champ of an Ashes To Ashes (David Bowie) cover out of the hat, and now.......... believe it or not a cover of One Step Up (1987) by Bruce Springsteen. I am intrigued by their curious choices/doings and sit here pondering... really.... what the screech is going on. None the less. The One Step Up track is a feature for an upcoming Springsteen tribute album called "Play Some Pool, Skip Some School, Act Real Cool" released by Where It's At Is Where You Are, prepped for release some time early 2009.

Go visit the still ever lovely Jeniferever at myspace for their albums, songs and above mentioned coversongs.

Hayden - New video/European tour cancelled

Good news: Canadian Hayden just released a new video for "Barely friends" from his latest album "In Field & Town", which came out earlier this year. Classical Hayden, lovely song, beautiful video. Bad news: Haydens much anticipated 2 week European tour, which was supposed to kick off 25th off November in London together with Giant Sand, is for reasons unknown, completely cancelled. I guess we will have to settle for the nice video for now then.

A Simple guide to free music

Myspace, Purevolume, Facebook applications, ilike, Last.fm, Skreemer, Songza, Hypem....yup, theres is no end to what time, fancy name, slogan or site you have to deal with in order for you to approach free legal attention worthy music downloads. At myspace one can spend days on following links amongst bands and friends, maybe finding good music yes, but interesting quality downloads? Rarely. The same goes for the rest of them.

An important thing to remember about most social network sites (whether they be music related or not), is that theyre driven by advertising and personal interests in commercial purposes (even from most bands point of view). So it is no wonder why these sites slowly evolve into hopeless digital deserts, highly infested with german emobands, crappy/unfriendly music players and dead end lofi downloads.

But, if youre keen on more, being simple (or just plain fox clever). Take the road less travelled. Think open source and embrace creative commons!. All you need, is to visit the open source audio department at archive.org, along knowing partially what you wanna look for. That, and some simple reading/searching skills. Let me show you what some concentrated 35 minutes of snoopin' around can do for you.

Seven New Songs of Mount Eerie (2004) - recorded for the July 2004 tour of Australia by Mount Eerie. They were recorded "Nowhere" in Anacortes, Washington in the months of May and June 2004. The release was in an edition of 196 CDRs and sold out on tour. Somehow people in North America found out about it and thought they really wanted it because of the low quantity. Now it is available forever for free. Besides this there are 11 other free Mount Eerie releases on archive, unique liveshows, private recordings, you name it.

FreeQuency - In Germany (and in german) Mr. Christian Grasse is doing his own podcasts, documentaing his search for neat new music, may it be indie, eletronic, punk, lofi or experimental. He regularly posts full podcasts under the name of FreeQuency. Though along that, posts individual tracks for download aswell. Tons of good stuff like Ghostape (CH), Cantaloup (DE), Resynthesize (US), Tone (DK) and heeps more cool unknown artists from all over the world.

Headphones Required - Headphones required is a weekly bilingual podcast from Montreal about independent quality music (post rock, indie rock, microsound, electro or pop). Filled to the brim with brilliant music ranging from unknown artists to stuff like Below the Sea (CA), Of Montreal (CA), Tortoise (US), The Brunettes (NZ), Akitakaya Tohyama & Kenji Ninuma, Fly Pan Am (CAN) and much more. Though the sets of podcasts are 128kbps encoded and dont include individual track downloads, it is still very much worth digging into.

By The End Of Tonight - A Houston mathrock quartet, uploaded some good quality live recordings from one of their liveshows At The Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco (2005). Viva Computer - a Tasmanian (yes down under) indieband uploaded 3 releases, their debut album "Viva Computer" included. Austrian Liger - and his archive pressence with "The infra-ordinary" album lead me further to the Beat Is Murder netlabel, with tons of more great albums to download freely. Cassettes - An anonymous soloartist, have a homemade noisy bedroom rock album entitled "Everything Is Chemicals" made entirely with Garageband and a three-string detuned guitar, that Black Reble Motorcycle Club, Sonic Youth and Pixies fans wont necessarily dislike..... Mogwai have maybe over 50 bootlegs floatin around.... Mono have a handful aswell......

Well , what im trying to say here. Why settle for the crowded, questionable and obvious, exclusively every day, when you can get all of this (and more) wrapped neatly in a minty breath of fresh air, "legally" along with.

Happy hunting.

PS: And may i remind you that Archive.org aint a dumb place to find uncopyrighted (or copyright expired) movies, commercials and animation either. (all the way from the beginning of the 1900's.:)

Metronomy is coming over

I cannot tell you for how long i have waited for these guys to come somewhat close by (on non boring soil anyway). Their 2006 album "Pip Payne (Pay The £5000 You Owe Me)" was nothing less than a masterpiece silently screaming for a just continuance. A continuance now justfied by the release of their amazing 2008 album : Nights Out, adding yet more "Yippieeee" to the discography.

Anyhoo, accordingly (and/or extraordinarily) they will be doing a one-off concert at Debaser in Malmo on the 29th of november. So if you kinda liked xxxxxx, but thought it was too fancy and dumb, you loved xxxxxx, but thought it was just politely boring, and on top of that even had one or two feverish wet dreams about something so quirky to add your deliciously retro paved panda loving 80's collage music memories (enslaved by slacker quality)...... Well i'll be damned... Metronomy should be right up your alley, and the malmo gig should bear no excuses of not attending.

To keep you toasty warm untill then, check out the Metronomy promo video and their latest official video for "Heartbreaker" from the Nights Out album.

Promo video/Interviewish?


Heartbreaker video


See you in Malmo on the 29th of november.

You are here for reason?

Blogging is way too fancy a word for what i wanna do on this basic page. I promised myself i wouldn't take it too seriously, but at the same time also swore that i wouldn't just do a dumb blog. So here's the deal. I like wasting/spending my time on surfing, i like searching for things.... i like to discover things. May they be musical, visual, verbal or none of the above. I would love to think that i am good at finding, showing and stating interesting things. I would also love to think that i could make it a better habbit, trying to document that assumption.

That being said, with me being brutally honest- Only time can tell what might be posted for you to love or dislike in here. I wont take it too serious, and i will try not being to uninteresting. Plus, minus, whatever, whenever. This is it. Welcome on over.