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.

Something monthly

Every month the 15th, starting the 15th of December. Im gonna post an artist of the month. Reasons and/or excuses for will vary occasion to occasion, though only truely independent artists will be elegable.

Every artist/Band of the month post will include: An interview/profile story, A batch of unique digital downloads (B-sides, bootlegs, unreleased material, etc.) and last but not least- 2x10 buttons (fan designed) will be up for grabs to the 10 first commenters each month. Buttons will include free postage.

So stick around for some promising nominees and free stuff.

Melodium - Cerebro Spin

A brief moment of recommendation- Magic music for winter. Melodium aka 28 year old Laurent Girard, late october released his 10th album "Cerebro Spin" on Audiodregs (Lullatone, O.Lamm etc.) A very wonderous and strange little album for people who love tricky fireplaces, melty snowmen, forests, evil toys, lemon icecream, scratching their ears, black tulips, kiwis and odd couples (not the tv show). Cerebro Spin is a record that with an almost outer planetary sound, engulf the art of dividing listeners as they dive into what could have been a silent film score about unevil nightmares and the dangers of day dreaming. Imagine a boy playing piano, inside a burning logcabin sitting on a pillar far away out on the ocean, accompagnied by serenading seagulls and robot whales.

Yes, lot of quirky distant keywords apply and salute Melodium on his 10th album birthday. Thankfully, thats just how he rolls. You can listen to a couple of songs from Cerebro Spin over here or here.

Blip festival NYC 2008

Grafitti Monsters (US). Photo by Richard Gin.

Originally i didnt feel like writing about this years Blip festival, mostly because of the fact that its just around the corner, and i cannot go. Have no time, have no money, and no chance in hell of convincing my boss that those days in New York across the planet from little ol' Denmark would be the perfect location for a company christmas get together. Ehhh.... Well, so me writing about it now, is pure therapy. I have to get it out my system someway, somehow. (And if possible i need someone to live it out for me and report back).

Blip festival is doing its 3rd annual run this december, 4 days straight, from the 4th to the 7th of december. It is undeniably the biggest bit-music event in our time, so far. Nearly 40 international musicians and visual artists occupying the sweet low-res cutting edge under the organization of Manhattan art organization THE TANK and legendary NYC artist collective 8BITPEOPLES.

To set the record straight, were talking hundreds of wonderful "geeks" and messed up indviduals performing, playing, modyfying and caressing/beating the living shit out of Nintendos, Gameboys, Amigas, Commodores (gaming consoles in general) or even homemade circuitry (and software), for the sake of creating ugly/cuddly bit tunes and art. Kinda gotta clue, but not quite sure what to think about that? Well, check this cheeky little promo from the documentary "BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET" (Promo featuring Nullsleep. One of my favourite bit-peeps).



Got some money stashed away? Gotta rich pappy? Got the balls to rob a bank or.... Could you really just go? Then you really should. Atleast if you fancy bit-rock, nintendocore, New York and beyond.

I myself still havent come to reconcile with the fact that im not even closely enabled to go, but i will try to make the best of it. So, when Blip festival kicks off. I will to. Every day from the 4th to the 7th of december, i will gather up and post the best of the free Blip-related bit-music downloads my webhotel can muster. Hopefully we will all enjoy it.

In the meanwhile, please go and check out all the fantastic artists and activities blessing this years Blip festival. Furthermore, heres a group of audio excerpts, from festival related artists.

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.:)

Ghostly Swim

Some time ago, cartoon channel Adult Swim teamed up with Ghostly international and put up a neat little free album download named Ghotsly Swim. It holds 19 various artists, all of a more or less electronical character, ranging from such nice names as Milosh, The Reflecting Skin, School of Seven Bells, Tycho and many others.

It is still available (free ofcourse), and it would be a darn shame if you didnt get the chance to get this home with you. Heres some previews.



Go visit the Adult Swim site and get your Ghostly Swim. Click here.

The Mintpad

The Mintpad. A promising little Korean pocket monster for those who appreciate the fine arts of drawing, blogging, taking pictures (and blogging), listening music, watching videos, making post-its (and blogging them). Yup, and i havent even beging to mention the different social features like personal calendar, chat and what not.

The Mintpad is a creation by Korean Mintpass, a newcomer on the market founded and run by fugitives of Irivers innovation department, lead by concept excentric Duk-Jun Yang, a former Ceo of Korean Reigncom/Iriver. Mintpass whom with the Mintpad now have good physical proof that they have no intention of being a company not doing things right from the beginning.



To sum up the full potential of the cuddly Mintpad. Well, besides its miniature form factor - the crossbreed size of a creditcard and post-it, it has a good quality 1.3 Megapixel integrated camera (descent for blogging and fun), Wi-fi (802.11 b/g), integrated speaker and microphone, a full 2.9" touch screen (for both fingers and pens), 4gb internal memory (backed up by a microSd slot, supporting up to 8gb cards), removable battery, built in accelerometer and a 3,5 mm standard headphonejack. Codec supports and tricks for music include Mp3, Wma, Ogg, Ape and Flac (which is damn impressive) along a customizable equalizer and intelligent playlist features. Videowise it does Avi (pressumably Divx/Xvid), Wmv and Mpeg (which is equally impressive).

Features include Etch'a'sketch like gesture support for both drawing and blogging. So that when you fx take a picture, wrote some text, made a note or a drawing. Just give the Mintpad a little shake and it goes straight to your blog (or other web destination). Yes, weve seen the shake gestures before, but to be honest, it actually makes alot of sense when you have the internet involved. Check it out.

Draw/write and take pictures. Shake it and blog it!.


Writing/drawing, speedy and natural.


Another really neat and exclusive feature (if you notice on the videos) is that when you make a drawing or a note, it actually blends in a paper texture (optional) so that it looks like a real drawing/post-it instead of straight up generic graphics. That combined with the fact that the Mintpad posseses a very capable tabletminded atypically responsive touchscreen (and nice user interface), makes it all pretty pitchable to the public and worth the fact that this could go and become an actual intelligent little trendsetting device.

So all in all, if youre a whore for simple clean cut design in a tiny package, you love blogging (and lofi photgraphy), you need a home for your handdrawn post-it style critters and doodles. Last but not least, wouldnt mind carrying your music/video along with all of that. Hell, your train has almost arrived. All you gotta do is, Hold your breath for a while and let Mintpass do their thing. They wont let this one miss out on a good old European fondle.

If you wanna see more of the Mintpad, please check out these pages on the Mintpass website. Mintpad design and press photos, The concept and features and How to use. All pages are unfortunantly in Korean, but theres loads of good product shots and details to be excited about.

The David Bazan dvd

To be completely honest, even if you dont know who the hell David Bazan is. This is the indie xmas present of the year : The 13$ David Bazan - Alone At The Microphone dvd. But why is that? Well.... There are so many reasons (some describable, som not). His 4 one mand band Pedro The Lion albums, his solo work as David Bazan, his Headphones band (with members from Starflyer59 and Fleetfoxes), he played with Damien Jurado, he played the drums on the first Unwed Sailor Ep.... and well.... Yeah, well, lets not make this rocket science. Watch this and tell me why you dont wanna know more about this man and his music.

Live outside Berkeley Campus, November 7th.
More clips from the Berkeley campus gig last week can be found here.

Youtube dvd promo.


The David Bazan dvd is internationally available at undertowstore.