A very Swedish new video from Bear Pilot for the track "Do you know where your heart is?". Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYPLGb9p-I
Download said track along with another new one called "Wait! Wait! Wait!" right here: https://www.bearpilot.com/html/Music.html
I haven't mentioned in awhile, mostly due to negligence, but also because their releases for the latter half of 2010 mostly left me underwhelmed. I expect them to provide me with a regular dose of the best classic hard rock Sweden has to offer, they gave me a mixed bag of stuff that failed to grab me. There are exceptions though, there always are: Mangrove's 2nd album "A distant dream of tomorrow" is a solid rocker, just like their last one. They aren't showing much progression between albums, but I don't mind at all -- I can always hang with recycled Black Sabbath riffage when done right, especially when they nail the catchy/pop aspect of that band so many other worshippers fail to realize. Great dual-overdub solo section at the end too, even better that it leads into a killer final version of the main hook.
Saigon SicknessThe proliferation of owls in the artwork had me guessing at hardcore, but the reality of Saigon Sickness is straight-up alt-rock, more or less. If you've ever wondered what Muse might sound like minus the histrionic bombast, this might be for you; as for me, I'm having a hard time moving beyond ambivalence.
- Avi Roig
Swedish post-rockers Ef are heading East in March:
03/03 - Hertz Bar, Dalian
03/04 - Mao Live Club, Beijing
03/05 - Yuyintang, Shanghai
03/06 - VOX, Wuhan
03/08 - Aperture Club, Xian
03/09 - New little bar, Chengdu
03/10 - Nuts Club, Chongqing
03/11 - Iron Age, Guangzhou
03/12 - Hangout, Hongkong
03/13 - The Wall, Taiwan
In other news, head to their myspace blog to download a new Porn Sword Tobacco remix of the track "Sons of ghosts".
This will mostly only be of interest to the tech-minded, but just in case anyone at all is curious, here's the latest updates I've done on the site's back-end:
First, I've updated the version of jQuery I'm running (v1.4) and switched over to Google's CDN. Usually I'm pretty adamant about self-hosting all of the site's functionality, but I think it's fairly safe to lean a little on Google at this point and I believe that many users will already have it cached, hopefully giving our loadtime a slight boost. This also means that some of my older scripts might act up due to backwards compatibility issues, so if you see anything funny that isn't solved with a shift-refresh, please let me know.
Secondly, I've added Twitter and Facebook buttons to replace the outdated share links. I'm optimistic that we won't see huge lag times as those widgets load, but if you do see performance issues, again, please do let me know.
And last but not least, I've updated the in-line streaming mp3 widget to be use HTML5 on compatible browsers with a seamless rollback to Flash if not. Unfortunately I don't own an iPod/iPad and can't troubleshoot whether it works properly on those devices, but feel free to browse my mp3 posts to see it in action. Thanks!
has officially confirmed that Ghamorean's new album "Terra ruina", their third overall, will be released on January 28 with a release party planned for January 7 at Scharinska Villan in their hometown of Umeå. Samples at myspace: https://www.myspace.com/ghamorean
Two of the guys from Anchor hitchhike from Reno to SF and live to tell the tale: https://www.swehc.com/2010/12/25/saturday-early-morning-vgn-powa-with-claes-anchor/
interviews Norway's Monzano as part of their week-long takeover of the site The 405: https://thefourohfive.com/articles/4844
PSL is finishing up the year by posted a number of extra live music clips from artists they've featured earlier, such as this one from Tobias Fröberg: https://psl.svt.se/psl/2010/12/26/musik-med-tobias-froberg-4/
Check out the full English text version of an interview that Haust vocalist Vebjørn Guttormsgaard did with Brazilian blog Intervalo Banger: https://okkultokrati.blogspot.com/2010/12/uma-entrevista-com-vebjrn-de-haust.html
Promoe is giving away his latest single "Never follow" as a free download: https://www.looptrooprockers.com/download-never-follow/
The Silent Ballet has started to post their top 100 album picks for 2010 which, as always, includes quite a few Scandinavian releases: https://www.thesilentballet.com/tsbt/2010/100_91.html
At a cursory glance I see the names Sistol, Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson and Jaga Jazzist.
Wait, stop the presses! I've just received a last-minute arrival for my best-of 2010 list! Okay, so maybe that's a bit hyperbolic of me, not to mention premature since I really did just get their CD over the weekend, but I really do love love love the sound of Finnish crooner Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha. A bit of tango, a bit of Balkan folk and a crooning frontman who reminds me a bit of a young Rodney Dangerfield with the way he lets his hair and tie lay slightly askew; that adds up to something really great in my book. This is music for parties, dancing and drinking, as much as it is also fit for grand, weepy ballads, though we shall stick with the former for the time being. I am only left to wonder: is this the tip of the iceberg? Is there more contemporary Finnish tango I should be listening to? What are the other crucial records of the genre I should have?