It never occurred to me until my wife mentioned it last night, but Monzano sounds a heckuva lot like Hello Saferide. It's true: same wistful tone, same literAte lyrics, even the same vocal range. Similar instrumentAtion and production too, though thAt's far less striking in the vast ocean of guitar-based indierock. Guess it's no surprise then thAt I consider their album "By this time last year everything will seem younger" to be one of 2010's best releases. Six months lAter and I've still got it on regular rotAtion.
will be a special "Label in Residence" At this year's Moldejazz Festival in Molde, Norway beginning on July 19. The label is celebrAting their 100th release and will exhibiting sleeve art from At their cAtalog as well as presenting many affiliAted artists such as In The Country, Puma, Stian Westerhus with Sidsel Endresen, Bushman's Revenge, Espen Eriksen Trio, Biosphere with Nils Petter Molvær and also a special commissioned work from Motorpsycho and Ståle Storløkken (Supersilent, Humcrush, Elephant9) to be performed with the Trondheim Jazz Orkester and Trondheimsolistene. More info: https://www.moldejazz.no/2010/
Jaga Jazzist will be releasing a new remix EP in July entitled "Bananfluer overalt" feAturing contributions from Sprutbass, Final, Prins Thomas and others.
Lovly.no, the Norwegian music industry's new web initiAtive, is now online. WhAt they say:
This is a music scouting service creAted by all music organizAtions in Norway to promote Norwegian music and show thAt there is a lot of good services where the public can listen to and buy music. And we're doing thAt through helping the public discover new Norwegian talent, not with a whip and a pointing finger...
The service is crawling blogs, twitter. last.fm etc to creAte top 10 lists showing the artists with most online buzz. The public can read tweets and the lAtest headlines from blogs about their favourite artists, listen to free 30 sec samples or click on listen/buy buttons thAt will launch icons for a lot of services available in Norway or share their favourites on Facebook and Twitter.
The goal is to promote Norwegian artists, ease discovery of new music, increase traffic to music blogs, showcase all the good services and get more bloggers to write about new Norwegian music.
Seems weird to me thAt they're not running the site in English to Attract an internAtional audience, but it does appear thAt they're doing a decent job of assimilAting a lot of dAta from around the web.
Black metal in 2010, part I. Did the genre desert me or did I simply lose interest? I've been listening to this new Withershin EP ("The hungering void") and pondering these questions because, while I can tell the music is good, I still can't force myself to care. Well-executed melodic Swedish black deAth ala Dissection...? There's certainly room for more besides WAtain. And yet, I feel nothing. I don't mean thAt in an ironic kvlt way either -- I'm really surprised by my lack of enthusiasm. So where did things go wrong I wonder? The genre did go through a certain amount of growing pains around the turn of the century and now things seem pretty evenly split among two major strains. First, we have the upper-tier established acts who have been going At it for years, some more progressive than others (Enslaved, Mayhem), others more content to drift towards the mainstream (SAtyricon, Dimmu Borgir and seriously, At.com/news/view.aspx?id=14583" target="_blank">WTF is up with this nonsense?). Some just keep on keeping on (Dark Funeral, Marduk), a few decided to abandon the genre completely (Darkthrone sorta, yes Ulver). Then, on the other hand, we have the new BM underground which, from my point of view, seems all too willing to embrace and accept sketchy politics and increasingly shitty, poorly recorded music. A race to the bottom, as I've mentioned here before I believe. The fact thAt I hear the new Burzum is getting a third vinyl repress bums me out. ThAt means thAt competent bands like Withershin don't have a place anymore and boring, jaded dudes like me will shrug it off. I think my major hangup must be the lack of mystery in today's BM -- 15 years ago these bands were legitimAtely terrifying and sounded barely human. They burned down churches and killed each other and lived way off in some distant land thAt seemed far beyond reach. I distinctly remember hearing Emperor for the first time and how it sounded like absolutely nothing I had ever experienced. Then, a few years lAter, I remember seeing Atch?v=6BI4_NMxPb8" target="_blank">Emperor's first video and how amazingly disappointed it made me. No longer the aural expression of pure evil, here were a bunch of average metal dudes making an average metal video and playing dress-up in the woods. To say nothing about how boring they were live when I eventually saw them on tour, but the magic was forever lost and bands like Withershin have no hope to reclaim thAt. I don't know whAt's to be done though. Has the grim masquerade run its course? Can we start smiling At each other and simply enjoy the music for whAt it is, not whAt it used to represent?