Tag: Mp3s
Still in California, stealing wireless Internet from one of my mom's hapless neighbors, so with Passover tonight and all my other family obligations, I'm letting contributor Jason Christie handle today's mp3 post:
Lindh's self ironic biography is as catchy as this song. As bouncy as Maia Hirasawa's "And I found this boy" and all very Swedish, not least for the native lyrics/obligatory piano trumpet moments. The Håkan Hellström method of plagiarism on "Kom igen Lena" might be at work here as there's a huge plagiarism of Tears for Fears' "Everybody wants to rule the world" during the last bridge.
This cut comes from "Ditt hjärta måste gå sönder" (Lindh's sixth album). If you have not heard of him, or his music "Varje lite steg" has been the perfect in road for me and will be this years' perfect music for Easter egg painting/rolling.Lindh plays a double release party at String and Pet Sounds in Stocklholm on April 4. The album is out April 4.
Lasse Lindh - Varje lite steg
I'm back in the SF Bay Area visiting my mom, so no there will be no news update today. However, I do have a brand new track from Torpedo to share, so all's not lost. Far from it actually - new music is always good thing and new music from Torpedo is great. However, I'm pretty beat from a rough day or travel and broken down cars, so let me allow the band to speak for themselves:
It's a 9.26 minute long anthem from our forthcoming album. It's easily the best work we've ever accomplished. May sound strange to people's ears the first time they listen, but we hope they'll understand the magic eventually.
The new stuff is much more monotone Krautrock but still maintaining the epic melodies and the quirkiness.
Hope you make it to the ending of the song. That's when the fun begins!
Intrigued? Check it out and I think you'll find that they speak the truth.
Torpedo - Assembly line
If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose my one, and only one, absolute favorite Bear Quartet record, today I'd say it was "Angry brigade". It's not the most "Important" BQ album (with a capital I), but it is tremendously consistent the whole way through and the one record I find myself grabbing most often when I need my BQ fix. Opening track "Put me back together" for example is fantastic in that it has no chorus, just an endless recurring melody that builds and builds as the lyrics heap insult upon injury, compiling an endless pile of grief. My favorite line: "We were sure it wasn't loaded." Even without context, you can easily imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios which would result in such a, uh, punchline. "I was only seven and I got knifed" is also pretty good, even if just for being silly (and hey, that's Northern Sweden for you). So is "I tried to fix the TV" too, as again - it's easy to picture how that could go oh-so wrong. In the end, "The last I felt was rain." Ominous.
The Bear Quartet - Put me back together
This week's Friday mp3 pick belongs to Matt Giordano:
Last Days of April has always been one of those groups that, whilst I like a handful of tracks, the rest of the lot has never really been able to grab my attention. Maybe it's because (to me anyway) the slower numbers tend to all sound rather similar, no matter when they have been recorded. The progression of the band since heading the pop route has been very slight, however it's with the uptempo pop songs where the band succeeds. Maybe it's because that's where Karl Larsson's pseudo-teen angst succeeds best - in capturing the energy of his moment of frustration. Anyway, the band's new album is out now, and although I've yet to hear it, here is one of the two songs I consider to be the band's best (and the only ones I subsequently listen to). Enjoy.
Matt's pick: "Do for two" from 2004's "If you lose it". The runner-up? My all-time favorite LDOA song "Playerin", off the 2002 album "Ascend to the stars". Seeing as how I've posted that one at least twice now over the years (once when it was new and once to revisit), I figure it's good to diversify.
Last Days of April - Do for two
Besides Logh (see yesterday's post), the other hot new release this week is Familjen's debut full-length "Det snurrar i min skalle". The music is just so... joyous. Not to mention, deceptively simple. Run a three-note arpeggio through a phaser and there's your refrain. Naturally, there's a bit more to it than that, but the essence of Familjen's pop/electronica sound is uncomplicated fun. Perhaps the lyrics tell a completely different story, but hey - I don't speak Swedish so I don't really care. Besides, as I've mentioned many times before, growing up on a steady diet of death-metal killed most of my attention for lyrical detail. As long as Familjen mainman Johan T Karlsson isn't singing about killing babies or something, I'm cool. Or actually, maybe that would make it even better?
Familjen - Det snurrar i min skalle
Today's the day that Logh's new album "North" is officially released in Sweden and Bad Taste Records has kindly given me permission to post my favorite song from the record "Thieves in the palace". Like most of Logh's best work, the mood is dark and tense, but not necessarily in a "doom" sort of way. The best doom music is defined by an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness, something that Logh doesn't fully embody. They have moments of grimness, but the recurring lead guitar melody fills me with a warm sense of optimism. It's something about the way they let the note hang after the string-bend. Pay extra close attention to the way it morphs ever so slightly as it leads out of the breakdown into the song's final coda.
It's funny - every new Logh album is a bit different than the last and not quite what I expected. It always takes me more than a few listens to wrap my head around it and appreciate it, something I fear most (especially America) critics are loathe to do. I like immediate gratification, but I also know that the bands who stick with me the longest rarely make that sort of music. For that, Logh remains one of my all-time favorites and "North" fits in nicely with their ever-evolving progression. Very well done.
Logh - Thieves in the palace
I'm going to contradict something I said yesterday. Sometimes it is important to read about music before listening and as such, I don't think I would've paid nearly as much attention to Konie's new album "The club is open" if I had not taken a look at the liner notes first. I have an audio engineering background, so I am always curious about the technical process behind the music and Konie lays out many of the details. The thing that caught my eye however is that all of the loops are real, honest-to-goodness tape loops. As in reel-to-reel, sliced with a razor and spliced together - there's even a deck pictured on the cover. Considering how stupid easy it is to replicate digitally (don't forget the saturation plug-in!), I think it's admirable to stick with the imperfect, old-fashioned method. It shows a high level of craftmanship and determination. There's also a certain character to it that's hard to fake.
Of course, it wouldn't make a lick of difference if the finished product wasn't worth listening to. The technical aspects of the recording made me listen in closer detail, but I wouldn't be talking about it if the end result was shit. This is organic dance music, pieced together by hand, not computers. That's the way I like it.
Konie - My life is shit but I am funky
As promised, here's some jazz to brighten up your Monday. Jonas Kullhammar Quartet operates in fairly standard territory on their most recent album "Son of a drummer" - the instrumentation is sax/piano/bass/drums and the compositions are fairly typical bebop. Play the head and let 'em rip, y'know? When the players are good, and they surely are, that's all you need. Music doesn't always need to be challenging to be good. This is especially true with jazz and I'm appreciating that more and more as I get older. If I have to read a treatise to care about the piece, chances are high it's not worth listening to. Listen to JKQ's take on the Swedish standard "Corny waltz" for instance. The music is warm, familiar and inviting. The performances are strong. Is it enough to make you happy? It is for me.
Jonas Kullhammar Quartet - Corny waltz
This week's Bear Quartet post comes courtesy of Johan Gustavsson. Johan plays in a shit-ton of various bands including Scraps of Tape, Tsukimono, Alina and Conduo Orchestra to name a few. SoT just released the excellent album "This is a copy is this a copy" and is on tour as we speak. Alina and Tsukimono have new records on the way, as do a few of the other projects he's involved in. Needless to say, he's a busy guy, but somehow to found time to reminisce on the mighty BQ:
"Gay icon" was the first BQ album I ever listened to as a whole and by my own will.
Up until then, my brother David used to play BQ to me once in a while, proclaiming that they were/are the best Swedish band ever and so on... I have infinite trust in David's musical knowledge and taste, so after a while I bought "Gay icon" and when "Portrait painter" came on I was blown to pieces. The lyrics just make me shudder and wipe a tear every time... thank you.
"Gay icon" was my first Bear Quartet album, too. Download "Portrait painter" below.
The Bear Quartet - Portrait painter
There are two things I'd love to post more of: raging hardcore punk and jazz. If I could find people to contribute a regular column on either subject I would be stoked. Talking about the same boring indie crap week in/week out is so tiring. Sure, there's plenty of gems out there, but there's so much bullshit to sift through to find it.
The jazz will wait until next week - today you get a track from Sweden's Bruce Banner off their 2004 full-length "I've had it with humanity". The group featured scene vets from all sorts of bands such as DS-13 and Filthy Christians and they play raw, no-frills early 80s-style hardcore with a two-pronged vocal attack. The song I've posted today: "Shut the fuck up". A totally self-explanatory, no slow/all go 35-second thrash onslaught. I'm not an angry teenager anymore, but this hits the spot for me right now.
Bruce Banner - Shut the fuck up
Peter Jöback: "Oh, let's go to Milano / it's fashion week and so am I / weak, in need of love / any love from anyone"
Markus Krunegård: "Oh no, come with me to Helsinki / where the streets are wide and so am I / wide open for love / any love from anyone"
And with that first verse, Laakso gives you their modern-day schlager classic. The innuendo is so fierce and the song so overwrought, over-the-top ridiculous and awesome, it's gotta be destined for evergreen status. I seriously cannot stop myself from listening to it over and over and over again. The fact that there's a video on the way makes me quiver with excitement.
Preorder Laakso's new album "Mother, am I good looking?": [click here]
Laakso - Italy vs Helsinki (ft. Peter Jöback)
Will Gambola Sing boasts a pretty amazing pedigree. They've got John Roger Olsson of IAT.MP3 artists The Grand Opening plus Jimmy Ottosson/Jimmy O of The Je Ne Sais Quoi, solo artist Mikko Singh, Joakim Labraaten of Yamon Yamon (another promising act) and Anders Ljung of Ohm. Considering the members other acts, it's not surprising that they make incredibly lush, dreamy pop music, but it is also kind of disappointing that they've decided to forego and keep it purely instrumental. What gives dudes? You've got more than one talented vocalist among you, so I wanna hear some beautiful harmonies. Aside from that one awfully minor complaint, this is some nice stuff, especially for what I imagine would be regarded as a demo. The songs and the playing is fantastic, the arrangements make great use of space and the recording sounds excellent. Definitely looking forward to hearing more down the road!
Listen to more tracks here: https://www.myspace.com/willgambolasing
Will Gambola Sing - Space is a strange place
It's amazing how little has changed between the demo version of Samuraj Cities' "All along the shoreline" (posted here in September '05) and the newer album version (posted today). The guitars still sound just as cheap and brittle as they always did, only now they're able to pile even more of 'em on top of eachother. That harsh, direct-to-tape tone is an integral part of what makes Samuraj Cities who they are and they wouldn't be nearly as good without the lo-fi DIY aesthetic. It's hard not to listen to this and think of that other "Shoreline" song from Broder Daniel - both involve heavy themes of isolation and finding your way in the world, though BD is far more agonizing and pessimistic compared to SC's philosophical ruminations. Or to take it further: Samuraj Cities ponders the possibilities of sailing up the coast while Broder Daniel is landlocked and raging at the sea. Is that relevant? I dunno, I just like to picture BD frontman Henrik Berggren on the beach in his beret, shaking his fist in the air.
Samuraj Cities - All along the shoreline
Maia Hirasawa's debut single "And I found this boy" is classic indiepop through and through, right on down to the big dance number in the video. A little sugary sweet perhaps, but perfect for that transition from winter to spring. But what of the rest of the record? Thankfully, it's more than cutesy girlpop and songs about boys. There are moments of that, sure, but it's all very well-done and balanced with other, more introspective and contemplative material. In the same way that I suspect some people were turned off from Hello Saferide because of "the lesbian song" ("My best friend"), understand that there's much more to it. It's the non-single tracks that elevate the album as a whole. Take "Gothenburg" for example - a song about a very specific place and time. The music is totally different, but I can't help but be reminded of Jawbreaker's "West Bay invitational". That's a song that is even more time/place specific, but its essence - the power of capturing that singular moment - is what's important and what makes it so strong and memorable. This will be a song to revisit in years to come.
Maia Hirasawa - Gothenburg
Once again, Aymeric of Absolut Noise takes care of our weekly Bear Quartet post:
Preamble: "Earthly pastime" is certainly not the best Bear Quartet song; too square, too pop, too "regular". Released on their "Moby Dick" album, it was made during the early part of BQ story. It could actually be taken as a "country" song. In this respect, it reminds me a bit the sound of "Ditt hjärta är en stjärna", the latest Mattias Alkberg BD album.
There are three kind of songs: the ones you hate, the ones you love and the ones you'd better listen to while you are driving a car. "Earthly pastime" belongs to this third category. I cannot exactly remember when I have begun to fall in love with it. I used to listen to it at home and find it nice, but it was not a killer to me. And then I was driving near Monaco, just next to the French Riviera, exactly on the road where Grace Kelly died in a car crash. I was actually thinking about the Hitchcock actress when I started to realize that I was moving my head back and forth, driving a bit too fast on this serpentine road. The feeling was just too good. I wanted to let the car go, put my hands off the steering wheel and clap them in rhythm. I did not dare though. I am still alive.
The Bear Quartet - Earthly pastime