Check out a preview track from recent Morningside Records signee I Am Bones aka Johannes Gammelby (ex-Strumm): http://www.morningsiderecords.dk/mp3/i_am_bones_-_talk_to_the_hand.m3u
The new album "Wrong numbers are never busy" comes out October 4.
Check out the video for "Drop dead, Casanova" from Finland's Disco Ensemble: http://www.laspalmas.nu/discoensemble/
The clip just was awarded the Yleisöpumpeli (Audience Award) at the Oulu Musiikkivideofestival.
Guitarist Georgios Kalafatidis has left The Sound o.e. A replacement is due to be announced shortly.
The scheduled Set My Path/Rentokiller tour I posted about last week has been cancelled due to "poor booking." The bands both plan to make up the dates eventually, but nothing has been set yet.
Singer/songwriter Ane Brun continues her international expansion plans with a few dates supporting Keren Ann in the UK:
09/15 - Bush Hall, London (UK)
09/18 - Life Café, Manchester (UK)
09/19 - The Maze, Nottingham (UK)
Megahype has signed alternative rock act Rezonance, a band they describe as a "mixture of rock, alternative pop and various electronic music such as Recoil, Nine Inch Nails, Björk and Massive Attack." Their debut album "Black filters" will be released at the end of October.
The new Surferosa single "Royal uniform" has been posted on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/surferosa
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a quick blurb hyping Robyn (who doesn't even have a US deal yet) and an article/interview with Emiliani Torrini.
The people behind the Metica webzine now have a club night in Stockholm: http://klubb.metica.se/
MP3: Rough Bunnies - Dance with your shadow
Once again I'm going to turn things over to Simon Tagestam for today's new mp3:
Two weeks ago I was back at my parents' house and spent a lot of the time alone driving around in their green Nissan Micra. The car stereo doesn't work in the car so I usually brought my nice little portable cassette player along for the ride, and during the last days of my trip I got totally hooked on this song by Rough Bunnies called "Dance with your shadow". I got so obsessed by the song that I had to unwind the tape every time the song finished, just so I could hear it again, making me a danger to my fellow drivers out on the road, since the cassette player isn't the easiest thing to maneuver with one hand while trying to keep your eyes on the road. Do you understand now how beautiful this song is? It made me a dangerous driver! Seriously, I haven't cried a lot lately but "Dance with your shadow" made my eyes more than misty while driving to my girl's parents' house in the middle of the night, but then it made me super happy half of the time as well (what a song!). When I now hear the song on the stereo in my room it's almost like a different song (for example: the male backing vocals, for some reason, are non-existent on the taped version), but I'm getting slowly used to the more hi-fi version of the song. "Dance with your shadow" is without a doubt the best song I've heard this year and not many songs I've listened to lately have made me feel this confused and warm inside. If you develop a similar liking to this gorgeous song, I would recommend you to put the song on repeat while you record it onto a tape (that's if you haven't got a car with a flashy cd player). The song itself is a bitter lo-fi love song that reminds me a bit of Beat Happening.
Rough Bunnies - Dance with your shadow
Today's oldie classic comes from Him Kerosene, one of my all-time favorites. Seriously, this is the kind of stuff I live for: huge walls of discordant guitars, dissonant melodies and a heavy rhythm section. What more do you need? This is the post-hardcore/indierock sound that got me hooked on the Norrland scene. From early Fireside, Starmarket and Brick to other bands like KVLR, Breach, Convoj and Seven Feet Four (not from the North, I know), Him Kerosene helped define and establish what I consider to be my favorite sound. And let's not forget HK frontman Niklas Quintana's newest band The End Will Be Kicks, also featuring ex-HK drummer Tomas Turunen. Today's selection comes from the sadly out-of-print magnum opus "Start.Stop", first released back in 1997 on Telegram/Warner, but it must be said that all of their releases are brilliant and worth tracking down even if they aren't quite so readily available. It's worth it, trust me. You want to start a band that I'm enthusiastically endorse, here's your blueprint.