A couple Scandinavian reviews from Splendid today:
Finally, an overwhelmingly positive US review for the new Soundtrack of Our Lives album: http://popmatters.com/music/reviews/s/soundtrackofourlives-origin1.shtml
Delusions of Adequacy reviews the now-departed Kid Commando: http://www.adequacy.net/review.php?reviewid=5364
Aftonbladet reports that the CD single is dead, something that most people should've already realized years ago: http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/noje/story/0,2789,631222,00.html (in Swedish)
Colony 5 has posted a bunch of soundclips from their new album "Fixed": http://www.colony5.com/index.php?page=listen
The excellent (mostly) Scandinavian music blog For the Eardrums recently posted an interview with hyped Swedish post-punk act CDOASS: http://eardrums.blogspot.com/2005/04/cdoass-interview.html
The (International) Noise Conspiracy has a new website: http://www.internationalnoise.com/
My understanding is that American Records is finally getting the latest album "Armed love" ready for a US release this summer, but probably not in time for the Trail of Dead tour. I haven't heard an exact date yet, but American has confirmed that they've established a new relationship with Warner and will able to get it properly distributed.
Oh. My. God. That had to be the longest trip home ever. I left Umeå late Sunday to head back to Stockholm and then got about an hour sleep before I had to run back to Arlanda to catch my flight to Paris. As luck would have it, the flight to Paris was delayed just enough for me to miss my connection flight to San Francisco, leaving me standed in France for an additional 24hrs. Merde! Thankfully the airport put me up at a local hotel, but let me tell you - it's scary to be a vegetarian at a Parisian buffet when there's so many little googly eyes staring back at you. I didn't realize pork came in so many forms. So anyhow, I survived and finally made it back home yesterday only to discover that my computer was kaput. Awesome. Still, it's so nice to be back in my own house with my wife and dogs and to sleep in my own bed, especially after such a draining journey.
Okay, day three of Umeå Open. My talk went okay even though I imbibed quite a bit the night before and the audience was somewhat unresponsive in typical Norrlandic fashion. That's pretty much what I expected, so I can't really complain. I suspect I could've prepared a little better, but it's far too late for those kinds of thoughts now. The shows that night were fantastic. Cult of Luna kicked things off down in the basement and actually played slower live than on record. Good stuff. I ran out of there at just the right moment to find Isolation Years taking the stage upstairs at the main auditorium. Again, quite nice. Both bands suffered a bit from being the first ones out for the evening, but both the bands and the crowd warmed up nicely by the end of their sets. After that I sat for a bit and relaxed before heading off to see a bit of El Perro Del Mar who was much, much better than I expected. I've thought that her recordings were kind of mediocre, but she really had a great voice live. Then it was back downstairs for Silverbullit who were easily the highlight of the entire festival. Such an awesome band, both live and on record. I took it easy after that until Moneybrother closed the show with a fantastic performance with his full band, including strings. It's interesting to see how much more he talked and related to the audience in Sweden than when I saw him a few weeks ago in LA. Both were good shows, but Anders was obviously much more comfortable in his home country, using his own language.
Huge thanks to everyone who put me up and put up with me. Thanks to everyone at Umeå Open and ExMS for making my trip possible and I'll be trying my best to thank you all personally in the next few days as I catch up on email. I had an awesome time and met so, so many great people. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'll be back in Sweden once again. I just won't go through France next time. Pictures soon! Once my home computer gets fixed. Oh, and if anyone finds my address book, please send it back to me. I'll cover the postage.
I managed to grab a couple new things for the mailorder including the new Convoj EP, restocks of Tiger Lou and the last double-CD special editions of the latest Kristofer Åström record. It might take me awhile to get them into the database, but you can always email me if you don't want to wait.
Now back to the grind! Brand new mp3 from C.Aarmé. Forget about Kent, Moneybrother, or whoever else being this year's summer hitmakers - this track is by far the best single you'll hear this summer, maybe even all year. I've been listening to it on repeat all week, it's just so good. And what could be a better songtitle than "We are the world"? Can it get any better than that? No! Of course not! 100% pure gold I tell ya! Can't wait to hear the album.
"I spy" has been confirmed as the first single from the upcoming CDOASS debut album "Extra fingers". It comes out April 20 via Playground Music and features guest appearances from members of Revl9n, Caesars and Paddington DC.
Sweatmaster will be heading to France at the end of the month to promote their new album "Tom tom bullet" which will be released over there on Vicious Circle Records in the near future. The first 1000 copies of said record will include 6 bonus songs from the recent "Song with no words" EP. Dates:
04/26 - La Noveau Casino, Paris (FRA)
04/27 - Le Son´Art, Bordeaux (FRA)
04/28 - MJC Oullins, Oullins (FRA)
04/29 - Grenoble (FRA)
04/30 - West Rock, Cognac (FRA)
Aura Noir has posted a small update regarding the steadily improving condition of guitarist Carl-Michael "Aggressor" Eide: http://www.wearetherobots.com/auranoir/news.php
In case you don't already know, Carl-Michael either jumped or fell from a 5-story building in Oslo shortly after performing at the Inferno Festival about two weeks ago.