Swedish act Lowe is heading east to promote their new album "Kino international":
02/28 - DBK, Kostopil (UA)
03/01 - Roberta Doms, Lviv (UA)
03/03 - Botshka, Kiev (UA)
03/04 - Sorry Babushka, Kiev (UA)
03/05 - Liverpool, Donetsk (UA)
03/06 - Master Schmidt, Dnipropetrovsk (UA)
03/07 - Churchill, Kharkiv (UA)
03/10 - Zvestnij, Volgograd (RU)
03/11 - Revolution, St Petersburg (RU)
03/12 - Ot zakata do rassveta, Tver (RU)
03/13 - Jao Da, Moskva (RU)
03/15 - Step, Minsk (BY)
Kristofer Åström has a new tourblog: http://kristoferontour.tumblr.com/
The Field's new album "Yesterday & today" is now officially confirmed for May 25 in Europe, May 26 in the US.
Swedish 90s indie revivalists Culkin have a couple great new tracks on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/culkin
Logh is working with animator/director Kenny Lindström from Organic Level on the video for their new single "Death to my hometown". Check out some initial sketches here: http://picnicwithpanic.blogspot.com/2009/02/logh-death-to-my-hometown.html
As with last year, Norway's Øya Festival is teaming up with Oh My Rockness to send over a couple bands to play showcases in NYC and at SXSW. This year's picks are Casiokids and The New Wine and the shows are as follows:
03/16 - Bell House, NYC w/Anamanaguchi, Kittens Ablaze
03/19 - Habana Annex Backyard, Austin (SXSW) w/Max Tundra, Wavves, more
Both acts are also playing a bunch of other showcases at SXSW, so keep your eyes peeled.
Fixe Records is the name of a new Swedish label and their first release will be melancholy indie act New Found Land's debut album "We all die", tentatively set for a May 2 release. Hear a couple tracks at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/fixerecords
Fields of Grain are a Swedish duo who bill themselves as "alternative electric soul music" which of course sounds positively horrendous, but the description fits and the music is actually pretty good. Normally I avoid any act that refers to themselves as "funky" (another word from their one-sheet) like the plague, but since I really do try and listen to at least a bit of every disc/record/mp3 that gets sent my way, I gave them a chance and found myself pleasantly surprised. Not only are they dark and moody in all the right ways, they are also nicely subdued and far, far closer to the ambient side of electronica than any sort of beat-you-over-the-head style I'd expect from the above descriptors. Think more Portishead, not Prince. While they are still not the sort of group I would ever seek out on my own, I am most certainly impressed.
Fields of Grain - Make
The Setting Son's new album "Spring of hate" has been pushed back to April 20 with the lead single "Soulmate" preceding it on March 2.
Miss Li's new album, due out April 1, will be called "Dancing the whole way home". The first single "I heard of a girl" comes out March 17 and can be heard now at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/experiencemissli
Listen to the new track "Music for hiss and elevator" from Swedish ambient/experimental act Ved: http://www.myspace.com/vedsound
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This week is a great week for Swedish music connoisseurs living in London, both Sad Day for Puppets and First Aid Kit are playing here. Yesterday I went to The Social to see Sad Day for Puppets. First up were The Deer Tracks (also from Sweden), who play music I don't get at all – some kind of slow ambient electro drone. There are fans of this genre, I'm pretty certain on that, but I don't associate with them. I watched half their set, then I ordered another beer and sat down as far away from the stage I could.
Sad Day for Puppets are great, their album is very solid and they've got some blinding songs (they sound a bit like a more melodic The Radio Dept. or a more shoegazing Camera Obscura). Yesterday it was all shambles though, mostly due to the sound situation being catastrophic. Over the weekend I went to a festival in Oslo and, despite short changeovers and stressed out musicians, nothing there sounded as bad as yesterday's show. There was feedback throughout the whole set and Anna Ecklund's vocals were barely audible (something that the crowd kept pointing out, alas to no avail). I don't blame the band, they did as best as they could, just a shame that they had to suffer on the behalf of a sound engineer not being able to do his job (The Deer Tracks brought their own engineer who annoyingly ran back and forth all the time to check that the sound was ok, but at least he got the job done). I'm not particularly fussy about how a gig sounds, as long as I can hear the vocals I'm usually ok, so this was a very rare occasion where the quality of the sound actually ruined my whole gig experience. A total waste of £6 and an evening.
- Simon Tagestam
Swedish powerpop act The Zoo will be releasing their debut single "Stay until the morning" on March 1, the same day their debut full-length "We can't wait" comes out via the band's own Manhoover Records. Listen at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/thezooworld
When I first got Detektivbyrån's latest record "Wermland" it immediately became my wife's favorite record (an honor now held by The Devil's Blood, but that's a different story). Which means that she would listen to it incessantly and though I'm ashamed to admit it, it drove me nuts. I don't know why, but I couldn't hang at all. Flash forward to the present and the situation is reversed. Not that I'm really all that surprised. Detektivbyrån is an amazing band, not to mention a worthy obsession. The problem was with me, not them! Even better, recent videos are keeping them in the spotlight. I don't think it's very far-fetched to call them one of Sweden's best bands.
Detektivbyrån - En annan typ av disco
Updated Wolfbrigade tourdates:
03/05 - Utkanten, Malmö (SWE)
03/06 - Alte Meierei, Kiel (GER)
03/07 - Az, Mülheim, (GER)
03/08 - The Buze, Steenwijk (NL)
03/09 - La Zona, Liege (BEL)
03/11 - Au, Frankfurt (GER)
03/12 - Beat Club, Stuttgart (GER)
03/13 - Juzi, Göttingen (GER)
03/14 - Dödsmaskinen, Köpenhamn (DK)
04/09 - tba, Valencia (ESP)
04/10 - La Jungla Squat, Barcelona (ESP)
04/11 - La Muerte Fest, Madrid (ESP)
05/30 - Rassle PunkRock, Emmaboda (SWE)
06/12-13 - Punk Illegal Fest 5, Munkedal (SWE)
07/17 - Obscene Extreme (CZ)
Sad Day For Puppets