Racy, funky new electro (and Finnish indie-schmindies).

I just browsed through the last few days of the Forkcast, while reading one of my buddies' travellog, and a lot of really interesting stuff actually showed up! I guess I'm in yet another electro phase, which will almost certainly not last too long, but right now, there's just a lot of tasty new stuff out there.

Most importantly, check out this track, 'American Mourning' by Bikini. It really amps up in a nice way at the end. I think it's a stretch to call them dance-pop as Pitchfork do - indie-house would probably be more appropriate.

Onra out of Paris, France is awesomely funky, in a laid-back, but not at all in an uneventful way. Try and check out 'The Perfect Match'. Oh, and never mind the bollocks lyrics, just keep it to the beatzzzz... 'All Around and Away We Go' by Twin Sister, is another track with a sweet, dirty groove.

My electro-wave might be sort of a counter-reaction to the wild and crazy lo-fi wave that's hitting indie right now. It's just sickening, and it's gone way, way, way, waaaay over the top! I mean, give White Fence a listen on 'Lillian (Won't You Play Drums?)'. Just too much.

I mentioned these Finnish Joe Shmoes in the header, which was mainly because they have quite another knish than all the club-tinged stuff. They're called French Films, and they've got a nice sorta The Drums'ey or late Raveonettes thing going on 'Golden Sea'. Very enjoyable!

Fuck, my tasteless flattie is amping up her Thursday with bone-dry, bland mainstream house - I think I'm gonna flee into my headphones with something nice and quiet!

You say yea, I say sayer!

Yeasayer's Odd Blood album has really been growing on me as of late. It's quite a tricky, quirky record, that can seem lengthy at first listen, but I've now realized that it's an absolutely splendid collection of tunes. Aside from the obvious crown jewel, 'O.N.E.', I've really been raving to 'Mondegreen' this week, it's such an awesome and powerful tune!


I like to utilize every possibility I have to write horse on my blog, and it's only more fitting when it comes in the form of an interesting song. It's 'The Dwarf and The Horse', which is by Sleep Party People. The live take from the X-Sessions I've linked to, captures the rabbit-masked outfit's very intense live shows pretty sharply. The metallic drum pad percussion is sort of reminiscent to another masked group of much wider acclaim...


Finally, I'm often irritated by good intros or interludes that seem like sort of undeveloped tracks - as if they're the fetus from an aborted working process, to metaphorize. I often wonder how stunning tracks they could have become if they were expanded a bit. A good example is 'Intro' on The xx' xx. There's such etherealness to the guitar, and it could really become the most haunting, sweeping, murky tune. Now, it's not much longer, actually it's shorter, than the original, but curious Swedish outfit jj (what's with those lowercase double-letter-names anyway??), whom I've checked out way too superficially, have had a take on 'Intro', sampling it for 'I'm The One/Money On My Mind', which is kinda cool.

Leslie, you and I have been long overdue...

Oi, I've had quite a busy week, so I haven't had time to write a bit about my new albums yet. I got a few last week, and all are shaping up pretty nicely!

I'm especially pleased to finally have Leslie Feist's The Reminder in my collection. It is every bit as delightful as I remember from my first few listens (I especially remember a rainy day on the Great Ocean Road...), and it has been a welcome addition to my record collection as an album that works well on many occasions. It's pretty hard to distinguish the key tracks yet, but I enjoy 'The Park' and 'Sealion' very much. Also the pretty closer 'How My Heart Behaves' featuring Eirik of Kings of Convenience and the very Norah Jones'esque 'Brandy Alexander' deserves mentions.

I also got The Amplifetes' eponymous debut. I kinda bought that one on the spur of the moment, so I didn't really have huge expectations. It is however a decent album, highlighted of course by 'Someone New', which is a simply massive tune, unsurprisingly the highlight of the album. The oohntzy 'Blinded By The Moonlight' is good too.

Finally, and in a completely other ditch, I got Søren Huss' solo-debut Troen & Ingen. I guess sometimes good songwriters need to shed the weight of a band to truly shine. Huss is no Bon Iver, as one had perhaps hoped, but he fares very well in the maze that is making a sentimental album without ending up sounding like a wuss or an emo or both. The lyrical universe is very strong, and the musical is much more interesting than what he ever did with Saybia, seemingly mingling a lot of styles in the name of the lyrics and the concept being what carries the album, not its musical traits.

Heavy duty Spleen.

Yesterday, I went to Århus to see Spleen United, who are playing their (more or less) first concerts in Denmark in two years. They have let the word spread on a comprehensive change in style, spearheaded by this fall's single, 'Sunset To Sunset'. The new Spleen United is supposedly tougher and even more machine-like, which is pretty serious for an already very machine-like band, and the rumored change in style proved to be no fluke. 


Reactions to the new material, which has been played in Copenhagen and Århus the past two weekends, have been mixed, as is always the case when a band etches a new route - some will undoubtedly and unavoidably turn themselves against the new stuff, arguing not to change a winning team etcetera.


Truth is, Spleen United already turned a major corner when they developed from the slow-moving, Jean-Michel Jarre-inspired escapades of Godspeed Into The Mainstream into the more straight forward, club-oriented Neanderthal, although there are overlaps on both, such as 'In Peak Fitness Condition' and 'Spleen United' on the first one, and 'Heat' and 'Under The Sun' on the last.


To be frank, I didn't mind the new stuff. Especially the latter part of the new material was very interesting, and I also think it's really pretty limited how much of this will actually get on the third record, which the band announced to be out in "a year". They also said, that much of the stuff was made specifically for this occasion (probably in conjunction with their show in Copenhagen last week as well though). It was a bit too machine-like at times, as my friend Maria summed it up quite precisely at one point during the concert, stating that it could just as well have been The Chemical Brothers who had snuck on stage, but still I do think the third album will in some way have stylistic connection to Neanderthal as well as to the harder techno-house the band exhibited bits of yesterday.


Other than that, the band was intense and party-starting as always, and cleverly finished off with 'Dominator', 'Spleen United' and 'Suburbia', although they could have worked the show even more powerfully by not introducing these tunes as obviously as they did. The crowd was raving about, and really Train as a venue was perhaps a bit small. There was a lot of pushing and shoving - not the dancing way, but more the territorial one.


This viddy from Berlin showcases a bit of the new style!

Well, can I ask you about today?

It's no secret that one of the major musical stories for me the past months time has been the discovery of The National's old Cherry Tree EP, off which especially 'About Today' is staggeringly beautiful. I just wanted to point out this amazing live version of it, it's about four years old, but the sound is actually quite alright, and it's all just marvelous! The National, by the way, are swinging by Århus late February, which'll be awesome.


I've been ill the past few days, so I've been geezing a lot around Youtube, and I stumbled upon this feller Chris O'Riley, a classical pianist doing Radiohead-tunes. Some of them are very interesting, such as 'Exit Music (For A Film)' and 'Subterranean Homesick Alien'.


Also I've been digging more into Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More album, beginning to understand why it was a Mercury nominee, even though the mandolin is still a bit hard on my ears. Ordered a few new albums the other day, which should be here soon - sweet!

This is Valleys! (and sweet electro treats)

Right, I stumbled upon this here on the Forkcast earlier this week  - it's 'Ordinary Dream' by Valleys. It does become a bit to noisily psych at times, but I do find it quite enjoyable.

In other news, some new interesting stuff is shaping up in the world of electro. I guess I would never forgive myself, if I let 'Not In Love', the all-star collaboration between kings of electropunk Crystal Castles, and Robert Smith of The Cure fame. Especially because it's a pretty nice corner of CC's otherwise sometimes very unaccessibly noisy sound spectrum.

A few of my more peripherical acquaintances maintain the blog HoerLigeHer.dk, which is often a good source of music. They honestly have their fingers on the pulse much more than I have, such as the case of new Swedish outfit The Amplifetes, which sounds armed and ready to take over the airwaves massively - try listening to 'Somebody New' - stinkingly catchy, huh?!

The Rumour Said... Treefight.

I'll give them this: It was a pretty difficult task for The Rumour Said Fire to really capture the crowd at Studenterhuset yesterday, performing after Treefight For Sunlight. Not only because the young warm-up band is musically vastly their superior, but also because a sizable minority of the audience was indeed there not for the big name on the bill, but for the "homecoming" of the locally born and bred new fast cats of Danish indie.


You probably already caught the knish: The main act was honestly a quite bland experience. I had perhaps hoped they could convince me to go buy their recently released debut album, The Arrogant, but sorry guys, that's not gonna happen. There there just isn't much zest to neither their music nor their performance, and they seem to have tough time building up anything substantial around their improbable, ultra-minimal breakthrough hit, 'The Balcony', which features a whopping four of the six-piece live line-up playing percussion. There's nothing wrong with percussion at all, but I didn't really like the impression of a band, who have achieved success on a sound which is a so massively stripped version of themselves.


On the other hand, Treefight For Sunlight was an interesting experience. As with their album, the rumor had run ahead, and had perhaps led me to having very high expectations, once again ending up with their splendor being somewhat matter-of-factly. The bands high degree of advanced vocal work was executed spotlessly, and the entire performance was very professional for a still relatively unexperienced foursome. I would almost define the performance as grave, which at times seemed awkward juxtaposed with the band's merry sound. But when the shit hits the fan, it's all about musicality, which is definitely in abundance with Treefight For Sunlight. The first few songs, the same first three as on the album, weren't as strong live as on the album, but the rest of the set was very impressive, especially 'What Became of You and I', which is definitely not one of my favorites on the album, and the darker, heavier songs 'Time Stretcher' and 'They Never Did Know'. Indeed a very exciting band to follow, and one that more than likely hasn't reached their full potential yet.

An absolute abundance of concerts!

So, while Halcyon Digest still hasn't dropped in my mailbox (seriously, fuck you Play.com, it wasn't free!), and while I can't access my e-bank to get an overview over how much I can afford to spend on new records tomorrow, I do have other things to look forward to. The next month and a bit is an extraordinary abundance of interesting concerts, which is nice, of course. Here's the calendar:


Tomorrow, on October 29th, I'm gonna see The Rumour Said Fire with Treefight For Sunlight. Let it be no secret, that I'm gonna be there primarily for the latter, but as regards TRSF, they might be able to convince me to buy their record. We'll see.


Next friday, November 5th, I'm off to Århus for Spleen United, which is gonna be massive. I have only seen them live once, and I've been listening to them much more since then - especially the first album, Godspeed Into The Mainstream, off which they're unfortunately probably not gonna play much. But what's gonna be really interesting is that they're showcasing a lot of new stuff from their forthcoming album - exciting! Also, Kenton Slash Demon are performing alongside them, which is gonna be massive too!


Friday, November 12th, it's back to Aalborg for Figurines and The Kissaway Trail. I've seen Figurines a few times live, and even though it's gonna be interesting to hear their new stuff, I'm again primarily there for the smaller act. I've been listening a bit to The Kissaway Trail the past half year, and it really bugs me that I've never seen them live.


A fortnight later, it's at Studenterhuset in Aalborg again, for Casiokids with Vinnie Who - perhaps the most interesting international name to come by since RJD2 a few years ago. I think it's gonna be awesome!


The real heavyweighters lurk at the end, though, as Saturday, November 27th, it's Klaxons at Amager Bio. This is gonna be seriously insane! I'm glad the new album has picked up pace on me, and together with a few of the classics off Myths of the Near Future, it's gonna be sweat-drenched for sure!


Finally, on December 3rd, it's Foals at Vega. This is probably the show I'm looking forward to the most. I've never seen Foals live, and with a sophomore album that is even better than their debut one, it can only be good!


So, that's whats in store - be sure to check back for comments on all these rad shows!

Kurt, Agnes, Val and The Alcoholic.

This Philly-bloke Kurt Vile has been buzzing in my radar the past week, showing up here and there, and I decided to check him out. He's pretty good - really chill. I'm constantly on the lookout for chill stuff these days, I guess its fall making me sombre. Try and check out 'Blackberry Song', which is a really enjoyable tune. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the vocal mix - why does it have to sound purposely sloppy and low? No thanks.


Berlin-based musical amazon Agnes Obel has garnered some pretty serious reviews for her new album, and 'Brother Sparrow' was on the Soundvenue High 5 until recently. It's a really graceful and pleasant tune. 


The National's songs come creeping and crawling one by one these days, and right now, it's 'Val Jester' off Alligator, another good example of Matt Berninger's tremendously timely and witty lyrics:

All the most important people in New York are nineteen.

Guess it only goes down from here huh? Anyway, it's incredible how Berninger is able to very accurately and touchingly describe feelings that he hasn't necessarily had. He's an astonishing ghost-writer of sorts.


Finally, lets conclude with a group that has somewhat gone only ever downwards from their magnificent debut. It's Röyksopp, who just released their fourth full-length, Senior, which didn't really impress me. 'The Alcoholic' however is pretty sweet!

Winter's on its way, 'Blindsided' tells me.

Halcyon Digest is still nowhere to be seen, and I am beginning to suspect Play.com, or the everyday devil we all know, the mailman, of fucking something up.


In the mean time, things have been really bloody quiet. I am in a tremendous musical void, to be honest, but out of voids, interesting tendencies tend to appear anyway. It's still mostly about The National's Cherry Tree EP, but being an EP, it doesn't exactly contain sufficient depth and inexhaustibility to bear endless hype. I'm also sorta coming around to The Suburbs, Arcade Fire's pretty damn well acclaimed third album, on which I was initially slightly lukewarm. Some of the gems have shined from day one, but many of the more anonymous and inaccessible tunes, initially seeming to be excess and overtime work for a band too flutteringly ambitious to fit a concept album into 40 minutes, are now emerging as strong songs in their own way. Today, I also finally downloaded a few of Beach House's tunes off Soundcloud (sorry). I'm really pissed their record is so impossible to get at, because a tune like 'Face It' is really enjoyable!


Finally, as the title states, I have had yet another revival of what seems to be the most immortal album on the face of indie Earth; For Emma, Forever Ago. I listened to it loudly and in utter darkness last Thursday night, when I had little else to do, and once again it slowly came creeping upon me, the greatness and total embrace of it all. Especially 'Blindsided', which also to me carries strong associations of last winter, when I came home from abroad, and everything was bloody cold as ice, and everyone were happy and rejoicing and some were dying and some were kissing, and all was bitterly cold and white.


I like fall, which is upon us now. Apart from the bitter cold, which is of course crap, I like when days are getting slightly shorter, when it's dark when you come home from work, and when colors are all grey and brown and even browner and orange. It's a time for melancholy, quiet musing and reflection and a slower pace.

Horse and Superpitcher.

I must admit I heard this tune primarily because of the title, as 'horse' is one of my favorite words. There's such a calmness and potency to it. Calmness perhaps isn't a fitting descriptor for Brian Eno's 'Horse', but there's something to it that made me return and listen again, regardless of the title. If you don't like Battles or Radiohead's 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors', this is however probably not for you.


Maybe Superpitcher is then. Distinctly German, but in a pleasant way. I find 'Rabbits In A Hurry' really catchy! It's got sort of a loungy laid-backness, but still doesn't become irrelevant. There's some sort of poise and edge to it.

New potent Danish electro.

The Danish electro scene has been booming in recent years. I guess after a few years of indie revolution, people needed something new to do. An interesting outfit is Kenton Slash Demon, who teamed up with Malthe Fischer of Oh No Ono fame for 'Matter', which really rocks. KSD are warming up for Spleen United at Train in a few weeks, which is gonna be rad.


Another interesting young artist is Oh Land, part of the crazy wave of female electro artists. Check out 'Sun of a Gun' (yeah, it's sun, not son, for some reason...), it's pretty catchy.


Another very catchy tune is WhoMadeWho's 'Left Hand of The Boxer'. Only thing is, I always get seriously irritated when Danes sing with a noticeable Danish accent - it just sounds so shit! (Carpark North anyone?).


Other than that, things are pretty quiet. I'm still waiting for Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest to pop into my mailbox. Where oh where has it gone, I wonder? I've been (very slightly) reviving Oasis, and also Danish band ENTAKT last week.


But October sure is quiet...

Just too much country, and just enough psych-pop.

All right, so they slightly drowned in my sudden discovery of the Cherry Tree EP, but I bought two new albums last week, and they deserve a mention.


Worst things first: Mumford & Sons. I was introduced to them by two Maltese blokes while traveling this summer, and after I saw they were shortlisted for the Mercury with their debut album Sigh No More, I decided I had to get a hold of it. I don't know in which way it sounded different this summer, but I am slightly disappointed. If you asked ten people to place this band geographically in either London or somewhere in the American Midwest, nine of them would opt for the latter. Thanks to globalization and the ever-karrazzeeer mingling and criss-crossing of genres and influences, that's however not true. Now, I listen to much more music from London or Brooklyn, than from Seattle, but I don't think this is for me. It's purely a question of taste and preferences I guess, and I cannot completely rule out that Sigh No More will one day grow on me (can you ever, really?), but this is just too country for me. There's too much mandolin, too much banjo, and it seems to be applied very uncautiously.


Then there's young Danish indie-psych-poppers Treefight For Sunlight's debut, A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull. I'm not quite decided on this one yet. That's a lie, actually. It's a bloody impressive album. I don't know, it's perhaps just all the hype surrounding the album - the 5- and 6/6 reviews and all that has led me to expect a masterpiece, and then it becomes sort of an anticlimax when the album, so far, turns out to be "just" very impressive. It kicks off spotlessly, with the two first joyful and pleasant tracks give way to 'The Universe Is A Woman', which is one of the albums definite musical highlights.


It almost becomes too rollickingly psychedelic and nauseatingly joyful at a few points, but only just about. The band cleverly keeps the sometimes slight over-the-top-ness in short leach, and turns it down a knot on pleasant tunes like 'They Never Did Know' and 'Time Stretcher', both of which are refreshingly finger-in-the-soil, and leave sufficient room for a beautiful escapade like 'Riddles In Rhymes'.


Then there's 'Facing The Sun'. It's often pretty hard to release a debut album on top of a highly successful hit single, but Treefight For Sunlight manage to overcome 'Facing The Sun's summer dominance - it fits pretty snugly into the whole ordeal, and while it by far isn't the most musically advanced track on the album, it's still an absolute favorite. I like it the same way I like Phoenix, for example, and even though it does seem slightly out of the place when the calendar reads October, it is a wonderful tune.


A Collection of Vibrations... is a pretty short and neat album, clocking in at only about 34 minutes. That's a good thing - sometimes young bands, especially very ambitious ones, tend to try and stuff much too much into their albums. To stay a bit within the genre, think of MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, on which, in my opinion, there's a pretty big drop-off between the 3-4 best tracks, and the less spectacular ones. Of course, there are tracks on A Collection of Vibrations... that are less interesting than others, but there isn't much of a gap. Another way Treefight For Sunlight manage to balance cleverly on the curious knife edge of debut records, is not selling out. Remember what happened to Oh No Ono between the Now You Know Oh No Ono-EP and their debut album? That's right - they became boring. Luckily, Treefight For Sunlight retain their confident sparkle.


So, what's the skinny on this? Well, it's a very good album. It's a very good debut album, which seems to have been what has propelled reviewers upwards, but it's a good album in it's own right, debut or not. It still very much remains to be seen how its longevity's like (I have my doubts...), but for sure Treefight For Sunlight have set a good benchmark for climbing even higher.


I'm waiting for Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest to drop in my mailbox. 9.2 on Pitchfork - that'll be rad!

Cherry Tree, you stunning hidden gem!

I had a revelation yesterday! I was listening to The National's wonderful album Boxer, and as 'Gospel' rang out, it segued into the Cherry Tree EP from 2004, which I haven't ever really heard, for some reason. I'm not good at EPs to be honest.


But holy shit, why didn't I think of this one sooner? Cherry Tree is like a The National album boiled down to the most essential and touching parts. It's just so beautiful. Like the absolutely amazing 'About Today', or 'Wasp Nest'. I mean, what astonishing ballads! And they're just the top of the bunch, the entire EP is just so soothing, save for the kinda misplaced live version of 'Murder Me Rachael' perhaps. 'Cherry Tree' and 'All Dolled-Up In Straps' are beautiful little pieces too, and 'Reasonable Man (I Don't Mind)' is so fantastically intimate. And 'All The Wine' (which is on Alligator too) is exquisite too - it reminds me very much of Bloc Party's wonderful 'Kreuzberg'. These songs are exactly in lieu of some of my favorite songs from Boxer and Alligator, such as 'Slow Show', 'Ada' and 'Daughters of the Soho Riots', and they're just so lovely all together.


I'm really lost for words on this one... Just really, really do listen to 'About Today'. It's just splendidly beautiful!

Dance little brother sport - and a new remixx.

Oi! A few tunes from the class of '09 have popped up this past week, that I wanted to share with y'all! One is  one of the at first glance more anonymous tracks on Arctic Monkeys' Humbug-record of yesteryear, that's really a prime representative of the much dustier style of the Monkeys on their third record. It's 'Dance Little Liar', which really kicks off viciously at 3:16. This latter part of the track is to some extent a comely reunification of Arctic Monkeys' earlier, intenser style and their obscureness of late.


The other sits at the unforgiving last spot of an album that is very easy to lose focus on, and thus it has taken me a long time to really get into this. I haven't really gotten into the album yet, even though everyone seemed to rave about it when it came out (and still do). It's 'Brother Sport', from Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, which is really a joyful and much more popish tune than many of the more oddball tracks on this album. Very enjoyable.


Just to add some new stuff, Four Tet have done this marathon of a remix of 'VCR' from The xx' Mercury Prize-winning, eponymous album. It's pretty chill!


I had an awesome few days in Copenhagen this weekend, and I'm really massively looking forward to moving there! To make time pass, I ordered a few new albums this Monday - more on that soon...

Lo-Fi-Fnk on fire.

Lo-Fi-Fnk did this chill remix of The Radio Dept.'s 'Heaven's On Fire' - go check it out! It's seldom bad when interesting artists remix good songs by other interesting artists...


I forgot to mention a few new cool tunes that are hitting the airwaves these days, such as the young Danish outfit 4 Guys From The Future, off the these days omnipresent Tambourhinoceros label. Check out 'Life Is Up To You'. Also Sufjan Stevens is making a serious case to make me buy his new record, The Age of Adz, lately by 'Too Much', which is a really catchy track, although it seems to remind me of an old Elton John tune I remember my parents used to like? I like the electronic direction in which he's going though.


I just got my paycheck, and even though the minuscule size of it means I'm still fucked and going nowhere, I just bought tickets for Klaxons and Foals' shows in Copenhagen this winter. I've also spent some time today signing up for apartments and such in Copenhagen - I'm looking forward to not having to traverse the country all the time to hear the music I like. Surfing The Void, by the way is strangely growing on me, and Foals have just made 'Wear & Tear', a b-side off 'Miami', available for download - check it out!


Now, I think I'm gonna spend a little more of my non-existant money on a few new records! Shit...

Sacrificing euphony for experimentalism.

I don't know what happened in the time between when I first heard Shout Wellington Air Force's debut album, Clean Sunset in spring, and was very thrilled with it, and now. I bought the album last week, and I must admit it really disappoints me. It's kinda like Dirty Projectors, but not quite as eccentric. Still too eccentric to be a pleasant listen in the long run. There's a fine line between being eccentric in a systematized way, such as Battles, for example, and losing structure. Clean Sunset loses structure. A few, very few, of the tunes are pretty good, such as 'Cherry Glands' (sorry, can't find it anywhere) and 'Astrid', but very often, the album becomes a cacophonous mess, topped by toe-cringing vocals. I'm gonna see them together with Sleep Party People tomorrow, that's gonna be interesting though.


One could make the case, that if the late 00's was dominated by indie folk, the early '10s could be the era of lo-fi or shoegaze. A few remarkable albums have hit the shelves this past week, each with a very high Pitchfork-score to accompany them. One is How To Dress Well's ethereal debut, Love Remains, and the other is Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest. The latter got a whopping 9.2 review, and might very well be in my next batch of records.


An album that will definitely be in my next batch of records is Treefight For Sunlight's debut album, A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull. It's available for streaming through this week at Soundvenue. It sounds pretty promising, but it's gonna be very interesting to see, how it fares after the tenth or twentieth listen. In any case, at first glance, it's a very impressive debut!

Petite Machine.

Among all the exciting new music that is thrust at me every week from various sources, it can sometimes be hard to find time to enjoy one's old classics. It's really necessary to go into the cellar and check up on some of your old wines now and then though, and the same goes for music.

This past week and a bit, it has been Kashmir's 'Petite Machine'. There's such an intenseness to the heartbeat-like drum pattern and the chillingly imperative guitar intro, Kasper Eistrup's exigent lyrics, frantically trying to convince this girl, woman, that she's the only one who can "fix this petite machine", i.e. make him feel alright and at peace. She struggles to be convinced, and Eistrup's anguish eventually leaves him short of words, and in stead, the song explodes into one of my favorite guitar soli, that writhes and wails and cuts like a dagger that is slowly and painfully, but also resolutely torn from the heart.

'Petite Machine', together with 'Ramparts', is a curious letting go of control on Zitilites, an otherwise very subdued record. I love to listen to 'Petite Machine' while walking alone in the streets at night, with that gut-wrenching guitar solo piercing through the silence and darkness of the night like a projector illuminating what goes on deep in the corners and alleyways, illuminating intimate feelings of desperation and pain.

One of the most beautiful renderings of this song is found on the The Aftermath dvd - mmmmh!

The strangest revival.

Oi! I figured it was finally time for a major visual revamp of The Idioteque - out with the old, in with the new, as they say. Anyway, I hope you all find the new look real tasty!


I've had the strangest revival the past week or so. It's Interpol. I heard their new (eponymous) album once, streamed somewhere, and categorically decided not to buy it, as little more than 'Lights' and 'Barricade' really fascinated me. "Alright, post-punk-revival's dead for good", I thought. But then I put on Interpol's former album, Our Love To Admire, and thought: "This is a bloody good album, why haven't I heard this since maybe two years ago?". And thus, this past week has been Interpol-revival week. It all started with 'Rest My Chemistry', which is a beautiful ballad about being drunk or stoned or whatever, and seeing something, someone who's, in the magic of the moment, unbelievably youthfully gorgeous; as Banks fragilely croons:

So young, so sweet,

so surprised. 

You look so young,

like a daisy in my lazy eye.

Pretty sweet. Then there's of course 'The Heinrich Maneuver', a highlight since day one, when one of my ex-girlfriends presented Interpol to a then unimpressed me. There's a nice air of aggressiveness to this one. But there are also songs on ...Admire, like 'The Scale', or the impressive closing pair of 'Wrecking Ball' and 'The Lighthouse', that haven't really appealed to me before, but do so impressively this time around.


And then I though of how deservedly critically acclaimed Antics was, and how Turn On The Bright Lights, which I haven't ever even heard, was near the very top of many a decade-in-music list, and I thought: "Maybe I'd better buy the new one anyway...".

New-rave unrenewed - Klaxons reactualized?

Boy was the new-rave craze a strange ordeal huh? Looking back at what many people expected - feared perhaps - would be the next big thing, and the benchmark for the latter part of the 00's, when it arose around 2006 and '07, it seems strange that it vanished almost quicklier than it came, and almost all the bands slightly connected with the moniker disavowed it completely. It was a thorough craze though. I remember when Klaxons came to Roskilde in 2007, and everyone were dressed so neon that one could have thought people had shredded Björk's wardrobe from the evening before into pieces and divided it between them. Face paint was passed around, and people went amok.


So what happened then? Well, people grew older and more melancholic, and started to listen to Band of Horses, and when the absolute poster boys of new-rave, Klaxons, with their psychotically-acclaimed debut Myths of the Near Future, disappeared into LSD oblivion, their scrawny supporting cast of the likes of Hadouken!, Shitdisco, Late of the Pier and such could not raise the bar, and as such, Myths... became the singular epic record of the genre.


So, Klaxons disappeared for years, and when they finally came a-knocking on Polydor Records' door, they were sent back home with a firm "thanks, but no thanks", and fewer and fewer people started to expect that Klaxons would ever reappear. But here they are now, with their new album, Surfing The Void.


Now, how exactly do you handle a legacy and a tumultuous album-birth like that? Apparently, you dress your record in one of the weirdest-as-fuck covers seen in a long, long time. Musically, Klaxons surprisingly allied themselves with metal producer Ross Robertson. An interesting choice for a band, which has perhaps always been indie. I mean, back in 2007, when Iron & Wine were still strange, Bon Iver was still unheard of, glitzy vintage-style trainers weren't at the forefront of every a store and only lumberjacks looked like lumberjacks, Klaxons and glowsticks and genuine vintage trainers were indie. So Ross Robertson? Picture sweety-cutesy James Righton with a sweaty, unhygienic metal buff? Not really. And that's pretty much the signature change on Surfing The Void. Sadly, the often very finesse'y guitar riffs and Righton's dominant synths of Myths... have been replaced by more guitar noise on Surfing... Opener 'Echoes' is very much of a bridge-builder between the two albums though - so much, that it must be either from very early in the songwriting process, or, more likely, a result of Polydor's slamming the door on the band first time around. It is an extremely pleasing track, but it is the albums high.


It's not that the rest of the album is that bad. It has been slowly moving through the past week, from the 'disappointment'-pile into the 'slow developer'-pile, and on some tracks, like the totally mental 'Flashover', the excessive guitar noise does actually work pretty well. Title track 'Surfing The Void' and 'Venusia' are other highs on the album, but it never quite lives up to the promise of 'Echoes', to be honest. A lot really has to do with the lyrical universe, which is really irrelevant to most earthlings, as it takes on almost Matt Bellamy-ish degrees of space fascination.


I don't know what made Myths of the Near Future so legendary, but Klaxons in my opinion don't quite match their early success on Surfing The Void. It's been a difficult task though, and even though Surfing is a bit too noisy, unfocused and uninteresting, it is an honorable sophomore album in any case! New-rave it isn't, but Klaxons have proven able to reactualize themselves on one of the most difficult number twos in a long, long time.